Robin Hobb

“Dragons. A sky full of dragons.”

“Well,the fun part of being a writer is that it's like making a wonderful film, with no limit on my budget. I can design the sets, the costume, the lightings, I write the script, and then I get to perform all the roles as I step into each character's skin, zip up, and adopt that point of view. So, to me, they are all compelling and fascinating.”

“Perhaps once one realised how deeply one could bond with a creature as foreign as a dragon, all forms of human love seemed more acceptable.”

“You seek a false comfort when you demand that I define myself for you with words. Words do not contain or define any person. A heart can, if it is willing.”

“You make no sense! You went somewhere to discover your place in history? How can that be? History is what is done and behind us.”    He shook his head, slowly this time. “History is what we do in our lives. We create it as we go along.” He smiled enigmatically. “The future is another kind of history.”

“Instead, we must focus on our hopes. If we cannot anchor ourselves in a belief that we will succeed, we have already been defeated.”

“Wolves have no kings.”

“Axes bit wood into pieces and hammers nailed it back together. Humans could never accept the world as it was and live in it. They were always breaking it and living amongst the shattered pieces.”

“Leave off sniffing the carcass of your old life-do you enjoy unending pain? There is no shame in walking away from bones. Nor is there any special wisdom in injuring oneself over and over. What is your loyalty to that pain? To abandon it will not lessen you.”

“Many will rant and rave against the garment fate has woven for them, but they pick it up and don it all the same, and most wear it to the end of their days. You... you would rather go naked into the storm.”

“I am a minstrel. I know more about lying than you will ever discover. And minstrels know that sometimes lies are what a man needs most. In order to make a new truth of them.”

“Um homem armado com a palavra certa pode fazer o que um exército de espadachins não pode.”

“- (...) acho que Zar aprendeu a lição. Uma vez queimado, duas reservado.- Hmf. Uma vez deitado, sempre esfomeado seria um ditado melhor para este caso.”

“Her nakedness was not vulnerability, but armour.”

“I looked at her, wanting her with all the lust of my months alone and untouched. But I knew also that for that deeper hunger for companionship and understanding, she offered me no more solace than any man might find in his own hand.”

“Somewhere inside me, a madman raged in his cell, but I chose not to know of that.”

“...a great part of what unmanned me was distress at the destruction of my own body. It was odd to realise that I had an emotional attachment to my own flesh. My deep desire to keep it functioning well surpassed simple avoidance of pain. A man takes pride in his body. When it is damaged, it is more than a physical thing.”

“One does not need the size of a dragon to have the soul of a dragon.”

“When you spring to an idea, and decide it is truth, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.”

“Do you think you're taking Etta out of here?""Yes," Kennit called over his shoulder up the sairs."What about all these dead men?" she shrieked after him as they strode out of her house."Those you may keep," Kennit replied.”

“He shook his head pityingly. “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.”“Not all men are destined for greatness,” I reminded him.“Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?”“This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.”“No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?”

“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.”

“A leaf turns in the wind, and you suddenly have a different perception of what colour it is.”

“Sometimes it seems unfair that events so old can reach forward through the years, sinking claws into one's life and twisting all that follows it. Yet perhaps that is the ultimate justice: we are the sum of all we have done added to the sum of all that has been done to us. There is no escaping that, not for any of us.”

“Et vif comme la pensée, il m'échappa, dévalant la pente comme l'ombre d'un nuage quand le vent souffle”

“Life is a balance. We tend to forget that as we go blithely from day to day. We eat and drink and sleep and assume that we will always rise up the next day, that meals and rest will always replenish us. Injuries we expect to heal, and pain to lessen as times goes by. Even when we are faced with wounds that heal more slowly, with pain that lessens by day only to return in full force at nightfall, even when sleep does not leave us rested, we still expect that somehow tomorrow all will come back into balance and that we will go on. At some point, the exquisite balance has tipped, and despite all our flailing efforts, we begin the slow fall from the body that maintains itself to the body that struggles, nails clawing, to cling to what it used to be.”

“There is little in life so reassuring as a genuine welcome.”

“E tudo porque eu fora demasiado tolo para ver que aquele que caminha sem saber por entre os segredos de um homem pode mesmo assim ter outros segredos seus.”

“Tinha andado a manter um silêncio amuado para com ele, esperando avidamente que me perguntasse que bicho me tinha mordido. O problema era que ele não o fazia. Haverá alguma coisa mais provocadora do que esperar que alguém comece uma discussão?”

“Depois daquilo comecei a desejar esclarecer as coisas com o Bobo. Como um dente doloroso, remoí uma e outra vez o que lhe queria dizer.”

“Nenhum inimigo, bem sabia, é mais temível do que aquele que ferimos gravemente.”

“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.”

“I do not know whom I wish to win; until I do, I will let no player be eliminated.”

“My perception of my life crashed from high tragedy to juvenile self-pity in a matter of moments.”

“...I bit my tongue and sat through his detailed and strained explanation. Not for the first time, I realized he considered me slightly slow. My silences he mistook for a lack of wit rather than a lack of any need to speak.”

“Utter loneliness was planted in me then, and sent its deep roots down into me.”

“It is like being two foreigners, trapped in a land we have come to, unable to return to our own, and having only each other to confirm the reality of the place we once lived.”

“I am the King's Fool. He is the King-In-Wating. Let him wait.”

“Why had Althea's crazed words affected Etta like this? Then the answer came to him: she was pregnant. Women always behaved strangely when they were pregnant.”

“Sometimes it seemed to me a cruelty that so much was unresolved between us; at other times, a blessing that a hope of reunion lingered.”

“I told you I set no limits on my love for you. I don't. Yet I have never expected you to offer me your body. It was the whole of your heart, all for myself, that I sought. Even though I've never had a right to it. For you gave it away ere ever you saw me.”

“Ah, Beloved. Of all the things I must bid farewell to, you are the most difficult to lose. Forgive me that I have avoided you. Better, perhaps, that we make a space between us and become accustomed to it before fate forces that upon us.”

“Death is always less painful and easier than life! You speak true. And yet we do not, day to day, choose death. Because ultimately, death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice. Death is what you get when there are no choices left to make.”

“I was as foolish as I had ever been, no, even stupider, for the gullibility of a boy is fatuousness in a man.”

“I feared my own kind more than anything the natural world could ever threaten me with.”

“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.”

“- проигрывать бой? - все еще задыхаясь спросил он. - Бой не заканчивается, пока ты его не выиграл, Фитц. Это очень просто запомнить. Независимо от того, что считает другой человек.”

“ ... é estranho, não é, como não se sabe até que ponto alguém faz parte de nós até esse alguém ser ameaçado? E depois achas que não há possibilidade de sobreviveres se alguma coisa lhes acontece, mas a pare mais assustadora é que, na verdade, sobrevives, tens de sobreviver, com eles ou sem eles. Simplesmente não há maneira de saberes em que te tornarás.”

“Claro que não sabes (...) E nem sequer queres ver o que está posto na mesa à tua frente. Homens. Se estivesse a chover sopa, estarias lá fora com um garfo.”

“Estamos aqui', respondi, e soltei uma gargalhada. Nunca pensara que a ira e o desespero pudessem fazer um homem rir.”