Bea

“Love is more than bedding, boy. If love doesn't come first and linger after, if love can't wait and endure disappointment and separation, then it's not love. Love doesn't require bedding to make it true. It doesn't even demand day-to-day contact. I know this because I have known love, many kinds of love, and amongst them, I've know what I felt for you.”
― Robin Hobb, Golden Fool

“Havia achado, sempre, que morrer de amor não era outra coisa além de licença poética. Naquela tarde, de regresso para casa, outra vez, sem o gato e sem ela, comprovei que não apenas era possível, mas que eu mesmo, velho e sem ninguém, estava morrendo de amor. E também percebi que era válida a verdade contrária: não trocaria por nada neste mundo as delícias de meu desassossego.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores

“I promise you, I won't let you die."
"Make me no promises that can break us both, Fitz.”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Fate

“This is their custom regarding marriage: it is binding only so long as the woman wishes to be bound by it. The woman chooses the man, although the man may court a woman he finds desirable, with gifts and deeds of war done in her honor. If an Outislander woman accepts a man’s courtship, it does not mean she has bound herself to him, only that she may welcome him into her bed. Their dalliances may last a week, a year, or a lifetime. It is entirely of the woman’s choosing. All things that are kept under a roof belong to the woman, as does all that comes from the earth which her mothershouse claims. Her children belong to her clan, and are commonly disciplined and taught by her brothers and uncles rather than by their father. While the man lives on her land or in her mothershouse, his labor is hers to command. All in all, it baffles this traveler why a man would willingly submit to such a minor role, but Outislanders seem likewise baffled by our arrangements, asking me sometimes, “Why do your women willingly leave the wealth of their own families to become servants in a man’s home?”
― Robin Hobb, Fool's Fate