Quotes from Robin Hobb

Some say 'a dog' or 'a horse' as if every one of them is like every other. I've heard a man call a mare he had owned for seven years 'it' as if he were speaking of a chair. I've never understood that. One does not have to be Witted to know the companionship of a beast, and to know that the friendship of an animal is every bit as rich and complicated as that of a man or woman.

You know your duty and you are doing it. It isn't your fault if Althea can't appreciate that.

How can I know what I'll do, until I've done it? How can I say?

It was said often at my monastery, 'The wise man takes the shortest path to peace with himself.' Acceptance of what is, that is the shortest path.

From these fragmented remains, one can glean that sore need drove him to seek the homeland of the Elderlings. His troubles are familiar ones; ships raided his coastline mercilessly.

If we cannot anchor ourselves in a belief that we will succeed, we have already been defeated.

Take comfort in this, Amber. You are only one small, short-lived creature. You'd have to be a fool to think you could change the course of the whole world." She was silent until she broke out in a shaky laugh. "Oh, Paragon, in that you are more right than you know, my friend.

They need other people to make them think they're alive. They only feel like they're important if someone else tells them they are.

Does no one around here ever use the healer?

De todas las bromas crueles que me había gastado recientemente el destino, decidí que despertar era la más cruel de todas.

You can't go back," she told him bluntly. Her voice was neither kind nor unkind. "That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is 'supposed to be.' 

No. You stop. Stop thinking you're the son your father disowned. You're not who he expected you to be; that doesn't mean you aren't somebody. Nor are you perfect. Stop using every mistake you make as an excuse to fail completely.

Despite their efforts to keep me from her, I saw Molly everywhere. Oh, not her person, no, but in the scent of the fat bayberry candle burning so sweetly, in the cloak left draped over a chair, even the honey in the honey cakes tasted of Molly to me.

The violence of a flood tears a tree from the riverbank, but the nurturing soil and water the flood brings more than compensate

Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life.

When people look most vicious, what you are seeing is not their animal side. It is the savagery that only humans can muster. When you see me loyal to my family, then you see the wolf.

I closed the door softly behind him and then stood leaning against it as if I could hold the future out.

When settled people look for security, they look for continuity." Here

Jovem como eu era, perguntava-me que espécie de homem era este que, com uma perna enfaixada, conseguia impor respeito a um recinto cheio de homens durões, com apenas um olhar ou uma palavra.

They were all gone now, broken or taken by people who had no idea what such items represented. Let them go. She held the past in her heart, with no need of physical items to tie it down.

Life does not wait for any of us to grow up.

Change rained fast and furious on me for the next fortnight.

What are you thinking about?" Tassin asked. She spoke so softly that I replied without thinking, still staring into the fire. "That sometimes it only makes one more lonely to know that somewhere else, one's friends and family are well.

Sometimes," he observed obliquely, "you have to trust people to understand you are not perfect.