Like a flower pressed flat and dried, we try to hold it still and say, this is exactly how it was the day I first saw it. But like the flower, the past cannot be trapped that way. It loses its fragrance and and its vitality, its fragility becomes brittleness and its colors fade. And when next you look on the flower, you know that it is not at all what you sought to capture, that that moment has fled forever.
attempt capture change fade fled flower history hold-on past preserve reality remember time write writing
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About This Quote

About Robin Hobb

Robin Hobb was a contemporary American fiction writer. Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, known by her pen names Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm, is an American writer of speculative fiction. As Hobb, she is best known for her fantasy novels set in the Realm of the Elderlings, which comprise the Farseer, Liveship Traders and Tawny Man trilogies, the Rain Wild Chronicles, and the Fitz and the Fool trilogy. Read more on Wikipedia →

Themes

  • Change — Embracing transformation, growth, and new beginnings
  • History — Lessons from the past and the arc of human civilisation
  • Time — Reflections on the passage of time and how we spend it

More quotes by Robin Hobb

“The second thing you have to do to be a writer is to keep on writing. Don't listen to people who tell you that very few people get published and you won't be one of them. Don't listen to your frien...”
— Robin Hobb
inspirational writing

“It is the nature of human that we tend to pass our pain along. As if we could get rid of it by inflicting an equal hurt on someone else.”
— Robin Hobb
emotion pain sharing

“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.”
— Robin Hobb
truth

“A woman of many talents. And intelligent, too. He'd probably have to kill her soon.”
— Robin Hobb
women

“Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change is what makes life interesting.”
— Robin Hobb
change life

“Fool, there is no sense in trying to play that game with the past. Here is where we are today, and we can only make our moves from here.”
— Robin Hobb
fool future move past
View all quotes by Robin Hobb →

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“It is said that men condemned to death are subject to sudden moments of elation; as if, like moths in the fire, their destruction were coincidental with attainment.”
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capture death

“once sailed neither the ship nor the shore ever remains the same again.”
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change inspirational inspirational-quotes life-lessons

“We are not trapped or locked up in these bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”
— Walter Mosley, Blue Light
change growth love

“One day spent with someone you love can change everything.”
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change love time