Robin Hobb Quotes

They regarded our passage not at all, and by the afternoon I felt no more significant than an ant. I had never thought to be disdained by a tree.
Robin Hobb
Boredom is vastly underrated. Boredom means that nothing is trying to kill you every day.
Robin Hobb
But if she is alone now, it is because she chose to be alone, not someone decree if for her. Her life is hers to live, not yours to repair.
Robin Hobb
I am shocked to find that some people think a 2 star 'I liked it' rating is a bad rating. What? I liked it. I LIKED it! That means I read the whole thing, to the last page, in spite of my life raining comets on me. It's a good book that survives the reading process with me. If a book is so-so, it ends up under the bed somewhere, or maybe under a stinky judo bag in the back of the van. So a 2 star from me means,yes, I liked the book, and I'd loan it to a friend and it went everywhere in my jacket pocket or purse until I finished it. A 3 star means that I've ignored friends to finish it and my sink is full of dirty dishes. A 4 star means I'm probably in trouble with my editor for missing a deadline because I was reading this book. But I want you to know . . . I don't finish books I don't like. There's too many good ones out there waiting to be found. Robin Hobb, author
Robin Hobb
Perhaps the greatest thing one can discover is that you can decide who you are. You don't have to be whom the Ludlucks made you. You don't even have to be who you were before that. You can choose. We are all creatures of our own devising.
Robin Hobb
And so the Wolf of the West rose from the stone! And so he will rise again if ever the folk of the Six Duchies call to him in need.
Robin Hobb
There was, she suddenly saw, many ways to be raped.
Robin Hobb
I should live each day as if it were significant, as if everyday the fate of the world depended on my action.
Robin Hobb
I wish they would all go away.Except the Fool. I wished he would join me. Somehow, I had always thought he would join me. Now, I could not recall why. Perhaps I had buried that in the stone.
Robin Hobb
He gave a final shake of his coat. I go to the hunt!
Robin Hobb
Did you feel that?' I asked him.He smiled sadly. 'Fitz, I have never needed to touch you to feel that. It was always there. No limits.
Robin Hobb
Perhaps once one realised how deeply one could bond with a creature as foreign as a dragon, all forms of human love seemed more acceptable.
Robin Hobb
When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead.
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
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
That is one thing that in all my years among your folk I have never become accustomed to. The great importance that you attach to what gender one is.
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
But in my heart, when I said “my king,” I meant Verity.
Robin Hobb
I wanted us to share all our lives. You wish to keep me in a box, separate from your life. I cannot be someone you come to when you have nothing more important to do.
Robin Hobb
Dragons don't bother with introductions.
Robin Hobb
Besides, if there were no dragons of flesh and blood and fire, whence would come the idea for these stone carvings?
Robin Hobb
Had they been dogs they would have sniffed me over and then drawn back. But humans have no such inbred courtesies.
Robin Hobb
You will live to love again. You know you have lost your springtime girl, your Molly on the beach with the wind in her brown hair and red cloak. You have been gone too long from her, and too much has befallen you both. And what you loved, what both of you truly loved, was not each other. It was the time of your life. It was the spring of your years, and life running strong in you, and war on your doorstep and your strong, perfect bodies. Look back, in truth. You will find you recall fully as many quarrels and tears as you do lovemaking and kisses. Fitz. Be wise. Let her go, and keep those memories intact. Save what you can of her, and let her keep what she can of the wild and daring boy she loved. Because both he and that merry little miss are no more than memories anymore." She shook her head. "No more than memories.
Robin Hobb
It's not the sort of thing one asks of a friend. He hasn't offered, and I will not ask it. I will not tear him that way. I am trying to let go. I don't know how.
Robin Hobb
The word of a cat is not to be relied upon.
Robin Hobb
The fight isn't over until you win it...That's all you have to remember. No matter what the other man thinks.
Robin Hobb
The fight isn't over until you win.
