Quotes from Ruth Downie

Now, tell me. Where did you get that?" He glanced down in the direction of her accusing stare. "Oh, that! Somebody lent it to me." He was wearing it specially. A winged penis. To meet his wife's people. She would never understand Romans.

Ruso's working space contained three shelves, a collection of unmatched stools and chairs, an examination table by the window, and a desk whose migratory tendencies had been curbed by a previous incumbent with a hammer and several large nails.

Life is short, Hades is long. As Agathon says, you can't change the past, and as Aristotle says—paraphrasing—things are as they are, it's how we deal with them that counts.

wriggled to avoid the lump that always seemed directly under

Back in Britannia he had placed Tilla on a list of potentially treacherous natives, and even though he was probably right, Ruso had never forgiven him.

You can't do anything with a man whose mind is gone.

Sparrows and pigeons and a blackbird were celebrating the morning in the courtyard.

hung around in the air like a wife waiting for you to notice she was sulking.

regarding the sacrifice] It was all very professionally done, even to a man whose religion consisted mostly of half formed and unanswered questions, it was strangely reassuring.

There's no good in moping girl, there's work to be done... Have you forgotten, nobody likes a person who feels sorry for herself.

Do you know what emperors do, Tilla?' That was easy. 'Send soldiers to steal the land and make us pay taxes.' 'They spend half their waking hours listening to people who want things. As, it seems, do gods. Maybe it wasn't as much of a transition as everyone thought.

If one person tells a lie and ten people hear it and pass it on, does it make it true?

Ruso, perched on the edge of Gnostus's operating table, looked the stringy youth up and down and wondered if young men were getting stupider or whether he had been just as much of a fool at that age.

He tried the diversion of reciting all the bones in the body, working down the left side, down to the toes and then back up. Each toe and finger separately, just to waste time. He lost his place somewhere on the right hand.

It struck her how often men made conversation by telling you things they thought you ought to know. Which was sometimes useful, except they rarely stopped to find out how much you knew already and sometimes they expected you to listen with wonder to total nonsense.

They had run out of words.... Then he and the Lamp were gone.... Ruse swallowed hard and then began counting bones again in the dark. Then when he reached the right elbow he stopped, and started counting suspects.

And leave me alone when I tell ya to. I will have things to do that are private. I cannot always have you trailing around with me like a strand of goose grass.

One of the many difficult things about women was that they tended to pick the most unsuitable times to tell you something they considered to be important, and then became irrationally upset when you failed to remember it.

I seem to remember sitting on a golden bench, and she started chattering about the sunset, or something. She seemed quite happy so I let her get on with it. Then she got hold of my hand and asked me what I was thinking about. So I said, "The treatment of anal fistulae".

Back from where? you're not going out again and leaving me here are you?? Holy Hercules I sound like somebody's wife

What color is time? Where do the thoughts of the dead go? How is it diseases spread but miracles don't? Have you ever thought of that?

Quid nomen tibi est? She was not about to offer her name up to a stranger. It was almost the only thing she possessed that nobody had stolen.

But what if--- Most of what if never happens.

There were many things a man might think he should be told when a woman agreed to marry him. She had choose not to mention several of them