Martha Gilstrap > Martha's Quotes

“The second thing you have to do to be a writer is to keep on writing. Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your friend who says you are better that Tolkien and don't have to try any more. Keep writing, keep faith in the idea that you have unique stories to tell, and tell them. I meet far too many people who are going to be writers 'someday.' When they are out of high school, when they've finished college, after the wedding, when the kids are older, after I retire . . . That is such a trap You will never have any more free time than you do right now. So, whether you are 12 or 70, you should sit down today and start being a writer if that is what you want to do. You might have to write on a notebook while your kids are playing on the swings or write in your car on your coffee break. That's okay. I think we've all 'been there, done that.' It all starts with the writing. ”
― Robin Hobb

“Home is people. Not a place. If you go back there after the people are gone, then all you can see is what is not there any more.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Fate

“The man who must brag for himself knows that no one else will”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin

“Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die.

True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship

“Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice

“It's too late to apologize for I have already forgiven you." -FitzChivalry Farseer”
― Robin Hobb

“Thinking is not always...comforting. It is always good, but not always comforting.”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin

“Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that. And no less.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship

“Anticipating pain was like enduring it twice. Why not anticipate pleasure instead?”
― Robin Hobb, Renegade's Magic

“Death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand

“The fight isn't over until you win.”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin

“History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.”
― Robin Hobb

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

Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too.
-Chade

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

We left. Walking uphill and into the wind. That suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life.
-Fitz”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice

“For the weakest has but to try his strength to find it, and then he shall be strong.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Quest

“Stop thinking of what you intend to do. Stop thinking of what you have just done. Then, stop thinking that you have stopped thinking of those things. Then you will find the Now, the time that stretches eternal, and is really the only time there is.”
― Robin Hobb, Royal Assassin

“One must plan for the future and anticipate the future without fearing the future.”
― Robin Hobb, Ship of Magic

“It's all connected. When you save any part of the world, you've saved the whole world. In fact, that's the only way it can be done.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“How different would our perception of reality be if... we discarded the mundane events that cannot coexist with our dreams?”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“Be with me" she said simply "Just for here. Just for now. With gentleness and friendship. To take...the other away. Give me that much of yourself."

I wanted her. I wanted her with a desperation that had nothing to do with love, and even, I believe, little to do with lust. She was warm and alive and it would have been sweet and simple human comfort. If I could have been with her and arisen from it unchanged in how I thought of myself and what I felt for Molly, I would have done so. But what I felt for Molly was not something that was only for when we were together. I had given Molly that claim to me; I could not resend it just because we were apart for while.”
― Robin Hobb

“No. This is right. I feel it. I am the Catalyst, and I came to change all things. Prophets become warriors, dragons hunt as wolves.”
― Robin Hobb

“Innocent?” He was incensed at her suggestion he was somehow responsible for this mess. “I’ve done nothing wrong, I intend nothing wrong. I am innocent!”
“Half the evil in this world occurs while decent people stand by and do nothing wrong. It’s not enough to refrain from evil, Trell. People have to attempt to do right, even if they believe they cannot succeed.”
“Even when it’s stupid to try?” he asked with savage sarcasm.
“Especially then,” she replied sweetly. “That’s how it’s done, Trell. You break your heart against this stony world. You fling yourself at it, on the side of good, and you do not ask the cost. That’s how you do it.”
― Robin Hobb, The Mad Ship

“I believed that by fixing it down in words, I could force sense from all that had happened, that effect would follow cause, and the reason for each event come clear to me.

But then I returned one day, to find all my careful scribing gone to fragments of vellum lying in a trampled yard with wet snow blowing over them. I sat my horse, looking down at them, and knew that, as it always would, the past had broken free of my effort to define and understand it. History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Errand

“Your future. It awaits only you, to live it and to write it.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“Locked into loneliness were we two and looking at one another every evening we each saw the one we blamed for it.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Apprentice

“i want to never settle for anything less than my soul on paper.”
― Jonathan Culver

“Fear is in the waiting, not the fighting." -- Snake (character in Slitherskins, scheduled for release in summer, 2014)”
― Martha Gilstrap