Robin Hobb Farseer Quotes & Sayings

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. — Robin Hobb

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. — Robin Hobb

Had they been dogs they would have sniffed me over and then drawn back. But humans have no such inbred courtesies. — Robin Hobb

We are as we are. How can you claim to know what life I was meant to lead, let alone threaten to force me into it? All your quibbling is nonsense. As well forbid your nose to snuff, or your ears to hear. We are as we do. — Robin Hobb

I was the Fool and the Fool was me. He was the Catalyst and so was I. We were two halves of a whole, sundered and come together again. For an instant I knew him in his entirety, complete and magical, and then he was pulling apart from me, laughing, a bubble inside me, separate and unknowable, yet joined to me. "You do love me !" I was incredulous. He had never truly believed it before. "Before, it was words. I always feared it war born of pity. But you are truly my friend. This is knowing. This is feeling what you feel for me. So this is the Skill". For a moment he reveled in simple recognition. — Robin Hobb

I am too swift of tongue. But I think that is the best way to talk to a dragon. — Robin Hobb

I have to let you go,' he said in a cracked whisper. 'While I can. Leave me that, Fitz. That I broke the bond. That I did not take what was not mine. — Robin Hobb

The King's tool. I see.' An oppression settle over me. My brief glimpse of blue skies arching over yellow roads and me travelling down them astride Sooty suddenly vanished. I thought of the hounds in their kennels instead, or of the hawk, hooded and strapped, that rode on the King's wrist and was loosed only to do the King's will. — Robin Hobb

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. — Robin Hobb

It was inside me. The more I sought it, the stronger it grew. It loved me. Loved me even if I couldn't, wouldn't, didn't love myself. Love me even if I hated. It set its tiny teeth in my soul and braced and held so that I couldn't crawl any further. And when I tried, a howl of despair burst from it, searing me, forbidding me to break so sacred trust.
It was Smithy. — Robin Hobb

That was Verity's way. MOnths had passed since we had last spoken but he took no times for greetings. Chade said it was a lack in him, that he didn't make his men feel their importance to him. I think he believed that if anything significant had happened to me, someone would have told him. He had a bluff heartiness to him that I enjoyed, an attitude that things must be going well unless someone ahd told him otherwise. — Robin Hobb

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

To bond to any animal was to promise oneself that future pain — Robin Hobb

Chade, I know the Fool is strange. But I like it when he comes to talk to me. He speaks in riddles, and he insults me, and makes fun of me, and gives himself leave to tell me things he thinks I should do, like wash my hair, or not wear yellow. But ( ... ) I like him. He mocks me, but from him, it seems a kindness. He makes me feel, well, important. That he could choose me to talk to. — Robin Hobb

If all I had ever done was to be born and discovered, I would have left a mark across all the land for all time. I grew up fatherless and motherless in a court where all recognized me as a catalyst. And a catalyst I become. — Robin Hobb

FitzChivalry Farseer, too long have you sojourned among the Elderlings, your memory spurned by the very people you saved. Too long have you been in a place where the months pass as if days. Too long have you walked among us in false guise, deprived of your name and your honor. Rise. Turn and face the folk of the Six Duchies, your folk, and be welcomed home at last. — Robin Hobb

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? — Robin Hobb

Cruelty is a skill taught not only by example, but also by experience of it. — Robin Hobb

I know you think me foolish, but then, I am the Fool. You know then I must be Foolish. — Robin Hobb

That is one thing that in all my years among your folk I have never become accustomed to. The great importance that you attach to what gender one is. — Robin Hobb

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

I'd rather I was a stray pup,' I made bold to say. And then all my fears broke my voice as I added, "You wouldn't let them do this to a stray pup, changing everything all at once. When they gave the bloodhound puppy to Lord Grimsby, you sent your old shirt with it, so it would have something that smelled of home until it settle in.'
'Well,' he said, "I didn't ... come here, fitz. Come here, boy.'
And puppy-like, I went to him, the only master I had, and he thumped me lightly on the back and rumbled up my hair, very much as if I had been a hound. — Robin Hobb

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

Because your heart will be hammered against him, and your strength will be tempered in his fire. — Robin Hobb

You will live to love again. You know you have lost your springtime girl, your Molly on the beach with the wind in her brown hair and red cloak. You have been gone too long from her, and too much has befallen you both. And what you loved, what both of you truly loved, was not each other. It was the time of your life. It was the spring of your years, and life running strong in you, and war on your doorstep and your strong, perfect bodies. Look back, in truth. You will find you recall fully as many quarrels and tears as you do lovemaking and kisses. Fitz. Be wise. Let her go, and keep those memories intact. Save what you can of her, and let her keep what she can of the wild and daring boy she loved. Because both he and that merry little miss are no more than memories anymore." She shook her head. "No more than memories. — Robin Hobb

Wait for you? Not likely. I've always had to run ahead of you and show you the way. — Robin Hobb

Suddenly, everything was easy and clear. I simply did whatever Chade told me to do, and trusted to him to have it turn out right. My spirit rode high on the crest of that wave of faith, and sometime during the night it occurred to me: this was what Burrich had had from Chivalry, and what he missed so badly. — Robin Hobb

It doesn't have to be that bad,' Chade said quietly. 'Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too. — Robin Hobb