Top 500 Robin Hobb Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Dying is boring, Nighteyes observed.”

— Robin Hobb

302. “Once she would have found him mysterious and alluring. She had grown wiser. Dangerous men were neither romantic nor exotic; they were men who could hurt you.”

— Robin Hobb

303. “We will discover the truth. And face it. And whatever it is, we will go after them. And we will kill them all, like the bastards we are.”

— Robin Hobb

304. “If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss.”

— Robin Hobb

305. “There is no more slippery task than to refrain from thinking of something.”

— Robin Hobb

306. “Do not pull back from the pain and imagine that makes you strong. Look at it, you dolt! It is trying to tell you what is wrong so you can fix it.”

— Robin Hobb

307. “Men walking a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight. I have seen farmers continue their plowing and planting, heedless of armies clashing but a few miles away.”

— Robin Hobb

308. “Besides, if there were no dragons of flesh and blood and fire, whence would come the idea for these stone carvings?”

— Robin Hobb

309. “How often does a man know, without question, that he has done well? I do not think it happens often in anyone’s life, and it becomes even rarer once one has a child.”

— Robin Hobb

310. “Every small, unselfish action nudges the world into a better path.”

— Robin Hobb

311. “My brother! Nighteyes greeted me joyously.”

— Robin Hobb

312. “It is hard for loneliness to gaze on happiness.”

— Robin Hobb

313. “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.”

— Robin Hobb

314. “The fire of my burning past sent odd shadows snaking ahead of us as we made our way into the storm’s resurgence.”

— Robin Hobb

315. “Leave old pains alone. When they cease coming to call, do not invite them back.”

— Robin Hobb

316. “Strangers had small interest in hurting you. That was always done best by your own family and friends.”

— Robin Hobb

317. “Hold the cat. You’ll feel better. I don’t think so. He rubbed against my leg insistently. Hold the cat. I don’t want to hold the cat. He reared up suddenly on his hind legs, and hooked his vicious little front claws into both flesh and leggings. Don’t talk back! Pick up the cat.”

— Robin Hobb

318. “He smiled, and reminded me that no man could make time, but only use that which he was given wisely.”

— Robin Hobb

319. “In the dead of night I stirred. Wakefulness flowed back into me. I was a cup full of sorrow, but that sorrow was stilled, like a pain that abates as long as one does not move.”

— Robin Hobb

320. “I could set aside my responsibilities to others and live my life as I pleased only when I also severed my ties to them. I could not have it both ways. To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibilities, to be bound by the rules of that group.”

— Robin Hobb

321. “Boys, I decided, simply have a given amount of rudeness they must express.”

— Robin Hobb

322. “For her part, she seemed totally unaware of how her eyes could meet mine and turn my tongue to leather in my mouth. No magic I possessed, no Skill, no Wit, was proof against the accidental touch of her hand against mine, nor could defend me against the awkwardness that overwhelmed me at the quirk of her smile.”

— Robin Hobb

323. “Some things cannot be solved,” he pointed out philosophically. “Drink makes those things much more tolerable.”

— Robin Hobb

324. “As it was with dragons, so it is with queens. A careless word or deed could have severe consequences. Inside.”

— Robin Hobb

325. “Patience had once counseled me that the best way to stop pitying myself was to do something for someone else.”

— Robin Hobb

326. “There is, in all honesty, no way to kill someone mercifully. There are those who count it no crime to drown an imperfect newborn in warm water, as if the infant will not struggle desperately to draw air into its lungs. Did it not try to breathe, it would not drown. But they do not hear the screams nor feel the darkening of the mind that the child endures, so they have been merciful. To themselves. This is true of most “mercy killings.”

— Robin Hobb

327. “Take all self-determination from a man’s life, and all that is left for him to do is complain.”

— Robin Hobb

328. “Any future can be!” she replied, laughing at me. “If it were not so, if it were fixed, it would be a past. You say a foolish thing. How can a future be impossible?”

— Robin Hobb

329. “All that is of dragons belongs only to dragons.”

— Robin Hobb

330. “Even now. Even when I feel like most of me is dead, life breaks through sometimes. Food tastes good. Or something Per says makes me laugh. A hot cup of tea when I’m cold and wet. I’ve thought of ending my life, Fool. I admit it. But always, no matter the damage to it, the body tries to go on. And if it manages to, then the mind follows it. Eventually, no matter how I try to deny it, there are bits of my life that are still sweet. A conversation with an old friend. Things I am still glad to have.”

— Robin Hobb

331. “Have you ever suddenly realized that there was someone you loved, but presently did not like very much?”

— Robin Hobb

332. “When you borrow trouble against what might be, you neglect the moment you have now to enjoy.”

— Robin Hobb

333. “You have a wild young heart. Right now, it is like a caged bird that batters itself against the bars. To struggle harder will only hurt you more. Wait, be patient. Your time will come to fly. And when it does, you must be strong, not bloodied and weary.”

— Robin Hobb

334. “I felt a familiar squeezing in what I thought must be my heart. I had heard of being “heartbroken” or “heavy-hearted” but I had never known it was an actual sensation one felt when the whole world abandons you.”

— Robin Hobb

335. “There is a saying from the Southlands that there is truth in wine. There must be a bit of it in ale, also.”

— Robin Hobb

336. “Oh, the power that lurks in the naming of names.”

— Robin Hobb

337. “How much do you understand?’ I demanded of her one afternoon. She cocked her head at me, met my gaze and demanded, ‘How much do YOU understand?”

— Robin Hobb

338. “But a wall that will not yield to a battering ram can still be breached by the gentle twining of ivy.”

— Robin Hobb

339. “There can be no misunderstandings if there are no understandings at all.”

— Robin Hobb

340. “We were one thing. Whole.”

— Robin Hobb

341. “Justice. There’s a thing we shall ever thirst after, and ever be parched.”

— Robin Hobb

342. “Keeping a child from harm is not the same as rearing one.”

— Robin Hobb

343. “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.”

— Robin Hobb

344. “If he ever wanted vengeance on me for all I did, he has it now. This is the worst thing he could do to me. Now I know how it feels to be left behind. As I left him.”

— Robin Hobb

345. “A while later, I lingered in the hinterlands of sleep. Sometimes I think there is more rest in that place between wakefulness and sleep than there is in true sleep. The mind walks in the twilight of both states, and finds the truths that are hidden alike by daylight and dreams. Things we are not ready to know abide in that place, awaiting that unguarded frame of mind.”

— Robin Hobb

346. “Vengeance took no account of innocence or right. It was the chain that bound horrific events together, that decreed that one awful act must beget another worse one that would lead to yet a third. It came to me, slowly, that this chain would never end.”

— Robin Hobb

347. “Bee, I will always choose to believe you first. So it is your serious responsibility to be righteous in what you do. It is the pact that must exist between us.”

— Robin Hobb

348. “Be the night. Not the wind that stirs the trees, not even the soundless owl a-wing or the tiny mouse crouched motionless. Be the night that flows over all, touching without being felt. For night is a cat.”

— Robin Hobb

349. “Assassins take no pride in fighting fairly. We take pride in winning.”

— Robin Hobb

350. “Blind funny little creatures they were, fumbling in the midst of a love they feared to acknowledge. To win, all they had to do was surrender but they could not perceive that. The beauty of what they could have been together made him ache. Is was a love he had been seeking all his life, a love to redeem and perfect him. That which he most desired, they feared and avoided.”

— Robin Hobb