Shaman's Crossing Quotes

“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

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

“A terrible premonition washed over me. This was how the whole world would end.... They would devour the forest and excrete piles of buildings made of stone wrenched from the earth or from dead trees. They would hammer paths of bare stone between their dwellings, and dirty the rivers and subdue the land until it could recall only the will of man. They could not stop themselves from doing what they did. They did not see what they did, and even if they saw, they did not know how to stop. They no longer knew what was enough.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“My blood will only buy you that fool's regard. I will pay a high price for you to be respected by a churl. Nothing bought with blood is worth having, young man.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“He is very concerned with his dignity, and I think that prevents him from having an interesting life. If I were a boy, and permitted to have an interesting life, I would have no dignity at all.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“Only a crazy man could have made any sense of the events. I did not want to be crazy, and so I could not think seriously about these things or permit them to have meaning in my life.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“I think that the ones who speak cruelly or taunt are the ones who should be pressured to change. I have no delusions about myself. In a physical fight, Trist would best me easily. And, having won it, he would then use that superiority to justify however he treated me afterward. He is saying that my physical condition should determine how he treats me. And you think that because you have bested him in a physical struggle, you have proved something to him. But you haven’t. All you have done is shown that you agree with him, that the man who can physically defeat another is the man who should make the rules. I don’t agree with that. If I attempt to live by those rules, I will be beaten, and I do not intend to be beaten. So I will not be goaded into a physical confrontation with Trist or anyone else. I will win another way.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“The truth doesn’t need you to recognize it, young man, for it to be so. You need the truth to recognize you.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“I think it is how most men get from one day to the next; they set aside all experiences that do not mesh with their perception of themselves. How different would our perception of reality be if, instead, we discarded the mundane events that cannot coexist with our dreams?”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“Why was the city better than the forest that had once stood there?”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing: Book One of The Soldier Son Trilogy – An Epic Military Fantasy Where Ancient Sorcery Claims Souls and Devastates Worlds

