Quotes from Robin Hobb

Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. 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.

the small delights of the flesh were sometimes the most potent medicine against the deep pains of the spirit.

As we stood together and watched our boy walk down the lane to the main road, I wondered if I had ever been so insufferably young and sure of myself, but the ache in my heart had the pleasant afterglow of pride.

Kettricken smiled.

They would know me for what I was. An assassin, like my father before me. The Destroyer from their dreams.

She was a tigress. One did not waste snarls on such a creature. You waited until you could snap his spine with a single blow.

Acaso reunir el coraje que se requiere para buscar un camino diferente equivalga a tener el valor para arriesgarse a cometer nuevos errores.

I had a bottle of wine, bread, apples, cheese, sausages, and a ferret in a basket beside me, and a cushion to perch on. I

But when all roads lead to death, there is no point to running down any of them.

It is hard for loneliness to gaze on happiness

Fate rushes down upon us! The time drags and the days plod past, lulling us into thinking that the doom we fear will always so delay. Then, abruptly, the dark days we have all predicted are upon us, and the time when we could have turned dire fate aside has passed. How old must I be before I learn? There is no time; there is never any time. Tomorrow may never come, but todays are inexorably linked in a chain, and now is always the only time we have to divert disaster.

Sometimes all a father can do is stand by and witness the disaster, and then pick up the pieces.

was tucked into his dark blue trousers. He was small for his age, a lean and supple youth. Wind and sun had weathered the boy's face. The warm color of his skin, his white teeth and dark eyes, the dark trousers merging into the darkness of the corridor behind him: it was all a chance composition of perfect light and shadow.

I was just thinking of all the years and times when I've sat across from you, and wondered if I'd ever truly seen you at all.

I had Hap still, I reminded myself, but on the heels of that thought I knew I did not. Hap was a young man striking out on his own. For me to cling to him now and make him the focus of my life would have been the act of a leech. So who was I, when I stood alone, stripped of all others? It was a difficult question. p. 449

To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention.

She taught me that being open was simply not being closed. And going into another's mind is mostly done by being willing to go outside of your own.

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.

Is that a riddle? Or a serious question?' 'Yes.' The Fool was grave.

You speak of passing time as in the Mountains we speak of passing wind. As if it were a thing to be gotten rid of.

Once you are a father, you have to try to be a better man than you truly are.

Your mind will remember how to do something and you will think you can still do it. Your body will try. And fail.

I lose my place in time. It seems to me that we have come this way before, done these things before, perhaps even shared these words before. Sometimes I believe it so strongly that I think that today is actually a memory or a dream.

I wanted to stop and think, but the anxiety wouldn't let me. Do it now, do something now, do anything now. The drive to be doing, doing anything, was a pressing need that could not be denied.