Assassin's Fate (The Fitz and the Fool, #3)

by Robin Hobb

I am real and I am with you. Trust me. I can help you protect yourself.

His hands on my shoulders felt good but reminded me too sharply of Molly.

‘Never do what you can’t undo until you’ve considered well what you can’t do once you’ve done it.’

There were times when taking vengeance for the dead seemed too high a price for abandoning the living.

Calm and prosperity dull a man’s edge just as endless battle and hardship dulls the gentler parts of the soul.”

“This is our last hunt, old wolf. And as we always have, we go to it together.”

For some things, there is no forgiving or unforgiving. They are simply a crossroads, and a direction taken, whether I would or no. Someone else set my feet on that path. All I can control is every step I take after that.”

do not do a thing you cannot undo, until you have considered well what you cannot do once you’ve done it!”

The sad thing about boredom is that one learns to value it only when it is exploded by a disaster, or the threat of one.

I will shake off this ship’s body and the shape of your flesh, but always I will carry with me the horror of what humans can do to one another for amusement.”

She spent her childhood as a whore. Can you conceive that she thought of Kennit as the first person to treat her with kindness? That she came to love him for saving her from that life?”

“There is no going back, my son. We will take what we have now, and keep it with us forever.”

I cannot speak for what happens after. I can only say that for the days we have left together, I will be here with you.”

“What monsters humans are! I’d rather be a wolf.”

Oh, Da, does life ever become simple? Only for a few moments, my dear. Only for a few moments.

‘woken the sleeping wolf, and stirred the dragons in him to fury.’

‘Never do that which you can’t undo, until you’ve perceived what you can’t do once you’ve done it.’

“Bee. Nothing happens to you. You happen to everything.”

“It is worse than useless to do things halfway, Bee. For then you think the work is done, but someone must come behind you later to do it all over again. Even if you must work much harder and get less done, it is better to do the whole task the first time.”

“When people do not know the past, they make the same mistakes their forebears made,”

That is both the danger and the hope of life. That each of us changes the world, every day.”

“Some knowledge comes not from dreams but from life.

The problem is not that we forget the past. It is that we recall it too well. Children recall wrongs that enemies did to their grandfathers, and blame the granddaughters of the old enemies. Children are not born with memories of who insulted their mother or slew their grandfather or stole their land. Those hates are bequeathed to them, taught them, breathed into them. If adults didn’t tell children of their hereditary hates, perhaps we would do better.

“If a flock of crows is a murder, what should we call a group of dragons?” “A catastrophe of dragons,”

Vengeance took no account of innocence or right. It was the chain that bound horrific events together, that decreed that one awful act must beget another worse one that would lead to yet a third. It came to me, slowly, that this chain would never end.

Someday I hope to sit next to him and demand that he tell to me everything he can remember of his life. And I will write it down and never let the flames steal it.

It’s like poison working out of a wound. Let the tears fall and let the fear shake you. On my deck or within my hold, you do not have to be strong. Let go of what you had to hide.

great events often hinged on small ones.

“No. I can be alone with you here. You never look at me like I’m something odd in your soup.”

‘Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done

“My dear, the journey home is always easier than any other.