Quotes from Conn Iggulden

A power is seductive

For a moment, he almost wished Jochi alive so he could tell him how different things were, how his world had grown larger that the small inheritance they had fought over. The horizons were wide enough for them all, he realized now, but the wisdom of age is bitter when those you have failed have gone.

had happened and to assure the man his niece was unhurt. As Salisbury imagined Cromwell's reaction, he growled softly, shaking his head like a series of twitches, each one a bitter child of the shame spilling through him. He could feel the eyes of his wife and son on his back as he led the battered soldiers

but what good is thousands of years of art if you can't defend yourself?

Goats can be milked many times, but killed only once

Sometimes, whether a man lived or died was down to luck. He did not know if that realization made him value his own life more or less. If death could come because you chose the wrong door leading out into the sun, perhaps there was no sense to any of it - just the fifth horseman. He shrugged, putting such thoughts aside.

it is a truth of historical fiction that all the characters are long dead; all the lives and stories have ended, and usually not well.