Quotes from Robin Hobb

A moment ago you spoke of love without need. To sate your need without love is theft. If you ust have that, hire it done.

Vultures and peacocks might both have feathers and beaks, but one did not confuse the two creatures.

Hold the cat. You'll feel better. I don't think so. He rubbed against my leg insistently. Hold the cat. I don't want to hold the cat. He reared up suddenly on his hind legs, and hooked his vicious little front claws into both flesh and leggings. Don't talk back! Pick up the cat.

Be very chary of telling your hoarded secrets. Many lose all power once they have been divulged. Be even more careful of sharing your own secrets lest you find yourself a puppet dancing on someone else's strings.

And while you're 'hearing' all this vital gossip, I might point out to you that no wise man tells all he knows. And that he who carries tales has little else in his head...

Yet I desperately wanted to share the news, as if grief were a heavy burden to be spread out among those who must bear it.

Then I'd be dead," I pointed out. "Among other things. Fool, there is no sense in trying to play that game with the past. Here is where we are today, and we can only make our moves from here.

Feelings don't have to be wise, they just are.

Keeping a child from harm is not the same as rearing one.

Could any amount of love ever be worth the pain of losing it?

But there was a cost to that surcease from pain, Fool. When you dull pain and hide it from yourself…" My words trickled away. I did not want to sound self-pitying. "You dull your joys as well." He said it simply." p. 510 Fitz to the Fool

She knew, with vast certainty, that she would never desire to be kissed by a man who had first asked her permission.

Housework was comforting. In cleaning and restoring a room, one could assert control. One could even pretend, briefly, that life could be tidied the same way.

Choose a place to take a stand. Not where they can corner you but not where they can surround you, either. Find a weapon, a stick, a rock, anything. If you cannot escape, make them pay as dearly as you can for capturing you. Fight them all the way.

But a wall that will not yield to a battering ram can still be breached by the gentle twining of ivy.

For he was the Fool now, all of Lord Chance and Lady Amber and Lord Golden scraped away by sorrow. He was no one's Beloved now.

The world had to change and for some reason the prosperity of men always results in them taking ever more from wild creatures and places.

Sometimes you have to trust people to understand you are not perfect

You leave so much behind to do this," I said awkward, thinking of his tools, his half-finished puppets, even the plants growing inside by the window. Despite myself, I felt responsabile for it. Perhaps it was because I was glad that I was not going on alone. He glanced over me and shrugged. "I take myself with me. That's all I truly need, or own.

We will discover the truth. And face it. And whatever it is, we will go after them. And we will kill them all, like the bastards we are.

Isn't it strange how wise counsel can cool the hottest head? He made sense but my heart screamed protest.

Bee. Nothing happens to you. You happen to everything.

The hunt for meat is best, but any hunt is always the hunt, and one is never more alive than during the hunt.

People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed