The Dragon Keeper Quotes

“That is true. I could not prevent what was done to me, nor can I change what people made of me. But I know what I am and have decided to continue being what I am.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“Reality is often unkind to legends.”
― Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper

“Even the homeliest girl secretly dreams that a man might fall in love with her inner spirit.”
― Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper

“Some memories are best left undisturbed. Sometimes, if you forget something, it's because it's better forgotten.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“I’ve only been sensible for a few months now, and I’m already heartily sick of it.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“It is irony, is it not, that you live so short a time, and waste so much of it being stupid?”
― Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper

“She fell silent, overcome at what humans, in their ignorance, had done.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“All that is of dragons belongs only to dragons.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“Death fed life.”
― Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper

“And I'd like to sleep!"
"Sleep, then. It's good practice for death.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“It took so little to make him happy. Her words didn't have to be kind, even, just not cruel. She tried not to wonder what his early life had been like that mere neutrality seemed like friendship to him.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“I’m sorry,” she said, and then wondered at her words. She wasn’t sorry, not at all, and yet she could not keep herself from apologizing. When had it become so ingrained in her to apologize whenever she wanted something for herself?”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“It came, he knew, from the unremembered dreams of the night before. He reached for them, but the tattered shreds became threads of cobweb in his mind’s grasp, and then were gone.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“I haven’t forgiven anything. And I don’t believe in the "us" you think I might take vengeance on. You didn’t do this to me. But even if you had, killing you would not undo it.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“Hate you?" Paragon slowly digested her words before he spoke again. He did not turn to look at her, but kept his eyes focused on the river ahead of him as the ship moved steadily against the current. "Why would I waste my time with hate? What was done to me was unforgivable of course. Completely unforgivable. Those who did it are no longer alive to be punished or to apologize. Even if they were and did, it would not undo what they did. The torments I endured cannot be undone. The stolen future cannot be given back to me,”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“She felt silence growing in her. Sometimes it reminded her of a fast-growing ivy; silence covered her and cloaked her, and she suspected that one day she would smother in the silences Hest could create. It was an effort to break through that strangling quiet, but she did it.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“Vultures and peacocks might both have feathers and beaks, but one did not confuse the two creatures.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“He wants to be the leader of the dragon keepers, so he just asks as if he is. And hopes everyone will fall into line. It's so infuriating that some of them do. The truth is no one was put in charge among us. We're all free to do our own jobs. But Greft is very good at causing discord among those who refuse to concede to him. Like Tats and Me. Usually Tats and I get along very well. Then Greft came along and he just seems to enjoy making trouble and maniupating people. Sometimes it seems if he can't force us to do what he wants he focuses on making us as miserable as possible.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“Look at her. The sun soaks right int her and shines back out of her. She’s magnificent.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“Any human who dared to attack a dragon deserved to die himself. And dead, of what use was he, unless someone ate him? She didn’t see why leaving a human to be eaten by worms was more acceptable.”
― Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper

“But you should know I’m not the sort that will short myself for the sake of being nice to someone else. For one thing, I’ve learned it’s seldom appreciated. For another, I know that my ability to hunt is based on my strength. If I weaken myself to be a nice fellow today, perhaps all of us will go hungry tomorrow if I’m too slow or distracted to kill my quarry. So I protect my own interests today, to be in a better position to help everyone tomorrow.”
― Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper

“The Paragon? Don’t look at me like that, Alise. Everyone in Bingtown knows this liveship and his reputation. He rolled and killed his entire crew, what, five times?”
― Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper

“I need to measure myself against the world. Prove that I can stand up to it and be something.”
― Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper

“Some prince of the far Six Duchies had unearthed the dragon, digging him out of an icy grave for reasons of his own, ones that did not matter to her. The black drake had not been dead after all; he had risen from his long and icy sleep and taken Tintaglia as his mate. They had flown off together to hunt and feed and mate.”
― Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper

