Fool's Assassin (The Fitz and the Fool, #1)

by Robin Hobb

Time is an unkind teacher, delivering lessons that we learn far too late for them to be useful.

And there it was, that stone-dropping-into-a-well plunge of my heart. I kept it from showing on my face or in my eyes. That gulf, after all, had nothing to do with how long I’d gone with no animal companion. That was a different sort of loneliness entirely. Wasn’t it? Perhaps not. The loneliness that can never be filled by anyone except the one whose loss created the absence; well, then, perhaps it was the same.

There are endings. There are beginnings. Sometimes they coincide, with the ending of one thing marking the beginning of another. But sometimes there is simply a long space after an ending, a time when it seems everything has ended and nothing else can ever begin.

I lived my grief; I slept mourning and ate sorrow and drank tears.

To every creature is given both a place and a time, and when that time is over, we have to let them go.

“Some calls you cannot ignore, no matter how it may tear your heart.”

Such is the power of memory. It is fully as strong as the most feverish infection, and it lingers not just for a period of sickness but for all the days of a man’s life.

I have all those memories still, the ones of hurt and the ones of comfort and the ones of exultation. I can touch them still, even if they are faded now like a tapestry left to harsh light and dust.