Robin Hobb Quotes

Long or short, if you worry about every step of a journey, you will divide it endlessly into pieces, any one of which may defeat you. Look only to the end. ~ Robin Hobb

And a Fool is supposed to be wise? ~ Robin Hobb

I was the Fool and the Fool was me. He was the Catalyst and so was I. We were two halves of a whole, sundered and come together again. For an instant I knew him in his entirety, complete and magical, and then he was pulling apart from me, laughing, a bubble inside me, separate and unknowable, yet joined to me. "You do love me !" I was incredulous. He had never truly believed it before. "Before, it was words. I always feared it war born of pity. But you are truly my friend. This is knowing. This is feeling what you feel for me. So this is the Skill". For a moment he reveled in simple recognition. ~ Robin Hobb

If all I had ever done was to be born and discovered, I would have left a mark across all the land for all time. I grew up fatherless and motherless in a court where all recognized me as a catalyst. And a catalyst I become. ~ Robin Hobb

Do you do this because you live such short lives? Tell yourselves wild tales of what might happen tomorrow, and feel all the feelings of events that will never happen? Perhaps to make up for the pasts you cannot recall, you invent futures that will not exist. ~ Robin Hobb

One can only walk so far from one's true self before the bond either snaps, or pulls one back. ~ Robin Hobb

I was lonely, and a lonely heart has hungers that can overpower both common sense and dignity. ~ Robin Hobb

Doing something stupid and reckless is not a better proof of your love than doing something measured and powerful. ~ Robin Hobb

Burned over water. ~ Robin Hobb

Sometimes it only makes one more lonely to know that somewhere else, one's friends and family are well. ~ Robin Hobb

Bee, I will always choose to believe you first. So it is your serious responsibility to be righteous in what you do. It is the pact that must exist between us. ~ Robin Hobb

Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change is what makes life interesting. ~ Robin Hobb

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. ~ Robin Hobb

Refusing to think about a thing only brings it more strongly to mind. ~ Robin Hobb

I have said it before. You are too cautious, Fitz. What if this, what if that? You hide from trouble that may never knock at our door. ~ Robin Hobb

If a few students come reluctantly to their studies, then let them go. If all students come reluctantly to their studies, then let your scribe be dismissed and find another. For once students have been taught that learning is tedious, difficult, and useless, they will never learn another lesson. ~ Robin Hobb

That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention. ~ Robin Hobb

Justice. There's a thing we shall ever thirst after, and ever be parched. No. We content ourselves with law. ~ Robin Hobb

And to die with the Warrior's Prayer on his lips. For, 'Yes', he had sighed on his dying breath, and all knew that was the ultimate prayer one could offer to life. Acceptance. ~ Robin Hobb

Cats themselves may be very chatty, but they seem to resent it in anyone else. Cats like listeners. ~ Robin Hobb

It was not that she was a better-tempered person, she decided detachedly. It was that her anger had learned a terrible patience. What good was wasting words on a petty and tyrannical second mate? He was a little yapping dog. She was a tigress. One did not waste snarls on such a creature. One waited until one could snap his spine with a single blow. ~ Robin Hobb

I have found the old adages to be true. One can only walk so far from one's true self before the bond either snaps, or pulls one back. I am fortunate. I have been pulled back. I walk once more in trueness to myself."
p. 177: Kettricken to Fitz: ~ Robin Hobb

The puppet dances, He turns flips and he jigs. His painted red smile looks happy but he is screaming, for he performs on red-hot coals. His wooden feet begin to smoke. A man comes in with a shining axe. He swings it. I think he will cut off the puppet's burning feet, but instead the axe cuts all his strings. But the man with the axe falls just as swiftly as the puppet leaps away, free. ~ Robin Hobb

One does not need the size of a dragon to have the soul of a dragon. ~ Robin Hobb

Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then, stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things. Then you will find the Now, the time that stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is. ~ Robin Hobb

