Top 500 Robin Hobb Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “I suddenly wished to go back, to have again each separate day to spend. Time. I was trapped in it, fenced into a tiny piece of now that was the only time I could influence. All the soons and tomorrows I might plan were ghost things that might be snatched from me at any moment. Intentions were nothing. Now was all I had.”

— Robin Hobb

202. “It was possible to be homesick for a time, and to be lonely for the only other person who could recall it.”

— Robin Hobb

203. “My silences he mistook for a lack of wit rather than a lack of any need to speak.”

— Robin Hobb

204. “But if she is alone now, it is because she chose to be alone, not someone decree if for her. Her life is hers to live, not yours to repair.”

— Robin Hobb

205. “And so the Wolf of the West rose from the stone! And so he will rise again if ever the folk of the Six Duchies call to him in need.”

— Robin Hobb

206. “When we are children, we believe that our elders know all and that even when we cannot understand the world, they can make sense of it. Even after we are grown, in moments of fear or sorrow, we still turn instinctively to the older generation, hoping to finally learn some great hidden lesson about death and pain. Only to learn instead that the only lesson is that life goes on.”

— Robin Hobb

207. “Some memories are best left undisturbed. Sometimes, if you forget something, it’s because it’s better forgotten.”

— Robin Hobb

208. “Such a storm of emotions as humans can evoke, all on the basis of imagination,” the dragon observed condescendingly. In a more reflective voice she asked, “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.”

— Robin Hobb

209. “I was sick of strife, and weary of being wary.”

— Robin Hobb

210. “And tomorrow we’ll do the same again. And again. Until one day you get up and find out that whatever it was didn’t kill you after all.”

— Robin Hobb

211. “There is no such thing as an extraordinary coincidence. There is only destiny.”

— Robin Hobb

212. “I am too swift of tongue. But I think that is the best way to talk to a dragon.”

— Robin Hobb

213. “When one has been disappointed for so long, hope becomes the enemy. One cannot be dashed to the earth unless one is lifted first, and I learned to avoid hope.”

— Robin Hobb

214. “Any human who dared to attack a dragon deserved to die himself. And dead, of what use was he, unless someone ate him? She didn’t see why leaving a human to be eaten by worms was more acceptable.”

— Robin Hobb

215. “There are other types of neglect and deprivation. To deny what unfolds inside someone, to forbid the magic that comes unbidden, to impose ignorance in a way that invites danger, to say to a child, ‘You must not be what you are.’ That is wrong.” His voice was gentle but the condemnation was without compassion.”

— Robin Hobb

216. “Once one knows what heartless people can do, it cannot be entirely forgotten. It always remains among the possible things that can befall you.”

— Robin Hobb

217. “We aren’t fated to survive, then at least let us fight it to the end. Let it be fate that extinguishes us, not our own lack of heart.”

— Robin Hobb

218. “I lived my grief; I slept mourning and ate sorrow and drank tears. I ignored all else.”

— Robin Hobb

219. “When the mainstay of one’s world is taken away, it’s only natural to cling to all the rest, to try desperately to keep things as close to the way they were as one can.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “But no one can ever go back to yesterday.”

— Robin Hobb

220. “Name it as you will, claim it as you will, the world does not belong to men. Men belong to the world. You will not own the earth that eventually your body will become, nor will it recall the name it once answered to.”

— Robin Hobb

221. “In politics, appearance matters more than truth.”

— Robin Hobb

222. “Don’t go mooning after the stars, when the wide sea is all around you. It’s a sky of its own, you know.”

— Robin Hobb

223. “Words do not contain or define any person. A heart can, if it is willing.”

— Robin Hobb

224. “When people look most vicious, what you are seeing is not their animal side. It is the savagery that only humans can muster.”

— Robin Hobb

225. “Sound seemed muted, and night darker, scent and taste dulled. It was as if the world had been robbed of its brightness. He had left me behind to dwell alone in a dimmed and stale place.”

— Robin Hobb

226. “All this guilt and shame and remorse you carry, Kestrel. Don’t you see? That is what they burned you with. And you have added to it, all these years. The wall is of your own making. Take it down. Forgive yourself. Come out.”

