Robin Hobb · 1861 pages
Rating: (2.3K votes)
“Long or short, if you worry about every step of a journey, you will divide it endlessly into pieces, any one of which may defeat you. Look only to the end.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
“Take all self-determination from a man’s life, and all that is left for him to do is complain.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
“A boy is a man when he proves himself to be one, but a girl is a woman when she desires to be one.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
“It’s all a trick,’ he observed. ‘All a rotten trick men play on themselves. They get together and they create this beautiful thing and then they stand back and say, “See, we have souls and insight and holiness and joy. We put it all in this building so we don’t have to bother with it in our everyday lives. We can live as stupidly and brutally as we wish, and stamp down any inclination to spirituality or mysticism that we see in our neighbours or ourselves. Having set it in stone, we don’t have to bother with it any more.” It’s a trick men play on themselves. Just one more way we cheat ourselves.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
“If she could make them both irritated with her, chances are they would commiserate with each other. So it had always worked when they were boys.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
“Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It’s not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
“Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
“When you borrow trouble against what might be, you neglect the moment you have now to enjoy.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
“Sa help us all, but I plan to give her free rein and let her be as unpleasant and bitchy as only she knows how.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
“Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
“You didn’t shout at me. You were so quiet I thought you had left.’ ‘I almost did. I detest shouting. I hate being shouted at, and I never shout at anyone. That doesn’t mean I never get angry though.’ After a moment’s pause, she added, ‘Or that I never get hurt. “Only my pain is more silent than my anger.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from The Complete Liveship Traders Trilogy: Ship of Magic, The Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
Robin Hobb
Born place: in California, The United States
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“I'll show you how," Peter said. "Stop hiding behind your ignorance.”
― Diana Wynne Jones, quote from House of Many Ways
“And everywhere, infinite options, infinite possibilities. An infinity, and at the same time, zero. We try to scoop it all up in our hands, and what we get is a handful of zero. That's the city”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from The Elephant Vanishes
“Each time that my enemy would provoke me to combat, I behave as a gallant soldier. I know that a duel is an act of cowardice, and so, without once looking him in the face, I turn my back on the foe, then I hasten to my Saviour, and vow that I am ready to shed my blood in witness of my belief in Heaven.”
― Thérèse de Lisieux, quote from Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux
“How, in the contemporary period, can we evoke the imagery that communicates the most profound and most richly developed sense of experiencing life? These images must point past themselves to that ultimate truth which must be told: that life does not have one absolutely fixed meaning. These images must point past all meanings given, beyond all definitions and relationships, to that really ineffable mystery that is just the existence, the being of ourselves and of our world. If we give that mystery an exact meaning we diminish the experience of its real depth. But when a poet carries the mind into a context of meanings and then pitches it past those, one knows that marvelous rapture that comes from going past all categories of definition. Here we sense the function of metaphor that allows us to make a journey we could not otherwise make ...”
― Joseph Campbell, quote from Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
“You are America. Yes, you are, my wicked boy. When we flew to New York and drove in on the highway, whatever the highway is, and those graveyards that are surrounded by cars and the traffic, and that was very confusing and frightening to me. I said do Matija, 'I don't like this'. I was crying. Motorized America with all the endless cars that never stop, and then, suddenly, the place of rest is between that. And they are thrown a little here and a little there. It's so very scary to me, so extremely opposite and different that I couldn't understand it. Through you it is all different now. Do you know? Through you I can think of those stones with understading now. I only wish now I went places with you. I was wishing today, all day, thinking of the places."
"Which places?"
"To where you were born. I would have liked to go to the Jersey shore."
"We should have gone. I should have taken you."
Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda. The three blind mice.
"Even to New York City. To show it to me through your eyes. I would have liked that. Wherever we went, we always went to hide. I hate hiding. I wouldn't mind to go to New Mexico with you. To California with you. But mainly to New Jersey, to see the sea where you grew up."
"I understand." Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Sabbath's Theater
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