Fantasy is my genre and my home in the writing world. I consider it the biggest writing room in all literature, where there are literally no boundaries at all.
Robin HobbRead
It was hard to reconcile the drumbeats and lifted voices in the night with my memories of flames and the screams of dying men. How could humanity range so effortlessly from the sublime to the savage and back again?
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the duality of human nature, highlighting the contrast between beauty and brutality.
In this quote, Robin Hobb explores the inherent contradictions within humanity, illustrating how people can experience profound beauty and joy while simultaneously being capable of violence and suffering. This reflection invites deeper contemplation about the complexities of human existence, suggesting that the capacity for both the sublime and the savage resides within us and that we frequently oscillate between these extremes.
Themes
HumanityDualitySublimeSavageContrastNature
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the complexities of human behavior.
More from Robin Hobb
All quotes →As I apologized to her a flicker of panic raced through me and then faded away. There wasn't enough life left in me to panic. I'd made a mistake and I was dying. Apparently not even a Speck afterlife was available to me. I'd simply stop being. Apparently I hadn't died correctly. Oops.
Robin HobbRead
That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.
Robin HobbRead
Start writing sooner. Don't wait for permission. Don't hesitate.
Robin HobbRead
I healed. Not completely. A scar is never the same as good flesh, but it stops the bleeding.
Robin HobbRead
If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate berevement, both the Prince and I passed into the gray days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it.
Robin HobbRead
Similar quotes
The blessed spirits must be sought within the self which is common to all
William Butler YeatsRead
And now I was lonelier, I supposed, than anyone else in the world. Even Defoe's creation, Robinson Crusoe, the prototype of the ideal solitary, could hope to meet another human being. Crusoe cheered himself by thinking that such a thing could happen any day, and it kept him going. But if any of the people now around me came near I would need to run for it and hide in mortal terror. I had to be alone, entirely alone, if I wanted to live.
Wladyslaw SzpilmanRead
If the believers in liberty wish the principles of liberty taught, let them never intrust that instruction to any government; for the nature of government is to become a thing apart, an institution existing for its own sake, preying upon the people, and teaching whatever will tend to keep it secure in its seat.
Voltairine De CleyreRead
A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?
Stephen HawkingRead
How could so many intelligent people be so grievously wrong for such an extended period of time? How could they ignore so much overwhelming evidence that contradicted their most basic theories? These questions, too, deserve their own discipline: the sociology of error.
Steven JohnsonRead
When you are fully present, you are truly living; the rest of the time, you are merely existing
Sri Sri Ravi ShankarRead