Golden Fool Quotes

“A burden shared not only can lighten it; it can form a bond between those who share it. So that no one is left to bear it alone.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Butter for the cat. I have no reason to be nice to you. Yes you do. I am the cat.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“I used to doubt the Fool when he told me that all of time was a great circuit, and that we are ever doomed to repeat what has been done before. But the older I get, the more I see it is so. I thought then that he meant one great circle entrapped all of us. Instead, I think we are born into our circuits. Like a colt on the end of a training line, we trot in the circular path ordained for us. We go faster, we slow down, we halt on command and we begin again. And each time we think the circle is something new.

Each circle spins off a circle of its own. Each one seems a new thing but in truth it is not. It is just our most recent attempts to correct old errors, to undo old wrongs done to us and to make up for things we have neglected. In each cycle, we may correct old errors, but I think we make as many new ones. Yet what is our alternative? To commit the same old errors again? Perhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Cold isn't so bad. Cold can only kill you if you stand still. Just keep moving.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“I don't think any two pains are ever exactly the same, Hap. But the part about being a fool, oh, yes.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“I went from the practice courts still bearing every problem that I had brought there with me, but buoyed with the idea that perhaps I possessed the wherewithal to face them.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“It could all happen again, and I could not stop it. I think I grasped then, fleetingly, the passion that powered the Fool. He believed in the terrible strength of the White Prophet and the Catalyst, to shoulder the future from the rut of the present and into some better pathway. He believed that some act of ours could prevent others from repeating the mistakes of the past”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“If I had met you for the first time tonight, I would have despised you. You put me in mind of Regal."
"Did I? Well, perhaps that reflect my belief that there is something to be learned from everyone that we meet.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“The years have come and gone in their scores of turnings, and night after night I still take pen in hand and write. Still I strive to understand who I am. 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'.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“I couldn’t tell him it would come out right, because I wasn’t sure it would. I couldn’t tell him that I’d trust his judgment, because I didn’t. Then Hap found the words for both of us. “I love you, Tom. I’ll keep trying.” I sighed in relief. “Me, too. I love you, and I’ll keep trying.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“It’s all connected. When you save any part of the world, you’ve saved the whole world. In fact, that’s the only way it can be done.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Tears welled in my eyes. Perhaps, I thought, if I do not blink, they will not spill. Perhaps if I sat very still long enough, somehow my eyes would reabsorb the tears.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“As only friends can do, we found each other's most tender spots to wound.”
― Robin Hobb, The Golden Fool

“I wished so intensely to be somewhere else that it seemed unbelievable that my body remained where it was.”
― Robin Hobb, The Golden Fool

“Then, in a low hiss, she added that I was the stupidest and cruelest person she had ever met.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Your biggest blind spot is that you cannot imagine anyone seeing you in a different way from how you see yourself.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Dragons that, like butterflies, have two stages to their lives. They hatch from eggs into sea serpents. They roam the seas, growing to a vast size. And when the time is right, when enough years have passed that they have attained dragon size, they migrate back to the home of their ancestors. The adult dragons would welcome them and escort them up the rivers. There, they spin their cocoons of sand – sand that is ground memory-stone – and their own saliva. In times past, adult dragons helped them spin those cases. And with the saliva of the adult dragons went their memories, to aid in the formation of the young dragons. For a full winter, they slumbered and changed, as the grown dragons watched over them to protect them from predators. In the hot sunlight of summer, they hatched, absorbing much of their cocoon casing as they did so. Absorbing, too, the memories stored in it. Young dragons emerged, full-formed and strong, ready to fend for themselves, to eat and hunt and fight for mates. And eventually to lay eggs on a distant island. The island of the Others. Eggs that would hatch into serpents.”
― Robin Hobb, The Golden Fool

“Something killed them. Long ago. I don’t know exactly what. Some great cataclysm of the earth, that buried whole cities in a matter of days. It sank the coast, drowning harbour towns, and changed the courses of rivers. It wiped out the dragons, and I think it killed the Elderlings as well.”
― Robin Hobb, The Golden Fool

“They also found the cocooned dragons. They had no idea that was what they were, of course. They thought … who knows what they thought at first? Perhaps they seemed like massive sections of tree trunks. So they refer to it: wizardwood.”
― Robin Hobb, The Golden Fool

“I truly wanted to live a life in which I could make my own choices, independent of the 'duties' of my birth and position. It was only when fate granted that to me that I realized the cost of it. I could set aside my responsibilities to others and live my life as I please only when I also severed my ties to them. I could not have it both ways. To be part of a family, or any community, is to have duties and responsibilities, to be bound by the rules of that group.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“is deceived about what is offered by the other. What danger do you fear here, Tom?”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“War later is almost always better than war now.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Not every problem in the world belongs to you, Tom Badgerlock. Let others have their share.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Acaso reunir el coraje que se requiere para buscar un camino diferente equivalga a tener el valor para arriesgarse a cometer nuevos errores.”
― Robin Hobb, El bufón dorado

“Stop it, or I will kill her, and you will lose your eyes and your ears here.” And he drew his belt knife, and advancing to the serving woman, he laid the edge of it along her throat. The woman did not blanch or shrink away. She stood still, her eyes glittering, almost smirking at his threat. She made no response to his words.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“But change proves that you are still alive. Change often measures our tolerance for folk different from ourselves. Can we accept their languages, their customs, their garments, and their foods into our own lives? If we can, then we form bonds, bonds that make wars less likely. If we cannot, if we believe that we must do things as we have always done them, then we must either fight to remain as we are, or die.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“If it was raining soup, you'd be out there with a fork.”
― Robin Hobb, The Golden Fool: The Tawny Man Trilogy, Book 2

“I came because I wanted you to know that I knew you were in pain. Not because I could heal you of it, but because I wanted you to be aware that I shared that pain through our connection. I suspect there is an aspect of selfishness in that; that I wished you also to be aware of it, I mean. A burden shared not only can lighten it; it can form a bond between those who share it. So that no one is left to bear it alone.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“I was choosing to be alone then; it was not the inescapable consequence of the wolf’s death, nor even a carefully considered decision. I was embracing my solitude, courting my pain. It was not the first time I had chosen such a course.
I handled that thought carefully, for it was sharp enough to kill me. I had chosen my isolated years with Hap in my cabin. No one forced me into that exile. The irony was that it had been the granting of my often-voiced wish. Throughout my youth, I had always asserted that what I truly wished was to live a life where I could make my own choices, independent of the “duties” of my birth and position. It was only when fate granted that to me that I realized the cost of it. I could set aside my responsibilities to others and live my life as I pleased only when I also severed my ties to them. I could not have it both ways. To be part of a family, or a community, is to have duties and responsibilities, to be bound by the rules of that group. I had lived apart from that for a time, but now I knew that had been my choice. I had chosen to renounce my responsibilities to my family, and accepted the ensuing isolation as the cost. At the time, I had insisted to myself that fortune had forced me into that role. Just as I was making a choice now, even though I tried to persuade myself I was but following the inescapable path fate had set out for me.
To recognize you are the source of your own loneliness is not the cure for it. But it is a step toward seeing that it is not inevitable, and that such a choice is not irrevocable.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“At the time, I had insisted to myself that fortune had forced me into that role. Just as I was making a choice now, even though I tried to persuade myself I was but following the inescapable path fate had set out for me.
To recognize you are the source of your own loneliness is not the cure for it. But it is a step toward seeing that it is not inevitable, and that such a choice is not irrevocable.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool