Assassin's Quest (The Farseer Trilogy, #3)

by Robin Hobb

Sometimes a man doesn’t know how badly he’s hurt until someone else probes the wound.”

“Sometimes all the choices are poor ones, Fool, and still a man must choose.”

Children, I have found, are much more swift to accept the unusual. They admit their curiosity, you see, rather than disdaining the object that arouses it.”

Some people say there is a relief in the sharing of cares and pains. To me there was no catharsis, only an unearthing of rotting corpses of memories, a baring of still suppurating wounds.

Accept, and endure.”

‘They come like raindrops against the stone towers of time. But in time it is always the rain that prevails, not the tower.’ ”

“Among other things. Fool, there is no sense in trying to play that game with the past. Here is where we are today, and we can only make our moves from here.”

Honor and courtesy and justice…they are not real, Fitz. We all pretend to them, and hold them up like shields. But they guard only against folk who carry the same shields. Against those who have discarded them, they are no shields at all, but only additional weapons to use against their victims.”

There is no more slippery task than to refrain from thinking of something.

“When you can either laugh or cry, you might as well laugh,”