“The same thing I live for are the same things I would die for.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“My nurse often exhorted me to take hope for the future in how the good god had preserved me, but most days it seemed to me that continuing my life was the cruelest jest the good god could have played upon me. Whenever I looked at the days of my life that stretched before me, I felt discouraged. What was I to do with them all, now that I’d ruined my prospects?”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“My nurse often extorted me to take hope for the future in how the good god had preserved me, but most days it seemed to me that continuing my life was the cruelest jest the good god could have played upon me. Whenever I looked at the days of my life that stretched before me, I felt discouraged. What was I to do with them all, now that I’d ruined my prospects?”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“My sisters are at least as good at math as I am,” Spink told her. I commented to myself that was scarcely an endorsement, but kept my thoughts to myself.
“Well, perhaps it if because they were set to such studies earlier in life than I was. I had but the rudiments when I was small, and my governess made it seem that learning to calculate was far less important than the ten basic stitches of Varnian embroidery. So I learned them for the week and promptly forgot them. Only later did I discover that even in needlework one needs to understand proportions in order to change a pattern, and ratios to adapt a recipe…but that if not what I am speaking about when I mention women’s talents.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“What ails you, that a young woman of your family and years acts like an irresponsible hoyden?”
She had begun to walk away, leading her mare. Now she turned back to me. Her face changed as completely as if she had removed a mask, and I think that in some ways she had. She leaned towards me as she spoke, and had she been a horse, her ears would have been back and her teeth bared.
“The day I begin acting like a ‘woman’ instead of a ‘girl,’ the day I succumb to the manacles and shackles prepared for me, is the day on which my parents will auction me off to the highest bidder. I had heard on the border, women were allowed to have lives of their own. I had expected more modern sensibility from you, cousin dear. Instead, over and over, you reveal my worst fears for you rather than my fondest hopes.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I felt angry, indignant, and strangely hurt at her disparaging words.
“I do,” Spink said quietly. “My mother speaks of it.”
“Of what?” I demanded. Was he siding with Epiny again? I felt as I did when I first tried to learn Varnian; that people were talking, but that their words had no meaning.
“Of women learning to run their own affairs,” Spink said. “I’ve told you how our first overseer cheated us, when my brothers and I were little more than children. My mother blames that on her education and upbringing. She says that if she had been able to understand the accounts and how the holdings should have been operated, she would never have lost for us what should have been my brother’s fortune. So when she sent for a tutor for my brother, she insisted that she be allowed to sit in on all his lessons. And she has taught my two sisters all that they might need to know should they ever become untimely widows with small children to defend.”
I stared at him, unable to think of anything to say.
“Exactly,” Epiny said, as if it justified all her strange behavior.
I found my tongue. “I would more blame your mother’s family that your uncle did not come to your aid.”
“Blaming them will not undo what is done. And even though I doubt that my elder brother would ever abandon my wife and children to such a fate, no one can predict that he would be alive and in a position to help them in such straits. My mother has said that no daughter of hers will suffer as she did, from ignorance.”
I could think of any number of replies to that, ranging from tactless to cutting. Instead, I turned to my cousin and said, “I cannot imagine what ‘shackles and manacles’ you are so dreading, Epiny. If you behave like a lady, you will marry well and go to a lovely home of your own, with servants to care for your needs. It seems to me that all noble ladies in Old Thare have to do is fix their hair and order new clothing made for them. Are those your ‘shackles’ you speak of? It shames me to speak of your parents as ‘auctioning you off’ as of you were a prize cow! How can you say such a cruel thing when your father so obviously loves you?”
“Shackles of velvet and manacles of lace, dear cousin, can bind a woman as effectively as those of cold iron. Oh, my father loves me and so does my mother, and they will find some noble son of a good family who will be delighted with my dowry and will probably treat me well, especially if I produce children for him in a timely and uncomplicated way. The man they choose for me will become an important political ally, which is where I see all the difficulties arise, for my father and my mother have very different political ambitions, as you undoubtedly know.”
I understood what she spoke of, but I pointed out, “So it has always been. My parents have chosen my wife for me, and my elder brother’s wife as well.”
“Poor things!” she said with heartfelt sympathy. “Given to boys before they are even men, with no more choice in their fates than an orphaned kitten has. When it is my time to wed, I intend to choose my husband for myself. And I will get me a man who respects my mind.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“You won’t stay and hold a séance with me?”
“I…of course not! It’s unholy. It’s improper!” I throttled a terrible curiosity to know how a séance worked and if anything real ever happened in one.
“Unholy? Why?”
“Well, it is all trickery and lies.”
“Hm. Well if it is all trickery, then it can scarcely be sinful. Unless of course…” She paused and looked at me quite seriously, almost as if alarmed. “Do you think those mimes who pester people in the Old Square are sinful? They are always pretending to climb ladders or lean on walls that aren’t there. Are they unholy, too?”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“You heard your father. We have to waken early for Sixday services at dawn.”
“If the good god is always with us, why must we worship him at such an awful hour?” Epiny demanded.
