One had a knife. But I had a staff and was trained to use it.Collection: Knives
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 dieCollection: War
Sometimes it seemed to me a cruelty that so much was unresolved between us; at other times, a blessing that a hope of reunion lingered.Collection: Blessing
History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.Collection: Past
When both my editors say 'This is really bad, you need to change this,' I ignore that at my peril.Collection: Editors
Nothing takes the heart out of a man more than the expectation of failure.Collection: Heart
I do not know whom I wish to win; until I do, I will let no player be eliminated.Collection: Winning
How do you politely explain to someone that you had believed for years he was a moron as well as a Fool?Collection: Years
Death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice.Collection: Death
I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.Collection: Flesh
I believed that by fixing it down in words, I could force sense from all that had happened, that effect would follow cause, and the reason for each event come clear to me. But then I returned one day, to find all my careful scribing gone to fragments of vellum lying in a trampled yard with wet snow blowing over them. I sat my horse, looking down at them, and knew that, as it always would, the past had broken free of my effort to define and understand it. History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.Collection: Horse
For, "Yes," he had sighed on his dying breath, and all knew that was the ultimate prayer one could offer to life.Collection: Prayer
I am the King's Fool. He is the King-In-Wating. Let him wait.Collection: Kings
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. They could not stop themselves from doing what they did. They did not see what they did, and even if they saw, they did not know how to stop. They no longer knew what was enough.Collection: Dirty
I think that old magic draws much of its strength from that acknowledgment: that we are a part of that world.Collection: Thinking
If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate berevement, both the Prince and I passed into the gray days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it.Collection: Fashion
Be a man. 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.Collection: Men
Silence can ask all the questions, where the tongue is prone to ask only the wrong one.Collection: Silence
Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change is what makes life interesting.Collection: Past
Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more.Collection: Inspirational
There is little in life so reassuring as a genuine welcome.Collection: Littles
Do you not see how strange and wonderful that is? That all history balances on an affair of the human heart?Collection: Heart
Your future. It awaits only you, to live it and to write it. - Shaman's Crossing by Robin HobbCollection: Writing
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.Collection: Opposites
Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.Collection: Men
Very little worth knowing is taught by fear.Collection: Knowing
if love doesnt come first and linger after, if love cant wait and endure disappointment and seperation, then its not love.Collection: Disappointment
We are as we are. How can you claim to know what life I was meant to lead, let alone threaten to force me into it? All your quibbling is nonsense. As well forbid your nose to snuff, or your ears to hear. We are as we do.Collection: Noses
One must plan for the future and anticipate the future without fearing the future.Collection: Plans
You seek a false comfort when you demand that I define myself for you with words. Words do not contain or define any person. A heart can, if it is willing.Collection: Heart
One can only walk so far from one's true self before the bond either snaps, or pulls one back.Collection: Self
When we come back to fantasy, I think we're actually coming back to the real bedrock of storytelling. Our national or international genre really is fantasy, if you think about the worldwide myths and legends and stories that we all know, whether we're talking about Little Red Riding Hood or the Arabian Nights or Noah's Ark or Hercules. These are stories that cross many cultures in much the same way that dragons cross many cultures.Collection: Real
Remember with your heart. Go back, go back and go back. The skies of this world were always meant to have dragons. When they are not here, humans miss them. Some never think of them, of course. But some children, from the time they are small, they look up at the blue summer sky and watch for something that never comes. Because they know. Something that was supposed to be there faded and vanished. Something that we must bring back, you and I.Collection: Summer
For the weakest has but to try his strength to find it, and then he shall be strong.Collection: Strong
Someday is someday, and maybe it will be or maybe it won't. This is a human thing, to worry about things that may or may not come to be. You can't eat meat until you've killed it.Collection: Worry
What a man can take with a sword, a woman can give by her flesh alone. Life.Collection: Men
It's too late to apologize for. I have already forgiven you.Collection: Too Late
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.Collection: Men
How different would our perception of reality be if... we discarded the mundane events that cannot coexist with our dreams?Collection: Dream
learning is never wrong. Even learning how to kill isn't wrong. Or right. It's just a thing to learn, a thing I can teach you. That's all.Collection: Wrong Or Right
Start writing sooner. Don't wait for permission. Don't hesitate.Collection: Writing
Writers really do that. We weep over our characters. We are saddened sometimes for days when we say goodbye to a world or a character. They do become our best friends. I've probably spent more time with them over the past 22, 24 years than I have spent with most of the real members of my family.Collection: Goodbye
I began reading everyhing in the family library. Kidnapped, Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe. And of course, if you're running out of books to read you can always read Shakespeare.Collection: Running
THE HEIR OF NIGHT by Helen Lowe is a richly told tale of strange magic, dark treachery and conflicting loyalties, set in a well realized world.Collection: Loyalty
Everybody has felt at one time or another that everyone else in the world had a better shot than they did, so when you engage that, you engage the reader, and I think you create a character that brings the reader more fully into the story.Collection: Character
The biggest doubts come in the five minutes after I hit send.Collection: Doubt
Very little about being a writer is signing an autograph. It's sitting in a room and writing. Getting it out.Collection: Writing
I was dressed up as a witch for Halloween, and wanted to write a story about my black cat before I went out trick-or-treating. I think it went out with the trash the next day.Collection: Halloween
Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them.Collection: Writing