Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, #1)

by Robin Hobb

You’ve learned to guard your thoughts so well, you’re almost afraid to let yourself know what they are.

One would have thought that her excesses toward the end of her life would have disillusioned her followers. To the contrary, they declared either that Shrewd had driven her to self-destruction or poisoned her himself.

luck belongs to children and madmen.

Hard times

are here, boy. And I wonder if they will ever pass.”

Some, like Chade, seem so preoccupied with their lives that they either forget to eat, or burn every bit of sustenance they take in the fires of their passionate fascination with life.

know. So quickly were we all made accomplices in our own degradation.

and Kerry and Dirk, and other, older secrets I

walking uphill and into the wind. And that suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life.

I conveyed to Smithy that he was to stay with Burrich, and he accepted it with an equanimity that surprised me as much as it hurt my feelings.

Nothing takes the heart out of a man more than the expectation of failure.