“Because it is our duty. It’s a small sacrifice he asks of us, to demonstrate our respect for him.”
“That,” she told me archly. “Was a rhetorical question. I already know its conventional answer. I just think it’s a good idea for us all to think about it now and then. For just as the good god makes rather strange requests of how men must show their respect, so do men make peculiar demands of women. And children.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“Oh. Those. I’ve heard some talk about them. People sitting in a circle in the dark, holding hands and playing at bogey-frights on one another. It sounds unholy, and completely unfit for a girl to be interested in,” I told her sternly. In my heart, I was full of curiosity and longing to hear more, but I did not wish to tempt my own cousin to corruption.
“Indeed?” She gave me a disdainful look. “Perhaps you ought to tell that to my mother, for tonight she assists the queen at her weekly séance session. Or perhaps the queen herself would like to hear your notions of what is ‘unholy and unfit for girls.’” She turned to Spink. “The queen says that much of what is judged ‘unfit for women to pursue’ are the very sciences and disciplines that lead to power. What do you think of that?”
Spink glanced at me but I had no help for him. It struck me as an entirely peculiar conversation, not unlike Epiny herself. He took a breath, and the expression on his face was the same one he wore when an instructor called on him in class. “I have not had much time to reflect on that, but on the surface, it would certainly seem true. Women are not encouraged to study the exact sciences or engineering. The complete texts of the Holy Writ are forbidden to them; they only study the writings given specifically for women. The arts and sciences of war are judged unfit…if those be the paths to power, then yes, perhaps women are denied those paths when they are denied those disciplines.”
“Why should it matter?” I spread my hands. “If there are disciplines that are unfit for girls, then it is only natural that those disciplines would lead to inappropriate ends. Why would any father put his daughter on a path that can only lead to her unhappiness and frustration?”
Epiny swiveled her gaze to me. “Why would a powerful woman be unhappy and frustrated?”
“Because she wouldn’t, well, a powerful woman, would not…have, well, a home and family and children. She wouldn’t have time for all the things that fulfill a woman.”
“Powerful men have those things.”
“Because they have wives,” I pointed out to her.
“Exactly,” she said, as if she had just proven something.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“I’m a man grown, Spink. I’m fat, and perhaps that is a fault or perhaps it is just the way the good god made me. But it does not make me a child, nor does it make me any less in command of my own life. You think that I should fight those who are cruel. The doctor back there thinks I should change myself so they would have less excuse to be cruel to me. But what I think is that I should not have to do either.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“We are not defined by what we die for, but what we live for.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“The truth doesn’t need you to recognize it, young man, for it to be so. You need the truth to recognize you. Until you do, you are not real. But let us set aside the truth of the worthlessness of things bought with blood. Let us try to recall who you are in another way. We are not defined by what we die for, but what we live for. Will you acknowledge that truth?”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“I could not bear to look out the window. The stink of burning branches, the particle-laden air, the cursing of the deckhands as they yelled warnings to the sweepsman and fended us away from the floating log rafts with long poles told me all that I did not wish to know. I felt as aggrieved as I had when the hunters had shot the wind wizard. I had glimpsed something immense and wonderful, and in the next instant had seen its destruction. I felt like a child shown a most desirable plaything that is then whisked away. I could not discard the feeling that I had been cheated. The world I had expected to live in was vanishing before I could explore it.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“I carried inside me, small and sharp, the knowledge that my father, despite his encouraging words to me, doubted me. His doubt became my own, a competitor I could never quite conquer.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“Days piled on days to become months, like dead leaves heaping atop one another to become loam.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“I’ve heard that we all dream, every night, but only some people can remember their dreams.”
I smiled at that. “And if everyone forgot all their dreams, how could anyone prove such a thing? No. When my head touches the pillow and I close my eyes, all is quiet in my mind until morning. Unlike you. You seem to fill your sleeping hours with all sorts of adventures and fantasies.”
She glanced away from me. “Perhaps I adventure in my dreams because there is so little else in my life to distract me.”
“Oh, I don’t think you’ve got such a hard life, little girl.”
“No. I’ve hardly any sort of life at all,” she returned, almost bitterly.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“I leaned back on my pillows. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. But even though I could force my body to relax, the thoughts in my mind only chased one another more swiftly. I felt they had worn a rut in my brain with their endless circling.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“Help me!” I cried, neither to the tree woman, who stood looking down at me mercilessly, nor to Dewara, who had sent me to this doom. Rather, I shouted to the uncaring universe, a desperate plea that something would take pity on this dangling bit of life.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“I suppose I cannot blame you for doubting me. I could scarcely believe it myself at first. I found all sorts of ways to deny it and explain it away. But it wouldn’t stay gone.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing

“I perceived then that my father had already known these things, but that by asking about them in front of us, he had given Spink the opportunity to share his family’s straitened circumstances without making it seem that he sought our pity.”
― Robin Hobb, Shaman's Crossing