Quotes from Robin Hobb

He pleasures his body with drugs and deadens his soul with his savage amusements. Aye, and spreads the disease to those around him, until they take no satisfaction in a contest of skill that draws no blood, until games are only amusing if lives are wagered on the outcome. The very coinage of life becomes debased. Slavery spreads, for if it is accepted to take a man's life for amusement, then how much wiser to take it for profit?

Time doesn't stop for her just because you're gone.

It's all my fault,' I confessed to her. 'Oh, Fitz, always you are …' She bit back whatever it was she had started to say. More gently she added, 'No one blames you.' 'I blame me.' 'Of course you do,' she said, as if I were a child insisting the moon was a cheese.

For I had already dreamed your face and I knew I must find you, even though everyone had assured me that you did not and could not exist.

Some memories are best left undisturbed. Sometimes, if you forget something, it's because it's better forgotten.

He came one late, wet spring, and brought the wide world back to my doorstep.

He has had his wish. He will not bow his head.

Perhaps the gods punish us by bringing us face to face with our own foolish mistakes, condemning us to watch our children fall into the same traps that crippled us.

His father and his sister had both deliberately attempted to wound him, and he had let them succeed. But those things that had happened, and these feelings he now experienced, were not faults to be conquered. He could not deny the feelings, nor should he try to change them. "Accept and grow," he (WIntrow) reminded himself, and felt the pain ease." p. 107

There is, in all honesty, no way to kill someone mercifully. There are those who count it no crime to drown an imperfect newborn in warm water, as if the infant will not struggle desperately to draw air into its lungs. Did it not try to breathe, it would not drown. But they do not hear the screams nor feel the darkening of the mind that the child endures, so they have been merciful. To themselves. This is true of most "mercy killings.

Coming up. A large tawny cat announced this to me at the same moment that he effortlessly elevated onto my lap. I stared at him in surprise.

I was very tired of being hit, but it seemed like the one thing I did well lately.

The fire of my burning past sent odd shadows snaking ahead of us as we made our way into the storm's resurgence.

Look at her. The sun soaks right int her and shines back out of her. She's magnificent.

Fitz, you are angry. I can feel it like storm waves lashing my shores.

The whole of everything I want in this world is right here, under my hand.

I remember that dress. It is quite old, isn't it? Didn't you wear it to one of the parties you gave to announce Keffria's wedding to Kyle? It takes years off your face. You must be quite proud to be able to squeeze yourself into it still." Ronica shook her head at the old family friend. "Davad Restart. Only you can so completely ruin so many compliments in one brief speech.

Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change are what makes life interesting.

He'd known of love and accepted that it existed for him. But never before had he actually felt love as a physical sensation that emanated from another creature and warmed and comforted him. It was incredible.

Nor do I need your pity. I accept my current fortune. I've seen my situation change before, and I will see it change again. I don't need you to change it.

There is no path to the future, Fitz. The path is now. Now is all there is, or ever will be. You can change perhaps the next ten breaths in your life. But after that, random chance seizes you in its jaws again. A tree falls on you, a spider bites your ankle, and all your grand plans for winning a battle are for naught. Now is what we have, Fitz, and now is where we act to stay alive.

Her ambitions have always exceeded her abilities." He paused, and looked directly at Regal. "In royalty, that is a most lamentable failing.

The white prophet Gerda was barely twenty when she set out into the world to find her Catalyst. She had dreamed of her often since she was an infant. She travelled far from the peaceful green lands of her birth, going both by sea and by land, to a village far in the mountains where a peak smoked in the distance and glowed red at night

Damn it, a man has to see himself reflected somewhere to be sure he is real