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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Grief is a process of adjusting to loss rather than simply waiting for the pain to go away.
In this quote, Robin Hobb reflects on the nature of grief, comparing it to a wound that, while it may heal, still requires time and patience to truly come to terms with. She emphasizes that losing someone leads not only to immediate pain but also to a prolonged period of numbness where one must learn to live with that loss, indicating that the journey of grief involves not just enduring the hurt, but also adapting to a new reality without the loved one.
Themes
GriefLossBereavementHealingAdjustment
In practice
Example use cases
In a memorial speech to honor someone who has passed away.
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
I wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound.
Robin HobbRead
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