— Robin Hobb

227. “When circumstances are right, unlikely people do extraordinary things.”

— Robin Hobb

228. “Perhaps the greatest thing one can discover is that you can decide who you are. You don’t have to be whom the Ludlucks made you. You don’t even have to be who you were before that. You can choose. We are all creatures of our own devising.”

— Robin Hobb

229. “Do you begrudge me that I am who I truly am? Should I pretend otherwise for the sake of pleasing you? If I did, it would be a lie. Would you rather love a lie than know me as I truly am?”

— Robin Hobb

230. “You see, said the wolf. He senses me. Not clearly, but he does. Hello, Fool. My ears itch. Outside the tent, the Fool reached down suddenly to scratch the wolf’s ears.”

— Robin Hobb

231. “There is something about you, Etta. Something in you that cannot be quenched, by hardship or ill treatment. Your soul gleams like silver beneath a patina of hard use. He is right to love you. Any man would love you.”

— Robin Hobb

232. “It’s not the sort of thing one asks of a friend. He hasn’t offered, and I will not ask it. I will not tear him that way. I am trying to let go. I don’t know how.”

— Robin Hobb

233. “I had read a poem about a girl with ‘silvery laughter’ but Shun’s sounded to me as if someone had fallen down a long flight of steps with a basket of cheap tin pans.”

— Robin Hobb

234. “Death does not conquer. It threatens, but it cannot subdue the future. What must be, will be.”

— Robin Hobb

235. “Perhaps the gods punish us by bringing us face to face with our own foolish mistakes, condemning us to watch our children fall into the same traps that crippled us.”

— Robin Hobb

236. “His heart had pounded with joy at the thought that he might catch her, might playfully hold her in his arms, for just a moment. They were children, I suddenly saw, children at play, only a handful of years older than I was now. They had never grown older, neither one of them, not really. All their lives she had remained that girl to him, that wondrous girl just a few years older than he was, but so worldly wise, so female to all that was so male in his life.”

— Robin Hobb

237. “There was always something to be learned from any experience, no matter how horrendous. As long as a man kept sight of that, his spirit could prevail against anything. It was only when one gave in and believed the universe to be nothing more than a chaotic collection of unfortunate or cruel events that one’s spirit could be crushed.”

— Robin Hobb

238. “In my opinion, men deny animals have feelings and thoughts for one basic reason: so they won’t feel guilty about what they do to them. But.”

— Robin Hobb

239. “Maybe you have to keep your pain and loss to know that you can survive whatever life deals you. Perhaps without putting your pain in its place in your life, you became something of a coward.”

— Robin Hobb

240. “I don’t want to have these burdens. But I can’t bear to turn them over to anyone else, either. Because, despite all the work, I like being in control of my own life.”

— Robin Hobb

241. “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!”

— Robin Hobb

242. “I can take all my pasts, keep them and determine my own future. I don’t have to be what anyone made me, Brashen. I can be Paragon.”

— Robin Hobb

243. “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.”

— Robin Hobb

244. “All memories are connected, and like a man’s skin, they can heal. In time, left to themselves, those memories would have stopped hurting you. You may someday wish you could call up that pain.”

— Robin Hobb

245. “She knew, with vast certainty, that she would never desire to be kissed by a man who had first asked her permission.”

— Robin Hobb

246. “Dragons don’t bother with introductions.”

— Robin Hobb

247. “People are intimidated by a man who acts with no apparent regard for consequences. Behave as if you cannot be touched and no one will dare to touch you.”

— Robin Hobb

248. “You know what I feel for you. You have known it for years. Let us not, you and I, alone here, pretend that you don’t. You know I love you. I always have. I always will.”

— Robin Hobb

249. “Cruelty is a skill taught not only by example, but also by experience of it.”

— Robin Hobb

250. “No one can have so little that someone else can find nothing to envy. Poverty and simplicity were not shields from the greed of others. If you had nothing left to steal, they’d take your body and enslave it.”

— Robin Hobb