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.

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.

Stop longing.You poison today__ ease, reaching always for tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

Why does the forbidden always add that edge of sweetness?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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__ character.

...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.

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.

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

I lied!' I spat my whisper at him. 'I knew you read my journal. I knew you read my dreams. I wrote there what I thought would hurt you most! I lied to hurt you. For letting him be dead while you lived. For being loved by him more than he loved me!' I took a breath. 'He loved you more than he ever loved any of the rest of us!