Quotes from Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

His absence seemed a solid thing, a burden I must carry in addition to my grief... Yet I knew I would continue to live. Sometimes that knowledge seemed the worst part of my loss.

We were both smiling, in that bittersweet way one does when imagining something the heart longs for and the head would dread.

To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibility, to be bound by the rules of that group.

Still I promise myself, "Next time I will do better" in the all-too-human conceit that I will always be offered a "next time.

...some secrets beg to be betrayed. The secret of undeclared love is like that.

There are few things so tender as a man's dignity.