Quotes from Robin Hobb

If ever you make it so they don't need you, they will kill you.

When considering a man's motives, remember you must not measure his wheat with your bushel. He may not be using the same standard at all.

Because she felt no shame at all, you think it must all belong to you. People like her are so adept at passing on blame.

I had learned, yet again, that I could not serve the Farseers and still claim a life for myself. Not this again, Changer. How could the moments of your life belong to anyone but you? You are the Farseers, blood and pack. See the whole of it. It is neither a binding nor a separation. The pack is the whole of you. The wolf's life is in the pack.

But when the enemy is finally driven far from your shore, and your houses are restored and your fields begin to yield and your flocks to increase, why, then it becomes time to find fault with your neighbors again.

I hate irony. It is a manacle that ties our dreams to our fears.

Suspense was an excellent tool for keeping powerful people off balance. It gave one bargaining power.

As it was with dragons, so it is with queens. A careless word or deed could have severe consequences. Inside

Take all self-determination from a man's life, and all that is left for him to do is complain.

The future cannot take from us the days we have left…unless we let it. p. 46 The Fool to Fitz

Mornings come, whether we want them or not.

I defended him, "He's a good man. He was kind to me. I want to believe he was really my friend." "I know that. So do I. But good men can disagree. Severely.

Isolation was better than shame. I would continue on my own. This was my fight and no one else

Passed through fire and plunged through salt water and offered to the winds of the air; thus were names sealed to these chosen children.

No one lives forever," the walls seemed to say. "Four stones stacked atop one another will outlive all your dreams and still stand when your descendants have long forgotten that you lived here.

The next was a girl with her face and arms painted white, in a gown decorated with gilt to mimic golden thread. Gilded, too, was her crown of feathers and rooster heads, and in her hands a scepter that looked more like a feather duster.

Had he ever truly cared about our friendship? There are always those dark thoughts, I must believe, when a deep friendship ends so abruptly. But every wound becomes a scar, eventually. That one would never entirely ceased being tender, but I learn to live with it.

I have known beauties and joys that tried my heart's strength as surely as the tragedies and uglinesses have

He's probably hungry, too, isn't he, Lacey? I've heard that about boys...

This is hard," he said, but he did not seem to address his words to me. "I'm too close to the end. I've had glimpses of this, but never clear ones. And now all I know is that I must go on, and that every step I take leads me closer to my death." He met my eyes and said without shame, "I'm terrified." I smiled. "Welcome to human existence." p. 335 The Fool to Fitz

Ah, Fitz, Fitz, we are who we are and who we ever must be.

The path will find you," he assured me, and smiled. "In darkness it cannot hide itself." p. 467 Prilkop to Fitz

All memories are connected, and like a man's skin, they can heal. In time, left to themselves, those memories would have stopped hurting you. You may someday wish you could call up that pain.

At the moment of deciding not to argue further, he had given up all emotional investment in the situation. He had withdrawn his anma into himself as he had been taught to do, divesting it of his anger and offense as he did so. It was not that these emotions were unworthy or inappropriate; it was simply that they were wasted upon the man. He swept his mind clean of reactions to the filthy blanket. By the time he reached the foredeck, he had regained not just calmness, but wholeness.