Robin Hobb quotes:

I 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.

That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.

Writing and reading fiction is, I think, a human effort to make sense of the world.

I think that my passion for writing fantasy began at about the same time as my passion for reading fantasy.

Fantasy encompasses a wide, wide spectrum of writing. We have beast fables, we have gothics, we have tales of vampires and werewolves, and we have sword and sorcery; we have epics from Homer, and there is just so much out there that we put under the umbrella of 'fantasy.'

Besides, if there were no dragons of flesh and blood and fire, whence would come the idea for these stone carvings?

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.

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.

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

I think ever since I started to read, there have been favorite novels for different stages of my life. And one is never bumped out of place to yield to another. Instead, I just add to my favorite shelves.

Not intending to be funny: I sit at the keyboard, put my fingers on the keys and go. To me, it's the real secret of writing. Put yourself in front of the screen or the blank sheet of paper and get to work.

Do you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?

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.

As the character talks and moves, the world around him is slowly revealed, just like dollying a camera back for a wider look at things. So all my stories start with a character, and that character introduces setting, culture, conflict, government, economy... all of it, through his or her eyes.

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.

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

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.

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

I think there have always been male writers, female writers. As a reader, I never picked up a book and said, 'Oh, I can't read this - it's about a male,' and set it back down.

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

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.

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.

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

Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.

Her 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.

I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound.

Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad.

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

To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibility, to be bound by the rules of that group.

One way to disperse fear and create decision was to consider the worst possible outcome of one's actions.

Wide gape the gates of yellowed bone. A tongue of plank is our path between the teeth as we walk toward the gullet. Here I will be devoured. This is a true thing, near unavoidable on any path. I must enter those jaws.

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

I would say that many of the characters in my stories do not live in true poverty - they are not out on the street; they are not wondering if there will be anything to eat in the next week. They are people who are at the lower echelons of the economic strata.

For the weakest has but to try his strength to find it, and then he shall be strong.

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

Sometimes people ask if my books have morals or lessons for readers, and I shudder at that thought. I always say that I have more questions than answers.

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

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

I ate, boy. Early this morning. Some awful fish soup. The cooks should be hanged for that. No one should face fish first thing in the morning.

That no man can truly imagine being happy and that's why happiness isn't for sale here.

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

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.

Strange, how being left out of a secret always feels like a betrayal of trust.

Undeserved forgiveness. Friendship defined.

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

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.

I 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.

if love doesnt come first and linger after, if love cant wait and endure disappointment and seperation, then its not love.

Boredom is vastly underrated. Boredom means that nothing is trying to kill you every day.

Diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power.

When both my editors say 'This is really bad, you need to change this,' I ignore that at my peril.

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.

Dragons, to my way of thinking, are just another 'race' of sapient characters. We see lots of elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, giants and, of course, dragons.

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

...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.

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.

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

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

Ah, Catylast, can it be that you do not see all the changes you have made? Some by your resignation and acceptance of circumstance, some by your wild struggles. You say that you hate change, but you *are* change. The Fool in Fool's Fate

All 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

Anticipating pain was like enduring it twice. Why not anticipate pleasure instead?

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.

Be 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.

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

Cats talk to whomever they please.

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.

Death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice.

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.

Don'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.

Everybody 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.

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

Fitz fixes fyces fitz.Fatsafices.

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.

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

For, "Yes," he had sighed on his dying breath, and all knew that was the ultimate prayer one could offer to life.

Home 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.

How do you politely explain to someone that you had believed for years he was a moron as well as a Fool? Fitz in Assassin's Apprentice

I am the King's Fool. He is the King-In-Wating. Let him wait.

I began attempting to write for children under the mistaken assumption that writing for children was easy.

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.

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

I feared my own kind more than anything the natural world could ever threaten me with.

I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.

I never confuse the cost of something with its value

I thought we had lost you. I thought we'd done something worse than let you die.' His old arms were tight and strong about me. I was kind to the old man. I did not tell him they had.

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.

If I had a dog that was sick as often as you are, I'd put it down," he observed kindly.

In that last dance of chances I shall partner you no more. I shall watch another turn you As you move across the floor. In that last dance of chances When I bid your life goodbye I will hope she treats you kindly. I will hope you learn to fly. In that last dance of chances When I know you'll not be mine I will let you go with longing And the hope that you'll be fine. In that last dance of chances We shall know each other's minds. We shall part with our regrets When the tie no longer binds.

It was hard to reconcile the drumbeats and lifted voices in the night with my memories of flames and the screams of dying men. How could humanity range so effortlessly from the sublime to the savage and back again?

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.

It's too late to apologize for I have already forgiven you." -FitzChivalry Farseer

King Shrewd is expecting me, rather he isn't expecting me, and that is precisely why I must go to him now.

learning 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.

Leave 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

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.

Locked into loneliness were we two and looking at one another every evening we each saw the one we blamed for it.

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

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.

Men cannot grieve as dogs do. But they grieve for many years.

Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.

My 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.

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

No. This is right. I feel it. I am the Catalyst, and I came to change all things. Prophets become warriors, dragons hunt as wolves. Fitz in Assassin's Quest

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 changed the world today?

Not being able to think of a reply is not the same thing as accepting another's words.

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

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

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

Perhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes.

Remember 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.

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

Silent," the carved wizardwood on his wrist breathed. "Silent as a blinded ship, floating hull-up in the sea. Silent as a scream underwater.

Some people say 'I want to be a writer,' and some people say, 'I want to write.'

Someday 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.