Robin Hobb Quotes

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.

How different would our perception of reality be if... we discarded the mundane events that cannot coexist with our dreams?

To be honest, I don't think of any of my characters as minor characters - they're all the main characters in a story that I don't necessarily get to tell.

Your future. It awaits only you, to live it and to write it. - Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb

I told you I set no limits on my love for you. I don't. Yet I have never expected you to offer me your body. It was the whole of your heart, all for myself, that I sought. Even though I've never had a right to it. For you gave it away ere ever you saw me.

A woman of many talents. And intelligent, too. He'd probably have to kill her soon.

Ah, Beloved. Of all the things I must bid farewell to, you are the most difficult to lose. Forgive me that I have avoided you. Better, perhaps, that we make a space between us and become accustomed to it before fate forces that upon us.

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

I believed that by fixing it down in words, I could force sense from all that had happened, that effect would follow cause, and the reason for each event come clear to me. But then I returned one day, to find all my careful scribing gone to fragments of vellum lying in a trampled yard with wet snow blowing over them. I sat my horse, looking down at them, and knew that, as it always would, the past had broken free of my effort to define and understand it. History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.

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

If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate berevement, both the Prince and I passed into the gray days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it.

You seek a false comfort when you demand that I define myself for you with words. Words do not contain or define any person. A heart can, if it is willing.

I do not know whom I wish to win; until I do, I will let no player be eliminated.

Fitz: How bad is it? Nighteyes: Mind your own business. Fitz: You ARE my business. Nighteyes: Sharing pain doesn’t loosen it. Fitz: I’m not sure about THAT.

Love isn't just about feeling sure of the other person, knowing what he would give up for you. It's knowing with certainty what you are willing to surrender for his sake. Make no mistake; each partner gives up something. Individual dreams are surrendered for a shared one.

Fitz: Shall we get up tomorrow and go looking for a wild pig? Nighteyes: I didn’t lose any wild pigs, did you?

THE HEIR OF NIGHT by Helen Lowe is a richly told tale of strange magic, dark treachery and conflicting loyalties, set in a well realized world.

When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.

Sometimes it seems unfair that events so old can reach forward through the years, sinking claws into one's life and twisting all that follows it. Yet perhaps that is the ultimate justice: we are the sum of all we have done added to the sum of all that has been done to us. There is no escaping that, not for any of us.

One must plan for the future and anticipate the future without fearing the future.

When you are writing, you have to love all your characters. If you're writing something from a minor character's point of view, you really need to stop and say the purpose of this character isn't to be somebody's sidekick or to come in and put the horse in the stable. The purpose of this character is you're getting a little window into that character's life and that character's day. You have to write them as if they're not a minor character, because they do have their own things going on.

What a man can take with a sword, a woman can give by her flesh alone. Life.

No man is so dangerous as the man who cannot decide what he fears.

Cats talk to whomever they please.

One had a knife. But I had a staff and was trained to use it.

Look forward, not back. Correct your course and go on. You cannot undo yesterday's journey.

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.

I was dressed up as a witch for Halloween, and wanted to write a story about my black cat before I went out trick-or-treating. I think it went out with the trash the next day.

There is little in life so reassuring as a genuine welcome.

Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character's skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating.

Very little worth knowing is taught by fear.

But a living is not a life.

But change proves that you are still alive. Change often measures our tolerance for folk different from ourselves. Can we accept their languages, their customs, their garments, and their foods into our own lives? If we can, then we form bonds, bonds that make wars less likely. If we cannot, if we believe that we must do things as we have always done them, then we must either fight to remain as we are, or die

Every writer knows a lot more about their characters and story than actually makes it onto the page.

A time when it is far too early to arise, but so late that going to bed makes small sense.

Start writing sooner. Don't wait for permission. Don't hesitate.

Nothing takes the heart out of a man more than the expectation of failure.

It's too late to apologize for. I have already forgiven you.

Silence can ask all the questions, where the tongue is prone to ask only the wrong one.

Useless to worry until we find outselves blocked. ... If it happens, then we must simply find a way around it. It may slow us down. But we will never get there at all if we stand still and worry.

Sometimes it seemed to me a cruelty that so much was unresolved between us; at other times, a blessing that a hope of reunion lingered.

History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.

Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die. True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right. ~Amber

Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.

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.

How do you politely explain to someone that you had believed for years he was a moron as well as a Fool?

The fight isn't over until you win.

Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad.