Robin Hobb Quotes

Some part of me knew that was important. That once it would have mattered terribly to me.

~ Robin Hobb

For he was the Fool now, all of Lord Chance and Lady Amber and Lord Golden scraped away by sorrow. He was no one's Beloved now.

~ Robin Hobb

...You won't even see what is put right on the table before you. Men. If it was raining soup you'd be out there with a fork.

~ Robin Hobb

As dye soaks fibres, drawn into them to change their colour forever, so does a memory, stinging or sweet, change the fibre of a man’s character.

~ Robin Hobb

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

~ Robin Hobb

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

~ Robin Hobb

The past is no further away than the last breath you took.

~ Robin Hobb

The problem is not that we forget the past. It is that we recall it too well. Children recall wrongs that enemies did to their grandfathers, and blame the granddaughters of the old enemies. Children are not born with memories of those who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn't tell their children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better.

~ 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

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

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.

~ Robin Hobb

...there was no point in sighing after what I could not have. It only distracted me from what I did have.

~ Robin Hobb

Why does the forbidden always add that edge of sweetness?

~ Robin Hobb

If all of her was not enough for him, then let him have none of her and seek what he needed elsewhere.

~ Robin Hobb

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

~ Robin Hobb

...once students have been taught that learning is tedious, difficult, and useless, they will never learn another lesson.

~ Robin Hobb

Stop longing.You poison today’s ease, reaching always for tomorrow.

~ Robin Hobb

Perhaps there can be no thanks nor any blame, but only recognition of the forces that brought us and bound us to our inevitable fates.

~ Robin Hobb

I truly wanted to live a life in which I could make my own choices, independent of the 'duties' of my birth and position. It was only when fate granted that to me that I realized the cost of it. I could set aside my responsibilities to others and live my life as I please only when I also severed my ties to them. I could not have it both ways.

~ Robin Hobb

As long as you believe it is impossible, you close your mind to understanding it.

~ Robin Hobb

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.

~ Robin Hobb

And what do you believe?”A slow smile spread over his face. “I believe in you. You are my new beginning.

~ Robin Hobb

To sate your need without love is theft

~ 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

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

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

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

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

~ Robin Hobb

It was better to leave the space empty of words than to choose the wrong ones.

~ 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

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

...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

Assassins take no pride in fighting fairly. We take pride in winning.

~ Robin Hobb

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

~ 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

Think of what is and don't let what might have been distract you.

~ 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

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

I was dying. And I had never been enough for anything.

~ Robin Hobb