I have been in howling storms in which a shout is reduced to a whisper, moved across the sea's featureless face in a gray fog that does not yield to human eyes. ~ Robin Hobb

It's all connected. When you save any part of the world, you've saved the whole world. In fact, that's the only way it can be done. ~ Robin Hobb

When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities. ~ Robin Hobb

Stop your whining. If you are frightened, be silent. Whining is for prey. It attracts predators. And you are not prey. ~ Robin Hobb

When you cut pieces from the truth to avoid sounding like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead. ~ Robin Hobb

Some secrets beg to be betrayed. The secret of undeclared love is like that. ~ Robin Hobb

Having something explained to you does not always solve it. ~ Robin Hobb

Then in general charge of the pack beasts and wagon animals. But it wasn't just work he taught me. Cleanliness. Honesty. He put a value on what my mother and grandmother had tried to instill in me so long ago. He showed them to me as a man's values, not just manners for inside a woman's house. He taught me to be a man, not a beast in a man's shape. He made me see it was more than rules, it was a way of being. A life, rather than a living. He ~ Robin Hobb

If I enter the room as you are fastening your shoe, I can say, "There will be a lovely moon tonight," and then you will call it to mind. But before I call it forth for you, you have forgotten the moon. One can swiftly understand that for most moments of our lives, we have forgotten almost all of the world around us, except for what currently claims our interest. ~ Robin Hobb

To bond to any animal was to promise oneself that future pain ~ Robin Hobb

A wise old man taught me that diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power. Persuasion, not force, works best and lasts longest. ~ Robin Hobb

We all perish in our last attempt to live. ~ Robin Hobb

You are confusing plumbing and love again. ~ Robin Hobb

The hand that once wielded both sword and axe now aches after an evening of the quill. When I wipe the tip of one clean, I often wonder how many buckets of ink I have used in a lifetime. How many words have I set down on paper or vellum, thinking to trap the truth thereby? And of those words, how many have I myself consigned to the flames as worthless and wrong? I do as I have done so many times. I write, I sand the wet ink, I consider my own words. Then I burn them. Perhaps when I do so, the truth goes up the chimney as smoke. Is it destroyed, or set free in the world? I do not know. I ~ Robin Hobb

The fight isn't over until you win it, Fitz. That's all you have to remember. No matter what the other man says. ~ Robin Hobb

The Six Duchies would fall. The world would end. We went to fetch blankets. ~ Robin Hobb

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. ~ Robin Hobb

I lied!' I spat my whisper at him. 'I knew you read my journal. I knew you read my dreams. I wrote there what I thought would hurt you most! I lied to hurt you. For letting him be dead while you lived. For being loved by him more than he loved me!' I took a breath. 'He loved you more than he ever loved any of the rest of us! ~ Robin Hobb

And like a child, I'd be testing the people who loved me, pulling away from them almost for the sole reason of seeing if anyone would come after me. ~ Robin Hobb

I passed that day in pleasure, which is to say, in the sort of work I wanted to do rather than the work that I thought I ought to be doing. ~ Robin Hobb

Something clamped tight inside her suddenly eased. He had been right. She did not have to grip her pain. She could let it go. The memory was still there. It had not vanished, but it had changed. It was a memory, a thing from her past. This wound could close and heal. The injury done to her was over. She did not have to keep it as a part of herself. She could allow herself to heal. Her tears were diluted in the rain that ran down her face. ~ Robin Hobb

She held his hand and did not look down nor back. ~ Robin Hobb

It is an odd language, yours. 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. ~ Robin Hobb

We are here, Fitz, you and I, to change the future of the world. To reach out and hold in place the tiny pebble that could trigger the boulder's tumbling. ~ Robin Hobb

The word of a cat is not to be relied upon. ~ Robin Hobb

She had called herself a whore. That was a man's word, a shame-word flung at a woman. But she did not seem ashamed. She wielded the word like a sword, slicing away all his preconceptions of who she was. She had earned her living by her sex, and she did not seem to regret it. ~ Robin Hobb

