The Tawny Man Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: Fool's Errand, Golden Fool, Fool's Fate

by Robin Hobb

But she was a minstrel, and for her the power of a secret was always in the telling of it.

There were days when I felt that Starling’s words had made an old man of me.

Yet that thought came not with any resentment that he might borrow my days but with hope that we might still have a good long span together.

Cooking for one person seemed foolish,

Beautiful summer days followed, one after another, like blue and green beads on a string.

Leave old pains alone. When they cease coming to call, do not invite them back.”

Autumn had just begun her warnings

the keen mind fought to shine past the fluttering curtains of his years.

“I hate irony. It is a manacle that ties our dreams to our fears.

you imagine the worst, and when you do, your mind stops at the problem and does not consider the solution.”

Life is a balance. We tend to forget that as we go blithely from day to day. We eat and drink and sleep and assume that we will always rise up the next day, that meals and rest will always replenish us. Injuries we expect to heal, and pain to lessen as times goes by. Even when we are faced with wounds that heal more slowly, with pain that lessens by day only to return in full force at nightfall, even when sleep does not leave us rested, we still expect that somehow tomorrow all will come back into balance and that we will go on. At some point, the exquisite balance has tipped, and despite all our flailing efforts, we begin the slow fall from the body that maintains itself to the body that struggles, nails clawing, to cling to what it used to be.

And in the moment, I smelled that summer was over,

“Four stones stacked atop one another will outlive all your dreams

The heart will flee anywhere when it is seeking comfort.

spring can dismiss a multitude of worries.

Few things are so exhilarating as good health on a clear spring morning.

With this lad, the arrow flies from his eye as much as from his bow.

Dread can weary a man more than honest labor,

A time, rather than a place. No road led there anymore.

No sense in agonizing my way through lessons I had already learned.

It was a young man’s humor, the dark sarcasm that has no fear of ever meeting the fate he mocks.