Quotes from Robin Hobb

It's not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed." "Even when it's stupid to try?" he asked with savage sarcasm. "Especially then," she replied sweetly. "That's how it's done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That's how you do it.

If a human's life can be measured in counted coins, then that worth can be diminished, a copper at a time, until no value is left.

It could all happen again, and I could not stop it. I think I grasped then, fleetingly, the passion that powered the Fool. He believed in the terrible strength of the White Prophet and the Catalyst, to shoulder the future from the rut of the present and into some better pathway. He believed that some act of ours could prevent others from repeating the mistakes of the past

It was immensely attractive, in the way that a sparkling creek glimpsed through trees draws the eye, or the smell of fresh-baked bread wakes hunger.

Like a flower pressed flat and dried, we try to hold it still and say, this is exactly how it was the day I first saw it.

fell silent. "When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead. Let's start

The diplomacy of the knife.

I do not disparage any man's life. Consider my own, and tell me what height I look down from.

Shall not I drive you through seas no other man would dare, shall not we together see lands that are the stuff of legends? Shall not we venture together under skies where the stars have not been named yet? Shall not we, you and I, weave such a tale of our adventures that the whole world will be in awe of us?

once students have been taught that learning is tedious, difficult, and useless, they will never learn another lesson.

The Outislanders have a word for that courage. Finblead, they call it, the last blood, and they believe that a special fortitude resides in the final blood that remains in any person before they fall. According to tales, only then can one find and use that sort of courage.

She asked me if the schoolteacher and the horsemaster were still at odds, and by this I discerned that Burrich and Galen's challenge at the Witness Stones had become something of a local legend already. I assured her that peace had been restored. We spent

If I had met you for the first time tonight, I would have despised you. You put me in mind of Regal." "Did I? Well, perhaps that reflect my belief that there is something to be learned from everyone that we meet.

I don't see any humor in this," she snapped. Rurisk and I looked at one another and grinned foolishly. Smoke.

That finblead lights everything in one's life with a terrible radiance. All relationships are illuminated for what they are and for what they truly were in the past. All illusions melt away. The false is revealed as starkly as the true.

The look I wore must have shocked her, for she turned her gaze back to Lord Golden. She spoke uncertainly. "Amber, my friend. Aren't you glad to see me?

Más tarde comencé a merodear por el umbral del sueño. A veces creo que se descansa mejor en la frontera que separa la vigilia y el sueño que durmiendo. La mente erra bajo el crepúsculo de ambos estados y es capaz de desvelar las verdades que guardan tanto la luz del día como los sueños. Todo aquello que no estamos preparados para descubrir pervive en ese límite, a la espera de encontrarse con ese rincón desprotegido de la psique.

I could almost see the resignation on the old man's face. I knew he would draw a breath and sigh that I insisted on stacking all my pain in one pile, facing it all at once." p. 480 Fitz about Chade

He's a spider. A web-weaver, with lines stringing out in all directions. He sits at the centre and interprets each tug.

The pain was just a part of all that. I had lives before this one, and they are just as much mine as this. I can take all my pasts, keep them and determine my own future. I don't have to be what anyone made me, Brashen. I can be Paragon.

What was the pain? Damaged units of his body, breaks in his defenses against the outside world. The barriers needed repairing, the damaged units must be broken down and dispersed. Nothing must get in the way of this task. All his resources should be put to it. His body demanded this of him, and pain was the alarm that sounded through him.

seen my birth. Oh, not in your lifetime, nor even mine. But shall we be happy, to say that we live in the dusk rather than in the full night? Shall we rejoice that we shall only suffer, while your offspring will be the ones to know the torments of the damned? Shall this be why we do not act?

I think I made a better boy than I do man, I admitted ruefully to the wolf. Why not wait until you've been at it a bit longer and then decide? he suggested.

by all the lies I had ever spoken and all the truths I had made into lies by leaving them unspoken.