Quotes from Karen Maitland

The present is all you can truly know of any man, and even of that you can glimpse only a fragment, however long you remain in his company.

They say despair is a terrible thing, but hope is worse: it keeps you shackled for ever, like a dog in a wheel, always running, but never able to go anywhere, save round and round.

Now, if we were lucky, no one would ever know they were lying down to sleep on top of a corpse. Perhaps we sleep on corpses every night do not know it.

The marsh-boy had borrowed a longer craft than his own light coracle, and despite the chill night his fingers were sweaty as he passed Raffe the rope. His evidently not helped him to scull the boat. But as Raffe passenger had grasped the priest's cold hand to pull him ashore, he realized that he would have been more a hindrance than help, for such soft delicate little fingers as these would have blistered before he'd made half a dozen strokes.

Gytha knew that affair was as doomed as a salmon and the swallow who fell in love

He] bowed his head, crossing himself, and so fervently did he pray that he almost missed the sound of the footsteps crossing the courtyard. But a man who has watched through many a long night waiting for that slight intake of breath that in the assassin makes before he sticks the dagger your back or slices his knife across your throat, can never again give himself over to prayer or sleep or even love-making without his sixth sense remaining ever watchful.

Why can't we call that hour back, unsay what should not have been said, turn right instead of left, stay instead of running away? But time will not come again and everything has changed because of it. The flight of an arrow is quicker than a breath, yet it takes a man from this world for eternity.

The bushes parted and a man stepped out. Gytha could see at once this was no charcoal burner. His fine red leather gloves and boots were not fashioned by any cordwainer in these parts. Nor was he a man who needed to hunt to fill his family's hungry bellies, for the flash from the gold thread on the trim of his tunic was enough to alert any quarry for miles around.

He was a good-looking man, but then rogues usually are

I had never felt so alone. I was in the deadlands, the limbo where souls wander nameless and formless, unable to speak or to touch. And in that blind silence I knew it was not the nature of death that frightened me; it was what lay beyond, not Heaven, not Hell, but spirit without a form, without a place to be. I would be nowhere. I would be nothing. [Chapter 26]

The skin on his palm was thicker than the hide on a man's heel, but across it and between the fingers were deep raw cracks from the cold and the salt which would never heal, not until he settled ashore. And that was not likely to be anytime soon, for when a man's got salt water in his blood and a sea wind in his lungs, neither wife nor land can keep him from the waves.

the flames of a fire are not made less painful by the knowledge that others are burning with you.

When a murderer their victim's corpse the wounds open and bleed again to show everyone who the murderer is. That means that one of you must have murdered him, doesn't it?

But, then again, the actions of the most insignificant men or women can be as a single raindrop that rolls a pebble that dislodges a clod that tumbles a rock and, before you know it, the whole mountainside has crashed down, sweeping palaces and pigsties, princes and paupers into the sea. So maybe there are demons at work, even in the smallest mischief

Most spells only have power in this life, but a mandrake's born at the same instant a man dies. That means its curse can follow you through the gates of death itself and into the life beyond. I'd not go against it, not for a whole kingdom and and every lusty man in it.

No sense fretting over a fox among the lambs, when there's a wolf on the prowl. And this wolf is a savage one.

For the passage time cannot undo the crime of murder, since the victim is gone of from mortal reach and has no tongue or sign to forgive the one who wronged him.

I would not betray a priest, but if you will not act as a priest should, if your miserable little skin is worth more to you than another man's immortal soul, then you have aban doned your vows and you are no priest

The hand of a man hanged on the gallows has healing powers. If it be stroked across a sore, tumour or goitre, the evil shall pass to the dead man and the sick will be cured. If a woman be barren she should go to a gibbet at night, climb up and reach through the bars and draw the corpse's hand across her womb three or seven times and her curse will leave her. Lincoln

A witch cannot die until her familiars or imps are dead. If a witch desires to put an end to her suffering she must call each familiar by name and order it to die. Then, when the last is dead, she too will die. Greetwell Edward

When a murderer touches their victim's corpse the wounds open and bleed again to show everyone who the murderer is. That means that one of you must have murdered him, doesn't it?

Cygnus was to remain with the wagon to guard it, though Zophiel protested that allowing a one-armed man to guard anything was like putting a leash on a rabbit and expecting it to hunt boar.

A child's fingernails should never be cut in the first year. The mother must bite them off or he'll become a thief. But when they are first cut at a year old, they must be buried under an ash tree so that witches can't take them and cause the child harm. Lincoln

The old woman cocked her head on one side. 'You wouldn't let me starve.' 'Wouldn't I?' 'I could put a hex on you that you'd never undo,' the old woman raged. I could bring a cooked fish alive in your throat even as you swallow it to choke you to death. You still don't know the half of what I know, girl, and you never will. You don't have the skill or patience to master it. Haven't had to learn it to survive, not like me, and that's your trouble.