“and Rapskal, who had attached himself to them like a tick on a monkey, added enthusiastically, “My blanket’s blue. My favorite color. How lucky is that?” “They’re all blue,” Tats replied, and Rapskal nodded again. “Like I said. I’m lucky my favorite color is blue.” Thymara tried not to roll her eyes. It was well known that some who were heavily marked by the Rain Wilds had mental problems as well. Rapskal might be a bit simple, or simply have an aggressively optimistic outlook.”
― Robin Hobb, Dragon Keeper

“One could read about addiction and still fall prey to it.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“She could scarcely bear to consider what she longed to be, not only because it was so far beyond her but because it seemed a childishly extravagant dream.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“She thought of Leftrin and tried to see him dispassionately. He was uncouth and unschooled. He told jokes at the table, and she’d seen him laugh so hard that tea spewed from his mouth, at a coarse jest from one of his sailors. He didn’t shave every day, nor wash as often as a gentleman should. The elbows of his shirts and the knees of his trousers were scuffed with work. The short nails of his wide hands were broken and rough. Where Hest was tall and lean and elegant, Leftrin was perhaps an inch taller than she was, wide shouldered and thick bodied. Her female friends in Bingtown would turn aside if a man like that spoke to them on the street.
Then she thought of his gray eyes, gray as the river he loved, and her heart melted. She thought of the ruddy tops of his unshaven cheeks, and how his lips seemed redder and fuller than Hest’s sophisticated smile. She longed to kiss that mouth, to feel those calloused hands clasp her close. She missed sleeping in his bunk, missed the smell of him in the room and on the bedding. She wanted him as she’d never wanted anything or anyone before. At the thought of him, her body warmed even as tears filled her eyes.
She sat up straight and dashed the useless water from her eyes. “Take what you can have, for the short time you can have it,” she counseled herself sternly.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“Last night, when he had been showing her how to refasten the bowline, she had feigned incompetence at the simple knot. It was a schoolgirl’s trick, but the poor, honest man had been completely deceived. He’d stood behind her, with her in the circle of his arms and take her hands to guide them through the easy motions. Heat had flushed through her, and her knees had actually trembled at his closeness. A wave of dizziness had washed through her; she had wanted to collapse on the deck and pull him down on top of her. She’d gone still in his loose embrace, praying to every god she’d ever heard of that he would know what she so hotly desired and act on it. This, this was what she was supposed to feel about the man she was joined to, and had never felt at all!
“Do you understand it now?” he’d asked her huskily. His hands on hers pulled the knot firm.
“I do,” she’d replied. “I understand it completely now.” She hadn’t been speaking of knots at all. She’d dared herself to take half a step backward and press her body to his. She dared herself to turn in the circle of his arms and look up into his whiskery beloved face. Cowardice paralyzed her. She could not even form words. For a time that was infinitely brief and forever, he stood there, enclosing her in a warm, safe place. All around her, the night sounds of the Rain Wilds made a soft music of water and bird and insect calls. She could smell him, a male musky smell, “sweaty” as Sedric would have mocked it, but incredibly masculine and attractive to her. Enclosed by his embrace, she felt a part of his world. The deck under her feet, the railing of the ship, the night sky above her, and the man at her back connected her to something big and wonderful, something that was untamed and yet home to her.
Then he had dropped his arms and stepped back from her. The night was warm and muggy, the insects chirred and buzzed, and she heard the night call of a gnat-chaser. But it had all seemed separate from her then. Last night, as now, she knew herself for the mousy, scholarly little Bingtown woman she undoubtedly was. She’d sold herself to Hest, prostituted out her ability to bear a child for the security and position that he had offered. She’d made the deal and signed on it. A Trader was only as good as his word, so the saying went. She’d given her word. What was it worth?
Even if she took it back now, even if she broke it faithlessly, she’d still be a mousy, little Bingtown woman, not what she longed to be. She could scarcely bear to consider what she longed to be, not only because it was so far beyond her but because it seemed a childishly extravagant dream. In the dark circle of her arms, she closed her eyes and thought of Althea, wife to the captain of the Paragon. She’d seen that woman dashing about the deck barefoot, wearing loose trousers like a man. She’d seen her standing by her ship’s figurehead, the wind stirring her hair and a smile curving her lips as she exchanged some sort of jest with the ship’s boy. And then Captain Trell had bounded up the short ladder to the foredeck to join them there. She and the captain had moved without even looking at each other, like a needle drawn to a magnet, their arms lifting as if they were the halves of the god Sa becoming whole again. She’d thought her heart would break with envy.
What would it be like, she wondered, to have a man who had to embrace you when he saw you, even if you’d just risen from a shared bed a few hours earlier? She tried to imagine herself as free as that Althea woman, running barefoot on the decks of the Tarman. ”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper

