Top 500 Robin Hobb Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “To sate your need without love is theft.”

— Robin Hobb

402. “He felt her dim groping towards him, a plea for companionship and comfort. He didn’t want to give it. But he had never been a hard-hearted man. When she invaded his mind, pleading, he had to reach back. ‘You are stronger than you know,’ he told her. ‘Keep moving. Follow the other ones, my copper beauty. Soon there will be better days for you, but for now you must be strong.”

— Robin Hobb

403. “The carriageway to the front door was wide, and graceful white birches lined it. In autumn they shed a carpet of gold on the road, and in winter, burdened with snow, they arched over it, a frosted white tunnel paned with glimpses of blue sky.”

— Robin Hobb

404. “The word of a cat is not to be relied upon.”

— Robin Hobb

405. “We were speaking of people living their dreams, and I said that few do, and even fewer enjoy the experience. For too many, when they get their dream, they discover it is not what they wanted. Or the dream is bigger than their abilities, and all ends in bitterness.”

— Robin Hobb

406. “Something clamped tight inside her suddenly eased. He had been right. She did not have to grip her pain. She could let it go. The memory was still there. It had not vanished, but it had changed. It was a memory, a thing from her past. This wound could close and heal. The injury done to her was over. She did not have to keep it as a part of herself. She could allow herself to heal. Her tears were diluted in the rain that ran down her face.”

— Robin Hobb

407. “It was as if I had been following a narrow trail, and had suddenly realized that at any time I could leave it and strike out cross-country.”

— Robin Hobb

408. “What does who call me when?”

— Robin Hobb

409. “Love isn’t just about feeling sure of the other person, knowing what he would give up for you. It’s knowing with certainty what you are willing to surrender for his sake. Make no mistake; each partner gives up something. Individual dreams are surrendered for a shared one. In some marriages, one partner gives up almost everything she once thought she wanted. But it’s not always the woman who does so. Such sacrifice is not shameful. It’s love. If you think the man is worth it, it works.”

— Robin Hobb

410. “Sometimes all the choices are poor ones, Fool, and still a man must choose.”

— Robin Hobb

411. “It made me wish there were a place as much me as that place is you. A place I would keep as secret.”

— Robin Hobb

412. “How strange to be loved simply for who I was.”

— Robin Hobb

413. “I had no idea what to do with this unexpected life.”

— Robin Hobb

414. “Even the homeliest girl secretly dreams that a man might fall in love with her inner spirit.”

— Robin Hobb

415. “Isn’t it strange how wise counsel can cool the hottest head? He made sense but my heart screamed protest.”

— Robin Hobb

416. “I was dying. And I had never been enough for anything.”

— Robin Hobb

417. “There were times when taking vengeance for the dead seemed too high a price for abandoning the living. I.”

— Robin Hobb

418. “And for that rush of fury? Time. Time passing with no one trying to hurt you or kill you will lessen that reaction.”

— Robin Hobb

419. “For time is the great enslaver of us all.”

— Robin Hobb

420. “It was all so meaningless when I looked at it that way. It was meaningless in the same way as when I stood up from a game and then looked down on the scatter of playing pieces, and realized that they all were just bits of polished stone on a wooden board marked with squares. All the meaning they’d had moments before when I’d been trying to win a game were meanings that I’d imbued them with. Of themselves, neither they nor the board had any significance.”

— Robin Hobb

421. “And like a child, I’d be testing the people who loved me, pulling away from them almost for the sole reason of seeing if anyone would come after me.”

— Robin Hobb

422. “There was a danger in asking too much of a child, but the danger of asking too little was almost equal.”

— Robin Hobb

423. “No man can return to being a boy. But there are interludes in a man’s life when, for a time, he can recapture the feeling that the world is a forgiving place and that he is immortal.”

— Robin Hobb

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

— Robin Hobb

425. “It was an impressive display of good food abused in the name of fashionable cooking.”

— Robin Hobb

426. “It’s an old tradition or perhaps a superstition. Never call something by its true name if you wish to avoid calling its attention to you. Perhaps.”

— Robin Hobb

427. “Oh, and you accuse me of flattery! Here I waddle about like a fat old duck and you try to tell me I’m lovely.”

— Robin Hobb

428. “I floated. I had been part of something immense, but now I was torn loose. Broken away from the great purpose that had used me as a conduit. Useless. Again.”

— Robin Hobb

429. “Here we do not believe in wasting time simply for the purpose of impressing others.”

— Robin Hobb

430. “There is nothing dishonorable about abandoning pain. Sometimes peace is most quickly found when a man simply stops avoiding it.” He shifted slightly in the dark. “And you never again lay awake all night, staring at darkness and thinking of them.”

— Robin Hobb

431. “We live in our bodies. An assault on that outside fortress of the mind leaves scars that may not show, but never heal.”

— Robin Hobb

432. “Jek is too busy living. She won’t waste time on regrets.”

— Robin Hobb

433. “If I enter the room as you are fastening your shoe, I can say, “There will be a lovely moon tonight,” and then you will call it to mind. But before I call it forth for you, you have forgotten the moon. One can swiftly understand that for most moments of our lives, we have forgotten almost all of the world around us, except for what currently claims our interest.”

— Robin Hobb

434. “Stop defining yourself by what you can’t do. Why don’t you consider what you didn’t lose?”

— Robin Hobb

435. “They regarded our passage not at all, and by the afternoon I felt no more significant than an ant. I had never thought to be disdained by a tree.”

— Robin Hobb

436. “Stop blaming yourself. Someone deceived you and hurt you. You don’t need to take on the burden of that. The man who committed the offense is at fault, not the person he wronged.”

— Robin Hobb

437. “Battered at my dreams like a moth trying to destroy itself in a lantern’s flame.”

— Robin Hobb

438. “When had it become so ingrained in her to apologize whenever she wanted something for herself?”

— Robin Hobb

439. “It is difficult to insult the man you don’t speak to.”

— Robin Hobb

440. “They do as we do, my dear. They take what joy they may find in life as they can. As you well know that Skelly has run off to do tonight, also. The shadows of harsh times creep over us. For in a battle between dragons and men, my love, it is not only the Elderlings who must decide where they stand, but you and me as well.”

— Robin Hobb

441. “It was a terrible division, to feel such need for someone, and yet angry that need existed.”

— Robin Hobb

442. “For too many, when they get their dream, they discover it is not what they wanted. Or the dream is bigger than their abilities, and all ends in bitterness.”

— Robin Hobb

443. “You are different, Bee. It will make some parts of your life very difficult. But if you always fall back on your differences to explain everything you dislike about the world, you will fall into self-pity.”

— Robin Hobb

444. “Dragon droppings?” Per asked in awe, as if that were the most fantastic part of their tale.”

— Robin Hobb

445. “We’d had a message from Just, the first to reach us in many a month. He and Hearth had left home almost three years ago. With youth’s fine disregard for the concerns of their elders, they’d sent messages only sporadically.”

— Robin Hobb

446. “Fun, fun, fun, got you, got you, and got you again! Here, you’re dead, here, I broke your forepaw, here, your blood runs out! Got you, got you, got you!”

— Robin Hobb

447. “Understanding how or why is seldom as useful as understanding that things are.”

— Robin Hobb

448. “Why does the forbidden always add that edge of sweetness?”

— Robin Hobb

Featured in: Romance Quotes

449. “You can’t die from seasickness, but you wish you could.”

— Robin Hobb

450. “Yet I desperately wanted to share the news, as if grief were a heavy burden to be spread out among those who must bear it.”

— Robin Hobb