Too late to apologize, I've already forgiven you. ~ Robin Hobb

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

Undeserved forgiveness. Friendship defined. ~ Robin Hobb

Life is a balance. We tend to forget that as we go blithely from day to day. We eat and drink and sleep and assume that we will always rise up the next day, that meals and rest will always replenish us. Injuries we expect to heal, and pain to lessen as times goes by. Even when we are faced with wounds that heal more slowly, with pain that lessens by day only to return in full force at nightfall, even when sleep does not leave us rested, we still expect that somehow tomorrow all will come back into balance and that we will go on. At some point, the exquisite balance has tipped, and despite all our flailing efforts, we begin the slow fall from the body that maintains itself to the body that struggles, nails clawing, to cling to what it used to be. ~ Robin Hobb

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 ~ Robin Hobb

A moment ago you spoke of love without need. To sate your need without love is theft. If you ust have that, hire it done. ~ Robin Hobb

Suspense was an excellent tool for keeping powerful people off balance. It gave one bargaining power. ~ Robin Hobb

The carriageway to the front door was wide, and graceful white birches lined it. In autumn they shed a carpet of gold on the road, and in winter, burdened with snow, they arched over it, a frosted white tunnel paned with glimpses of blue sky. ~ Robin Hobb

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 linked inexorably in a chain, and now is always the only time we have to divert disaster. ~ Robin Hobb

When people look most vicious, what you are seeing is not their animal side. It is the savagery that only humans can muster. ~ Robin Hobb

I don't know"
"When a man says that, it usually means, "No, I won't but from time to time, I'll toy with the idea, so I can pretend i eventually intend to do it. ~ Robin Hobb

Why do you chop your life into bits and give the bits names? Hours, days. It is like a rabbit. If I kill a rabit, I eat a rabbit. When you have a rabbit, you chop it up and call it bones and meat and fur and guts. And so you never have enough. ~ Robin Hobb

I was almost annoyed at her for spoiling my perfectly good sulk. ~ Robin Hobb

Prudent men never trusted their luck. But Kennit had long ago decided that a man had to trust his luck in order for it to grow. ~ Robin Hobb

I actually think that short stories transfer to film much better than novels do. ~ Robin Hobb

His face was so ravaged, it was like looking at death itself. Except for the smooth, silvered part of it. By creeping degrees, his human hand lifted. He turned it over, showing a bloody palm. His cracked lips moved.

Beloved.

He could not say the word, but I knew it.

So did his Fool. ~ Robin Hobb

I wondered if there was any way to live amongst other people and refuse to be harnessed by their expectations and dependencies. ~ Robin Hobb

When you want a thing so badly for so long, and then it comes time to face that you cannot have it, sometimes - '
'Sometimes you can't believe it when it comes to you. Sometimes you're afraid to believe it. I understand your hesitation. ~ Robin Hobb

The Golden Dawn was the first figurehead to take on life. ~ Robin Hobb

FitzChivalry Farseer, too long have you sojourned among the Elderlings, your memory spurned by the very people you saved. Too long have you been in a place where the months pass as if days. Too long have you walked among us in false guise, deprived of your name and your honor. Rise. Turn and face the folk of the Six Duchies, your folk, and be welcomed home at last. ~ Robin Hobb

Does anything feel worse than being angry with people you love?"
"P. 307: Fitz to Chade ~ Robin Hobb

Dawn," Thymara scoffed. "I think the dragons meant, "After we wake up and when we feel like it. ~ Robin Hobb

None of us ever know what we are choosing when we choose life. If certainty is so important to you, than you should have chosen to be dead. That is a certain thing. ~ Robin Hobb

My perception of my life crashed from high tragedy to juvenile self-pity in a matter of moments. ~ Robin Hobb

That is true. I could not prevent what was done to me, nor can I change what people made of me. But I know what I am and have decided to continue being what I am. ~ Robin Hobb

