Fool's Fate (Tawny Man, #3)

by Robin Hobb

‘How do you do it?’ I asked the Fool suddenly. ‘You shift who you are from year to year and place to place. Don’t you ever feel regret that no one truly knows you as the person you were born?’ He shook his head slowly. ‘I am not the person I was born. Neither are you. I know no one who is. Truly, Fitz, all we ever know are facets of one another. Perhaps we feel as if we know one another well when we know several facets of that person. Father, son, brother, friend, lover, husband … a man can be all of those things, yet no one person knows him in all those roles.

Name it as you will, claim it as you will, the world does not belong to men. Men belong to the world. You will not own the earth that eventually your body will become, nor will it recall the name it once answered to.’

‘There are other types of neglect and deprivation. To deny what unfolds inside someone, to forbid the magic that comes unbidden, to impose ignorance in a way that invites danger, to say to a child, “You must not be what you are.” That is wrong.’

Grief makes its own solitude, and I knew that I must endure it.

‘Fitz, 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.’

Maybe you have to keep your pain and loss to know that you can survive whatever life deals you. Perhaps without putting your pain in its place in your life, you become something of a coward.’

Oof