Assassin’s Apprentice: Robin Hobb: Book 1

When you spring to an idea, and decide it is true, without evidence, you blind yourself to other possibilities.

Don't do what you can't undo, until you've considered what you can't do once you've done it.

Learning is never wrong. Even learning how to kill isn't wrong. Or right. It's just a thing to learn, a thing I can teach you. That's all.

If all I had ever done was to be born and discovered, I would have left a mark across all the land for all time. I grew up fatherless and motherless in a court where all recognized me as a catalyst. And a catalyst I became.

My life has been a web of secrets, secrets that even now are unsafe to share. Shall I set them all down on fine paper, only to create from them flame and ash? Perhaps.

Very little worth knowing is taught by fear. It's a poor teacher who tries to instruct by blows and threats.