Fool's Quest

Sorrow and loss never die. We can put them away in a chest and lock it tight, but whenever it is opened, even a crack, the aroma of lost sweetness will rise to fill our lungs to heaviness.

Oh, my boy. The best mistake Chivalry ever made was you. Go on now.

If you don’t decide what you will do with the rest of your life, someone else will decide it for you.

Sometimes thanking someone is more important to the person giving the thanks than the one who receives it.

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

There is no path to the future, Fitz. The path is now. Now is all there is, or ever will be. You can change perhaps the next ten breaths in your life. But after that, random chance seizes you in its jaws again. A tree falls on you, a spider bites your ankle, and all your grand plans for winning a battle are for naught. Now is what we have Fitz, and now is where we act to stay alive.

In the dead of night I stirred. Wakefulness flowed back into me. I was a cup full of sorrow, but that sorrow was stilled, like a pain that abates as long as one does not move.

I found myself speaking softly as if I were telling an old tale to a young child. And giving it a happy ending, when all know that tales never end, and the happy ending is but a moment to catch one’s breath before the next disaster.

You can deny it. But I have been with you, in every way that matters. As you have been with me. We’ve shared our thoughts and our food, bound each other’s wounds, slept close when the warmth of our bodies was all we had left to share. Your tears have fallen on my face, and my blood has been on your hands. You’ve carried me when I was dead, and I carried you when I did not even recognize you. You’ve breathed my breath for me, sheltered me inside your own body. So, yes, Fitz, in every way that matters, I’ve been with you. We’ve shared the stuff of our beings. Just as a captain does with her liveship. Just as a dragon does with his Elderling. We’ve been together in so many ways that we have mingled. So close have we been that when you made love to your Molly, she begat our child. Yours. Mine. Molly’s. A little Buck girl with a wild streak of White in her. “Oh, gods. Such

FitzChivalry Farseer, too long have you sojourned among the Elderlings, your memory spurned by the very people you saved. Too long have you been in a place where the months pass as if days. Too long have you walked among us in false guise, deprived of your name and your honor. Rise. Turn and face the folk of the Six Duchies, your folk, and be welcomed home at last.

Doing something stupid and reckless is not a better proof of your love than doing something measured and powerful.

Sharpening your knife is never a waste of time.

Drink up your false courage and move forward. It’s the only direction a man can move in.

Once one knows what heartless people can do, it cannot be entirely forgotten. It always remains among the possible things that can befall you.

I wasn’t being fair to expect those things of him. But life wasn’t fair. Life does not wait for any of us to grow up.

But all fires, of wood or grief, burn down to ashes eventually.

What is a secret? It is much more than knowledge shared with only a few, or perhaps only one another. It is power. It is a bond. It is a sign of deep trust, or the darkest threat possible. There is power in the keeping of a secret, and power in the revelation of a secret. Sometimes it takes a very wise man to discern which is the path to greater power. All men desirous of power should become collectors of secrets. There is no secret too small to be valuable. All men value their own secrets far above those of others. A scullery maid may be willing to betray a prince before allowing the name of her secret lover to be told.

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.

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

Nothing is really lost. Shapes change. But it’s never completely gone.

Everything she sang was true. I will leave it to you as to whether the truth can exist with details omitted, or if those lacks make a lie of it.

He lives day-to-day now, just as we do, fumbling forward down the path to the future.

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

Think of what is and don't let what might have been distract you.

This was misery that could not yield, for he sorrowed for a time he could not return to, and a self he would never again be.

There would always be dishonorable things done to preserve the honor of any power.

Thoughts were too fast for words and too complex. There was too much to say, more than anyone could ever say in a lifetime about even the simplest things.

Mornings come, whether we want them or not.

Always behave as if you are the person you wish to be perceived as.