Robin Hobb

Humans could never accept the world as it was and live in it. They were always breaking it and living amongst the shattered pieces.

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

It is worse than useless to do things halfway Bee, for then you think the work is done, but someone must come behind you later to do it all over again. Even if you must work much harder and get less done, it is better to do the whole task the first time.

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

She had come to letters late in her life, and though she had mastered them, they had never become her good friends.

He had wished me well in finding my own fate to follow, and I never doubted his sincerity. But it had taken me years to accept that his absence in my life was a deliberate finality, an act he had chosen, a thing completed even as some part of my soul still dangled, waiting for his return. That, I think, is the shock of any relationship ending. It is realizing that what is still an ongoing relationship to someone is, for the other person, something finished and done with.

Like a flower pressed flat and dried, we try to hold it still and say, this is exactly how it was the day I first saw it. But like the flower, the past cannot be trapped that way. It loses its fragrance and and its vitality, its fragility becomes brittleness and its colors fade. And when next you look on the flower, you know that it is not at all what you sought to capture, that that moment has fled forever.

...it's strange, isn't it, how you don't know how big a part of you someone is until they're threatened? And then you think you can't possibly go on if something happens to them, but the most frightening part is that, actually, you will go on, you'll have to go on, with them or without them. There's just no telling what you'll become

The world had to change and for some reason the prosperity of men always results in them taking ever more from wild creatures and places.

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

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.

I was amazed at how strong women were when they were angry.

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

One part braggart to one part coward. He would fear everyone he did not control. And the next day he would fear those he controlled even more.

You," I surmised, and gestured round. "Thank you.""No," he denied. His pale hair floated out from beneath his cap in a halo as he shook his head. "But I assisted. Thank you for bathing. It makes my task of checking on you less onerous. I'm glad you're awake. You snore abominably."I let this comment pass. "You've grown." I observed. "Yes. So have you. And you've been sick. And you slept quite a long time. And now you're awake and bathed and fed. You still look terrible. But you no longer smell. It's late afternoon now. Are there any other obvious facts you'd like to review?

Surprise!-FitzChivalry

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

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