Quotes from Robin Hobb

I know you think it slatternly, the way I am with men. But once you have been forced, it is … different. Ever after. I say to myself, well, I know that it can happen to me at any time. So this way, at least I decide with whom and when. There will never be children for me, and hence there will never be a permanent man. So why should not I take my pick of what I can have?

Was not that truly the greatest benefit of wealth, that it allowed one to treat family and friends to what they deserved?

Don't do what you can't undo, until you've considered what you can't do once you've done it.

go on from there, making the best of things. 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.

Fool," I began. "Yes. I am that," he said, and left.

Madness made him such a congenial fellow.

A simple question unlocks best.

His lessons cautioned me that great events often hinged on small ones. (Bee talking about the Fool)

A hungry man can long for hot meat and gravy without disdaining the simple pleasures of bread and cheese.

he guessed, totally incorrectly.

She is, Althea thought uneasily, what I pretend to be: a woman who does not let her sex deter her from living as she pleases. It wasn't fair. Jek had grown up in the Six Duchies, and claimed this equality as her birthright. Consequently, men usually ceded it to her.

Most of being a woman hurts.

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. Do you understand me, Brant?

Fault and guilt are as useless as apology once the deed is done. Once the action has been taken, all must endure what follows.

In the space of a sundown, you show me the wide world from a horse's back, and the soul of the world within my own walls.

The Satrap will cede you to Chalced, or sell you to New Traders without even a moment of consideration. He doesn't care, Althea. Not about his honor, or his ancestor's pledge or the people of Bingtown. He doesn't even care about the citizens of Jamaillia. He is so engrossed in himself, he cannot perceive anything except as it relates to him.

A bed. A chest. A small stand by the bed.

We dream of carving dragons

I wince to think of the price willingly paid for loving me.

A tower seldom crumbles from the bottom up

Awe flowed through him with his blood. Tree. Bark and sap, the scent of the wood and the leaves fluttering overhead. Tree. But also the soil and the water, the air and the light, all was coming and going through the being known as tree. He moved with them, sliding in and out of an existence of bark and leaf and root, air and water.

What else?' Chade

When I had encountered the Skill joy, I had not found it the tawdry pleasure Galen had implied. Rather, it had been the same rush of blood and thunder of earth that sometimes music brought to me, or a sudden flight of bright pheasant in an autumn wood, or even the pleasure of taking a horse perfectly over a difficult jump. That instant when all things come into balance, and for a moment turn together as perfectly as birds wheeling in flight.

Each must be discouraged, but not completely denied all possibility. Men, she had discovered, were ruled by their imaginations in that regard.