“The very concept that dragons can recall their previous lives is so hard for humans to grasp. I should so dearly love to listen to whatever you wished to tell me, and to make a complete record of all you recall. Such conversations alone would make a journey worthwhile! Oh, please, say that you will!”
A taut quiet followed her words. “Alise,” Sedric said warningly, “I think you should come away from the railing.”
But she clung there, even though she, too, could feel the wave of uneasiness that swept through the ship. The smoothness went out of the sailing; the deck under her feet shifted subtly. Surely it was her imagination that the wind flowed more chill than it had? Paragon spoke into the roaring silence. “I choose not to remember,” he said. Alise felt as if his words broke a spell. Sound and life came suddenly back to the world. It included the sudden thud of feet on the deck behind her. A woman’s voice said, without preamble, “I fear you’re upsetting my ship. I’ll have to ask you to leave the foredeck.”
“She’s not upsetting me, Althea,” Paragon interjected as Alise turned to see the captain’s wife advancing on her. Alise had met her when they embarked and had spoken with her several times, but still did not feel at ease with her. She was a small woman who wore her hair in a long black pigtail down her back. She dressed in sailor’s garb; it was well tailored and of quality fabric, but for all that, she was a woman in trousers and a jacket. Less feminine garb Alise could not imagine, and yet the very inappropriateness of it seemed to emphasize her female form. Her eyes were very dark, and right now they sparked with either anger or fear. Alise retreated a step and put her hand on Sedric’s arm. For his part, he turned his body so that he stood almost between them and said, “I’m sure the lady meant no harm. The ship asked us to come up and speak with him.”
“That I did,” Paragon confirmed. He twisted to look over his shoulder at all of them. “No harm done, Althea, I assure you. We were speaking of dragons, and quite naturally, she asked me what I recalled of being one. I told her that I chose to recall nothing at all.”
“Oh, Ship,” the woman said, and Alise felt as if she had disappeared. Althea Trell did not even glance at her as she moved forward to take Alise’s place at the bow. She leaned on the railing and stared far ahead up the river as if sharing the ship’s thoughts.
“Par’gon!” A child’s voice piped up suddenly behind them. Alise turned to watch a small boy of three or four clambering onto the raised foredeck. He was bare armed and bare legged and baked dark by the sun. He scampered forward, dropped to his hands and knees, and thrust his head out under the ship’s railing. Alise gasped, expecting him to pitch overboard at any moment. Instead he demanded the ship’s attention with a strident, “Par’gon? You awright?” His babyish voice was full of concern.
The ship swung his head around to stare at the child. His mouth puckered oddly and then suddenly he smiled, an expression that transformed his face. “I’m fine.”
“Catch me!” the boy commanded, and before his mother could even turn to him, he launched himself into the figurehead’s waiting hands. “Fly me!” the imp commanded the ship. “Fly me like a dragon!”
And without a word, the ship obeyed him. He cupped the child in his two immense hands and lifted him high and forward. The boy leaned fearlessly against the ship’s laced fingers and spread his small arms wide as if they were wings. The figurehead gently wove his hands through the air, swaying the youngster from left to right. A squeal of glee drifted back to them. Abruptly the charge of tension in the air vanished. Alise wondered if Paragon even recalled they were there.
“Let’s leave them shall we?” Althea suggested quietly.
“Is it safe for the child?” Sedric objected in horror.
“It’s the safest place the boy can possibly be,” Althea replied with certainty. “And for the ship, it’s the best place, too.”
― Robin Hobb, The Dragon Keeper