Quotes from Robin Hobb

When circumstances are right, unlikely people do extraordinary things.

Change often measures our tolerance for folk different from ourselves. Can we accept their languages, their customs, their garments, and their foods into our own lives? If we can, then we form bonds, bonds that make wars less likely. If we cannot, if we believe that we must do things as we have always done them, then we must either fight to remain as we are, or die.

I am too swift of tongue. But I think that is the best way to talk to a dragon.

I sometimes think that age is based more on what you've done and what you remember than how old you are.

It is difficult to insult the man you don't speak to.

And like a child, I'd be testing the people who loved me, pulling away from them almost for the sole reason of seeing if anyone would come after me.

It was not that she was a better-tempered person, she decided detachedly. It was that her anger had learned a terrible patience. What good was wasting words on a petty and tyrannical second mate? He was a little yapping dog. She was a tigress. One did not waste snarls on such a creature. One waited until one could snap his spine with a single blow.

I could do as my father did: that is, lift my eyes and meet her gaze and let nothing of what I was thinking show in my face.

Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.

She closed her mouth. The abruptness of the kiss and Tats's assumption that something had just changed between them took her breath away. She should have pushed him away.

I don't want to have these burdens. But I can't bear to turn them over to anyone else, either. Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life.

It was not that these emotions were unworthy or inappropriate; it was simply that they were wasted upon the man.

Sweet Eda. Fitz, he has your face. Right down to the break in your nose." Amber cleared her throat. She spoke breathlessly into our shocked silence. "Fitz. Please. I can explain everything.

This was misery that could not yield, for he sorrowed for a time he could not return to, and a self he would never again be.

The puppet dances, He turns flips and he jigs. His painted red smile looks happy but he is screaming, for he performs on red-hot coals. His wooden feet begin to smoke. A man comes in with a shining axe. He swings it. I think he will cut off the puppet's burning feet, but instead the axe cuts all his strings. But the man with the axe falls just as swiftly as the puppet leaps away, free.

It's that which is between the gardener and his bit of soil that makes a garden.

Death does not conquer. It threatens, but it cannot subdue the future. What must be, will be.

But that is not true for all folk. Some folk are meant to argue with fate. And win.

you'd be wise to eat lightly, or not at all, of any food you do not prepare yourself." "At all the feasts and festivities that will be there?" "No. Only at the ones you wish to survive.

To Fitz and the Fool, my best friends for over twenty years

Acceptance of what is. That is the shortest path to peace with yourself.

All I ever wanted to do was live my own life. And I'm having damn little success at that." p. 250: Brashen Trell and Amber

Useless to worry until we find ourselves blocked, Nighteyes pointed out. If it happens, then we must simply find a way around it. It may slow us down. But we will never get there at all if we stand still and worry.

Death could make things stop, but it could not make things right.