Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb is the pen name of an American writer of mostly fantasy, Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden. She is most famous for her "The Realm of the Elderlings" series.

The Farseer Trilogy

Assasin's Apprentice

[Chade] "First, let me introduce you to yourself."

Simple: Before you understand anything else, you have to understand yourself.

[Fitz] "How do you politely explain to someone that you had believed for years he was a moron as well as a Fool?"

Simple: How do you tell someone you think of them as an idiot, as well as a fool

[Fitz] "It is a heady thing to be suddenly proclaimed the centre of someone's world, even if that someone is an eight-week-old puppy."

Simple: It is confusing to be quickly told you are the centre of someone's world, even if they are not important

[Lacey] "Now I've had boys of my own, and I know boys aren't that way. They don't learn, or grow, or have manners when you're looking at them. But turn away, and turn back, and there they are, smarter, taller, and charming everyone but their own mothers."

Simple: Young boys do not look as if they are maturing, but if you stop paying attention, they will have changed when you look back

[Fitz] "Look at Lady Patience and her woman, Lacey. They are always about and doing things. Their apartments are a jungle of the lady's plants, and the cuffs of her gowns are sometimes a bit sticky from her paper-making, or she will have bits of leaves in her hair from her herbery work, but she is still just as beautiful."

Simple: You can be messy, and unordinary, yet still beutiful.

[Fitz] "However, when all roads lead to death, there is no point in running down any of them."

Simple: If their is no happy ending, there is no benefit of reaching the end quicker

[King Shrewd] "Don't do what you can't undo, until you've considered what you can't do once you've done it."

Simple: Always look at the consequences of actions before doing them

[Burrich] "When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead."

Simple: When you lie to make yourself appear smarter, you end up looking more of an idiot.

[The Fool] "When considering a man's motives, remember you must not measure his wheat with your bushel. He may not be using the same standard at all."

Simple: When trying to understand why someone does something, you must not think they are thinking the same way as you are.

Royal Assasin

"A year passes for a wolf as a decade does for a man. Time is no miser when one lives always in the now."

Simple: Time means nothing when you live in the now, not caring about the future or worrying about the past.

[The Fool] "This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll a 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 nought 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 draught."

Simple: Despite humans putting large amounts of importance on small things, one single life of a common person is often seen as unimportant.

[Chade] "Sometimes, it would be much easier to die for one's king than to give one's life for him."

Simple: Death is sometimes easier than spending an entire life serving

[Nighteyes] "Such packs men make. How can you hunt together when you cannot all run in the same direction?"

Simple: How can you achieve goals, when your group does not even go in the same direction

[Burrich] "Lost a fight? The fight isn't over until you win it, Fitz."

Simple: Never give up, you have not lost until you admit you have lost

Assasin's Quest

[Burrich] "But a living is not a life. "

Simple: Just living, surviving, is not a full life

[The Fool] "Children, I have found, are much more swift to accept the unusual. They admit their curiosity, you see, rather than disdaining the object that arouses it."

Simple: Children will accept that which they do not understand, and admit they do not understand. Adults will try and hide this.

[Starling] "Honour and courtesy and justice... they are not real, Fitz. We all pretend to them, and hold them to us like shields. But they guard only against folk who carry the same shields. Against those who have discarded them, they are no shields at all, but only additional weapons to use against their victims."

Simple: Honour, courtesy, and justice cannot protect you against people who have forsaken them, only make you weaker.

Liveship Traders Trilogy

Ship of Magic

[Wintrow] "It is the nature of humans that we tend to pass our pain along. As if we could get rid of it by inflicting an equal hurt on someone else."

Simple: Humans, when in pain, will try and make others feel pain, to make themselves feel better.

[Amber] "Somehow, you have confused profitable and not profitable with right and wrong. I, however, have not."

Simple: Somehow, you have confused making money and losing money with doing the right thing or the wrong thing, I have not.

The Mad Ship

[Amber] "Stop using every mistake you make as an excuse to fail completely."

Simple: Because you make a small mistake, it is not reason to make a bigger one, or give up

[Amber] "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."

Simple: Evil will often come because people do not fight it, not because they act evil.

"She trusted to her simple life to protect her. Kennit knew the truth of that. No one can have so little that someone else can find nothing to envy. Poverty and simplicity were not shields from the greed of others. If you had nothing left to steal, they'd take your body and enslave it."

Simple: No matter how little you own, the greedy and theifs will find something to steal.

Ship of Destiny

[Brashen] "Some friendships go deeper than madness or common sense."

Simple: Friendships can see past madness or common sense.

[Serilla] "In politics, appearance matters far more than truth."

Simple: In politics, what you look like, and what you are saying mean more than if you are speaking the truth.

"There are dragons and dragons. This one would just as soon not spend eternity tied to a heap of bones. Turn back. Defy her. Challenge her."

The Tawny Man

Fool's Errand

[The Fool] "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."

Simple: It is easier to give up and die then to live, but once you do, you give up choice. You die when you run out of choices.

[Fitz] "When you speak in riddles, it exasperates me. Yet when you try to speak clearly of yourself, it frightens me."

Simple: When you speak with ridles, it confuses me. Yet when you speak clearly, it scares me.

[Kelstar's Riddle] "Is time the wheel that turns, or the track it leaves behind?"

Simple: Is time what is happening now, or the past.

The Golden Fool

[Mountain Proverb] "One man armed with the right word may do what an army of swordsmen cannot"

[Chade] "The weapon we throw away today is the one at our throats tomorrow."

Simple: The weapon we throw away today, our enemy can pick up tomorrow.

[Jinna] "What the heart longs for, and what the mind knows are two different things."

Simple: The heart's wants, and the mind's knowledge are different things.

Fool's Fate

[Dutiful] "The truth. I know it's a novel idea, but I thought that at least one Farseer should try it."

Simple: The truth. I know it is a new idea, but I thought one farseer should try it.

Soldier Son Trilogy

Shaman's Crossing

"Think it is how most men get from one day to the next; they set aside all experiences that do not mesh with their perception of themselves. How different would our perception of reality be if, instead, we discarded the mundane events that cannot co-exist with our dreams?"

Simple: Most men put to the side their dreams because they do not fit in their world. What would the world be like if, instead, they put to the side the boring events that cannot live together with their dreams?

Forest Mage

Renegade's Magic

"You are to be a soldier, Nevare. A soldier does not retreat from what he imagines might be an enemy."

Simple: A soldier does not fall back when he sees an enemy.

"And when a warrior is injured, or when he sees his brother fall, dying, he cannot *then* decide that the price is too high to pay. Each of them must go into this battle thinking that if he must die for us to win it, then he will."

Simple: A warrior must go into the fight thinking if one must die for our side to win, then he will. They cannot decide the price is to high after he is dead.