As long as you believe it is impossible, you close your mind to understanding it.

— Robin Hobb

As much as I had always longed to be freed of my duties and obligations, being released from such bonds was as much a severing as an emancipation.

— Robin Hobb

Assassins take no pride in fighting fairly. We take pride in winning.

— Robin Hobb

A terrible premonition washed over me. This was how the whole world would end.... They would devour the forest and excrete piles of buildings made of stone wrenched from the earth or from dead trees. They would hammer paths of bare stone between their dwellings, and dirty the rivers and subdue the land until it could recall only the will of man. Furthermore, they could not stop themselves from doing what they did. Furthermore, they did not see what they did, and even if they saw, they did not know how to stop. Furthermore, they no longer knew what was enough.

— Robin Hobb

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

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

— Robin Hobb

Back when he had first come to the monastery, they had given him a very simple ritual called Forgiving the Day. Even the youngest child could do this; all it required was looking back over the day and dismissing the day’s pains as a thing that were past while choosing to remember as gains lessons learned or moments of insight. As initiates grew in the ways of SA, it was expected they would grow more sophisticated in this exercise, learning to balance the day, taking responsibility for their own actions and learning from them without indulging in either guilt or regrets."p. 240

— Robin Hobb

Banks lifted an arm to point at the distant shale cliffs. "And in the face of it there were thousands of little holes, little what-you-call-'ems..."" Alcoves," Kennith supplied in an almost dreamy voice. "I call them alcoves, Banks. As would you, if you could speak your own mother tongue.

— Robin Hobb

Be a little puppet on their strings. That was what Ran wanted from her, also. She recognized that even if he did not. He was attracted to her not just for her beauty and charm, but because she was young. He thought he could control all her actions and even her thoughts.

— Robin Hobb

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

— Robin Hobb