Robin Hobb

“I was amazed at how strong women were when they were angry.”

“You want a mate who will follow your dream. You don't want to give up your own ambitions to make someone else's life possible.''I supposed that's true,' Althea admitted reluctantly. An instant later she demanded, 'Why is that so wrong?''It isn't,' Amber assured her, A moment later she added wickedly, 'As long as you're male.”

“...there was no point in sighing after what I could not have. It only distracted me from what I did have.”

“I think that old magic draws much of its strength from that acknowledgment: that we are a part of that world.”

“If all of her was not enough for him, then let him have none of her and seek what he needed elsewhere.”

“That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.”

“Why must it be one or the other?' she countered. 'You are both a capable seaman and the son of a Bingtown Trader. Why should not I have both sets of skill?”

“Still I promise myself, "Next time I will do better" in the all-too-human conceit that I will always be offered a "next time.”

“One must plan for the future and anticipate the future without fearing the future.”

“I'll never miss a chance to remind you of what a brat you were. A gloriously beautiful and very spoiled brat. I was utterly charmed by your complete self-absorption. It was rather like courting a cat.”

“Fool, there is no sense in trying to play that game with the past. Here is where we are today, and we can only make our moves from here.”

“Perhaps there can be no thanks nor any blame, but only recognition of the forces that brought us and bound us to our inevitable fates.”

“Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die. True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.”

“Somehow," she said coldly, "you have confused profitable and not profitable for right and wrong. I, however, have not.”

“A woman of many talents. And intelligent, too. He'd probably have to kill her soon.”

“Humans could never accept the world as it was and live in it. They were always breaking it and living amongst the shattered pieces.”

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

“Do you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?”

“Stop your whining. If you are frightened, be silent. Whining is for prey. It attracts predators. And you are not prey.”

“The challenge is always to find the good place to end the book. The rule I follow with myself is that every book should end where the next book would logically begin. I know that some readers wish that literally all of the threads would be neatly tied off and snipped, but life just doesn't work that way.”