As I apologized to her a flicker of panic raced through me and then faded away. There wasn't enough life left in me to panic. I'd made a mistake and I was dying. Apparently not even a Speck afterlife was available to me. I'd simply stop being. Apparently I hadn't died correctly. Oops. ~ Robin Hobb

There would always be dishonorable things done to preserve the honor of any power. ~ Robin Hobb

This was a young man who had killed, but never before been in imminent danger of being killed. I felt oddly qualified to introduce him to the sensation. ~ Robin Hobb

The wisest man takes the shortest path to peace with himself. ~ Robin Hobb

You have been with me, as close as the tips of my fingers, even when we were years and seas apart. Your being was like the hum of a plucked string at the edge of my hearing, or a scent carried on a breeze. Did not you feel it so? ~ Robin Hobb

To every creature is given both a place and a time, and when that time is over, we have to let them go. ~ Robin Hobb

Every small, unselfish action nudges the world into a better path. An accumulation of small acts can change the world. ~ Robin Hobb

Be now what you must be to succeed at the end of your journey, and when the end comes, you will find it is just another beginning.' Althea ~ Robin Hobb

Some speak of the savagery of beasts. I will ever prefer that to the thoughtless contempt some men have toward animals. ~ Robin Hobb

From their midst a broad-shouldered man stepped forth, past Longwick, who tried vainly to motion him back. He ran three strides toward me, and I took a deep, unbelieving breath of his scent just before he enfolded me in a bear hug. Despite the pain to my shoulder, I didn't struggle. I dropped my head on his shoulder, and let him support me, feeling safer than I had in years. Suddenly, it seemed as if everything would be all right, as if everything could be mended. Heart of the Pack was here and he never let us come to harm. ~ Robin Hobb

Death is always less painful and easier than life! You speak true. And yet we do not, day to day, choose death. Because ultimately, death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice. Death is what you get when there are no choices left to make. Am I right? ~ Robin Hobb

No man can return to being a boy. But there are interludes in a man's life when, for a time, he can recapture the feeling that the world is a forgiving place and that he is immortal. ~ Robin Hobb

A terrible premonition washed over me. This was how the whole world would end ... They would devour the forest and excrete piles of buildings made of stone wrenched from the earth or from dead trees. They would hammer paths of bare stone between their dwellings, and dirty the rivers and subdue the land until it could recall only the will of man. They could not stop themselves from doing what they did. They did not see what they did, and even if they saw, they did not know how to stop. They no longer knew what was enough. ~ Robin Hobb

The challenge is always to find the good place to end the book. The rule I follow with myself is that every book should end where the next book would logically begin. I know that some readers wish that literally all of the threads would be neatly tied off and snipped, but life just doesn't work that way. ~ Robin Hobb

To free humanity of time. For time is the great enslaver of us all. Time that ages us, time that limits us. Think how often you have wished to have more time for something, or wished you could go back a day and do something differently. When humanity is freed of time, old wrongs can be corrected before they are done. ~ Robin Hobb

There is no such thing as an extraordinary coincidence. There is only destiny. ~ Robin Hobb

Why does the forbidden always add that edge of sweetness? ~ Robin Hobb

In every building, in every garden, at every turn the visitor finds the austere beauty and simplicity of color and form that are the Mountain ideal. The overall impression that one carries away is of tranquillity and joy in the natural world. The chosen simplicity of life there may lead the visitor to question his own choice in life. ~ Robin Hobb

I think that old magic draws much of its strength from that acknowledgment: that we are a part of that world. ~ Robin Hobb

When you let go and follow your fate instead of trying to twist your life around and master it, a man finds that happiness follows him. ~ Robin Hobb

There are times when not thinking requires all of one's concentration. ~ Robin Hobb

It was not that these emotions were unworthy or inappropriate; it was simply that they were wasted upon the man. ~ Robin Hobb

Do not agonize about yesterday. Do not borrow tomorrow's trouble. Let your heart hunt. Rest in the now. ~ Robin Hobb

It's that which is between the gardener and his bit of soil that makes a garden. ~ Robin Hobb