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.”

There is a dead spot in the night, that coldest, blackest time when the world has forgotten evening and dawn is not yet a promise. A time when it is far too early to arise, but so late that going to bed makes small sense.

when a man’s decisions came to you, you made them as a boy. Impulsively. Intending to be right, intending to be good. But intentions are not good enough.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

I wondered if there was any way to live amongst other people and refuse to be harnessed by their expectations and dependencies.

Generosity to them is taught as simple courtesy.

Ignorant and callous as young men often were.

The small folk of a land can only be oppressed so long before they rise up in their own defense,

The chosen simplicity of life there may lead the visitor to question his own choice in life.

Diplomacy may very well be the art of manipulating secrets. What would any negotiation come to, were not there secrets to either share or withhold?

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

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.’

fate has laid this burden upon both of you. It must be borne.”

loose. A lock does no more than keep an honest man honest,

His shame, guilt, and remorse stood between us, and blocked him from my forgiveness. Blocked him, too, from forgiving himself.

Truth is often much larger than facts.

But that had been pain. This was death. I suddenly knew the difference.

sometimes lies are what a man needs most. In order to make a new truth of them.”

No one could be blamed. No one could be blameless.