Very little about being a writer is signing an autograph. It's sitting in a room and writing. Getting it out.
Robin HobbThere 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 Hobblearning is never wrong. Even learning how to kill isn't wrong. Or right. It's just a thing to learn, a thing I can teach you. That's all.
Robin HobbWhen considering a man's motives, remember you must not measure his wheat with your bushel. He may not be using the same standard at all.
Robin HobbHome is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more.
Robin HobbBe a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.
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 HobbBesides, if there were no dragons of flesh and blood and fire, whence would come the idea for these stone carvings?
Robin Hobbif love doesnt come first and linger after, if love cant wait and endure disappointment and seperation, then its not love.
Robin HobbDo you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?
Robin HobbWriters really do that. We weep over our characters. We are saddened sometimes for days when we say goodbye to a world or a character. They do become our best friends. I've probably spent more time with them over the past 22, 24 years than I have spent with most of the real members of my family.
Robin HobbSomeday is someday, and maybe it will be or maybe it won't. This is a human thing, to worry about things that may or may not come to be. You can't eat meat until you've killed it.
Robin HobbWhen we come back to fantasy, I think we're actually coming back to the real bedrock of storytelling. Our national or international genre really is fantasy, if you think about the worldwide myths and legends and stories that we all know, whether we're talking about Little Red Riding Hood or the Arabian Nights or Noah's Ark or Hercules. These are stories that cross many cultures in much the same way that dragons cross many cultures.
Robin HobbDeath 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.
Robin HobbLocked into loneliness were we two and looking at one another every evening we each saw the one we blamed for it.
Robin HobbEverybody has felt at one time or another that everyone else in the world had a better shot than they did, so when you engage that, you engage the reader, and I think you create a character that brings the reader more fully into the story.
Robin HobbHer stillness was such a contrast to all the jumbled communication inside me that I suddenly felt what a tiresome fellow I was, always filling the air with the rattle of words and anxieties.
Robin HobbKing Shrewd is expecting me, rather he isn't expecting me, and that is precisely why I must go to him now.
Robin HobbMy blood will only buy you that fool's regard. I will pay a high price for you to be respected by a churl. Nothing bought with blood is worth having, young man.
Robin HobbThis, 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.
Robin HobbDon't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them.
Robin HobbAll events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence the the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day. -Fitz Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too. -Chade When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead. -Burrich We left. Walking uphill and into the wind. That suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life. -Fitz
Robin HobbIn real life, things don't all end at the nice same place. To keep the story real, there has to be kind of a ragged edge at the end of a novel.
Robin HobbI began reading everyhing in the family library. Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe. And of course, if you're running out of books to read you can always read Shakespeare.
Robin HobbLeave the pain behind and let your life be your own again. There is a place where all time is now, and the choices are simple and always your own. Wolves have no kings
Robin HobbI wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound.
Robin HobbAs 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 HobbRemember with your heart. Go back, go back and go back. The skies of this world were always meant to have dragons. When they are not here, humans miss them. Some never think of them, of course. But some children, from the time they are small, they look up at the blue summer sky and watch for something that never comes. Because they know. Something that was supposed to be there faded and vanished. Something that we must bring back, you and I.
Robin HobbI healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.
Robin HobbThat 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 HobbStop 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 HobbThe truth, I discovered, is a tree that grows as a man gains access to experience. A child sees the acorn of his daily life, but a man looks back on the oak.
Robin HobbPerhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes.
Robin HobbWe are as we are. How can you claim to know what life I was meant to lead, let alone threaten to force me into it? All your quibbling is nonsense. As well forbid your nose to snuff, or your ears to hear. We are as we do.
Robin Hobb