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

by Robin Hobb

“Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.’

All events, no matter how earthshaking or bizarre, are diluted within moments of their occurrence by the continuance of the necessary routines of day-to-day living.

I have since come to know that many men always see another’s good fortune as a slight to themselves.

“Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.”

That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention.”

“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool, you end up sounding like a moron instead.

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

That summer, over three months, I killed seventeen times for the King.