Robin Hobb Quotations

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.

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

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.

I think when writers play with dragons, we are simply doing what fantasy writers have always done.

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 think it's really hard to draw a hard-and-fast line and say 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' doesn't count as science fiction or fantasy. Or at what point do we say mythology is not fantasy, so reading mythology when you're young does not count as an exposure to fantasy?

I think it was always okay to be a geek.

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

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

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

Sometimes I regret that the wonderful children's stories that have been made into movies were - people no longer read 'The Wizard of Oz'; they think they know the story. They don't know anything about all the bits and pieces they had to leave out.

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.

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.

At what point is a person old enough to say, 'I own my body, and I get to do what I want with it'?

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.'

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.

I know some people see it as this success when the book is finally made into a movie - that marks its success. I don't see it that way.

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.

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.

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

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

The man who must brag for himself knows that no one else will

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that. And no less.

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

I never confuse the cost of something with its value

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

...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.

Men of passion and vision are often seen as mad.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? - Fool

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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 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.

You are confusing plumbing and love again.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

When 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. ~ The Fool to Fritz in Assassin's Apprentice

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.

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

You can be the dead fish. I'll be the old stick

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

the greatest danger is always the one we are ignorant of.

Very little about being a writer is signing an autograph. It's sitting in a room and writing. Getting it out.

Cats talk to whomever they please.

The biggest doubts come in the five minutes after I hit send.

Fitz fixes fyces fitz.Fatsafices.

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

That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention.

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

The fight isn't over until you win.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

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

Thinking is not always...comforting. It is always good, but not always comforting. Royal Assassin

Very little worth knowing is taught by fear.

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

But a living is not a life.

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

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.

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.

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

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