Robin Hobb
I must talk to Kennit first. He will tell me when he is ready for us to have a baby.""Never," Bolt said flatly."What?""Never wait for a male on any such decision. You are the queen. You decide. Males are not made for such decisions. I have seen it time and time again. They would have you wait for days of sunshine and wealth and plenty. Yet to a male, enough is never sufficient, and plenty never reached. A queen knows that when times are hardest and game most scarce, that is when one must care most about the continuance of the race. Some things are not for males to decide.
Robin Hobb
I feared my own kind more than anything the natural world could ever threaten me with.
Robin Hobb
I think I made a better boy than I do a man, I admitted ruefully to the wolf. Why not wait until you've been at it a bit longer and then decide? he suggested.
Robin Hobb
There is a dead spot in the night, that coldest, blackest time when the world has forgotten evening and dawn is not yet a promise. A time when it is far too early to arise, but so late that going to bed makes small sense.
Robin Hobb
Why not break free now, and make Bingtown a place where folk begin anew, all men standing on an equal footing?""And all women, too."She must be Sparse's daughter, thought Keffria. Even her voice echoed his in tone. Devouchet looked at her in surprise."It was but a manner of speaking, Ekke," he said mildly."A manner of speaking becomes a manner of thinking.
Robin Hobb
I don't want to have these burdens. But I can't bear to turn them over to anyone else, either. Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life.
Robin Hobb
When the mainstay of one's world is taken away, it's only natural to cling to all the rest, to try desperately to keep things as close to the way they were as one can." He shook his head sorrowfully. "But no one can ever go back to yesterday.
Robin Hobb
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.
Robin Hobb
I could not make it right, but I could make someone pay for how wrong it had been.
Robin Hobb
This was misery that could not yield, for he sorrowed for a time he could not return to, and a self he would never again be.
Robin Hobb
If he ever wanted vengeance on me for all I did, he has it now. This is the worst thing he could do to me. Now I know how it feels to be left behind. As I left him.
Robin Hobb
As if he hadn't always known he was loved the best. That he was the Beloved.
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
Despite my pain, I felt not the regret of an ending, but the foreboding of a beginning.
Robin Hobb
Regrets are useless, " the Fool replied. "All you can do is start from where you are.
Robin Hobb
I was dying. And I had never been enough for anything.
Robin Hobb
A while later, I lingered in the hinterlands of sleep. Sometimes I think there is more rest in that place between wakefulness and sleep than there is in true sleep. The mind walks in the twilight of both states, and finds the truths that are hidden alike by daylight and dreams. Things we are not ready to know abide in that place, awaiting that unguarded frame of mind.
Robin Hobb
Open your eyes. This horrible mess is your life. There is no sense in waiting for it to get better. Stop putting it off and live it.
Robin Hobb
Think of what is and don't let what might have been distract you.
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
There are few things so tender as a man's dignity.
Robin Hobb
Assassins take no pride in fighting fairly. We take pride in winning.
Robin Hobb
...I've returned and I look around me and think, I've missed my life. While I was off and alone, it went on here, without me, and I'm forever doomed to be a stranger in my own home.
Robin Hobb
He shook his head pityingly. “This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft.”“Not all men are destined for greatness,” I reminded him.“Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?”“This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.”“No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?
Robin Hobb
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.
Robin Hobb
It was better to leave the space empty of words than to choose the wrong ones.
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
I lied to hurt you. For letting him be dead while you lived. For being loved by him more than he loved me!He loved you more than he ever loved any of the rest of us!
Robin Hobb
Those were some astounding lies, cub. And the very last one the most inspired of all. You have your father's talent for it.
Robin Hobb
How often does a man know, without question, that he has done well? I do not think it happens often in anyone's life, and it becomes even rarer once one has a child.
Robin Hobb
Everything she sang was true. I will leave it to you as to whether the truth can exist with details omitted, or if those lacks make a lie of it.
Robin Hobb
I'll never miss a chance to remind you of what a brat you were. A gloriously beautiful and very spoiled brat. I was utterly charmed by your complete self-absorption. It was rather like courting a cat.
Robin Hobb
Somehow," she said coldly, "you have confused profitable and not profitable for right and wrong. I, however, have not.
Robin Hobb