QuoteProject
The challenge is always to find the good place to end the book. The rule I follow with myself is that every book should end where the next book would logically begin. I know that some readers wish that literally all of the threads would be neatly tied off and snipped, but life just doesn't work that way.
Robin Hobb
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Life is unpredictable, and endings aren't always tidy.

In this quote, Robin Hobb reflects on the complexity of narratives, both in literature and in life. She suggests that a satisfying conclusion often sets the stage for new beginnings, indicating that not every loose end needs to be resolved as life is filled with ongoing stories and new challenges that arise after one chapter closes.

Themes

EndingsBeginningsNarrativeLifeBooksStories

In practice

Example use cases

Using this quote during a discussion on storytelling in literature classes.

More from Robin Hobb

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
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

As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing.
Haruki MurakamiRead
If you go through life, and you don't find the beauty in an unexpected place, then you really have a sad existence.
Octavia SpencerRead
He has spent his life best who has enjoyed it most. God will take care that we do not enjoy it any more than is good for us.
Samuel ButlerRead
Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors.
Hunter S. ThompsonRead
The trick is growing up without growing old.
Casey StengelRead
The world of the terminally ill is the world of neither the living nor the dead. I have watched others since I watched my father, and always with a sense of their strangeness. They sit and speak, and are spoken to, and listen, and even smile, but in spirit they have already moved away from us and there is no way we can enter their shadowy no-man’s-land.
P. D. JamesRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.