Fool's Assassin Quotes

“Time is an unkind teacher, delivering lessons that we learn far too late for them to be useful. Years after I could have benefited from them, the insights come to me.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“I will always take your part, Bee. Right or wrong. That is why you must always take care to be right, lest you make your father a fool.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“The knowledge that he had left me with no intent ever to return had come over me in tiny droplets of realization spread over the years. And each droplet of comprehension brought its own small measure of hurt...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.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“I lived my grief; I slept mourning and ate sorrow and drank tears. I ignored all else.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“There are endings. There are beginnings. Sometimes they coincide, with the ending of one thing marking the beginning of another. But sometimes there is simply a long space after an ending, a time when it seems everything else has ended and nothing else can ever begin.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“Stop your whining. If you are frightened, be silent. Whining is for prey. It attracts predators. And you are not prey.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“Undeserved forgiveness. Friendship defined.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“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.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“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, Fool's Assassin

“I loved that man as I have loved no one else. I do not say I loved him more than I love your mother. But that the way I loved him was different. But if you have heard there was anything improper in our bond, there was not. That was not what we were to one another. What we had went beyond that.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“I was almost annoyed at her for spoiling my perfectly good sulk.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“If a few students come reluctantly to their studies, then let them go. If all students come reluctantly to their studies, then let your scribe be dismissed and find another. For once students have been taught that learning is tedious, difficult, and useless, they will never learn another lesson.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“The loneliness that can never be filled by anyone except the one whose loss created the absence;”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“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, Fool's Assassin

“You'll do well, if you don't mire in self-pity. Self-pity only gets you more of the same. Don't waste time on it.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“You never miss the water until the well runs dry.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“My mother had told me to never be afraid to apologize when I was wrong. She had said it would have saved her and my father a great deal of trouble if they had only followed that rule. Then she had sighed, and added that I must never think that an apology could completely erase what I had done or said. Still, it was worth trying.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“To every creature is given both a place and a time, and when that time is over, we have to let them go.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“Time is an unkind teacher, delivering lessons that we learn far too late for them to be useful.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“Do not agonize about yesterday. Do not borrow tomorrow’s trouble. Let your heart hunt. Rest in the now.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“If one bad thing befell me, I immediately linked it to every bad thing that had happened in the last week or might happen in the coming week. And when I became sad, I was prone to wallow in grief, piling up my woes and sprawling on them like a dragon on a hoard.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“Oh, the things we discover and the things we learn, much too late. Worse are the secrets that are not secrets, the sorrows we live with but do not admit to one another.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“A secret is only yours so long as you don’t share it. Tell it to one person, and it’s a secret no more.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“I was lonely, and a lonely heart has hungers that can overpower both common sense and dignity.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“Some calls you cannot ignore, no matter how it may tear your heart.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“...there was no point in sighing after what I could not have. It only distracted me from what I did have.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“We did hard things for each other. Risked our lives. Gave up our lives and faced death, and then faced life again. You might be surprised to find that facing life can be much harder than facing death.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“I once knew of a minstrel who bragged of having had a thousand women, one time each. He would never know what I knew, that to have one woman a thousand times, and each time find in her a different delight, is far better. I knew now what gleamed in the eyes of old couples when they stared at each other across a room...My familiarity with her was a more potent love elixir than any potion sold by a hedge-witch in the market.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“But if she is alone now, it is because she chose to be alone, not because someone decreed if for her. Her life is hers to live, not yours to repair.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin

“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.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin