Quotes from Bernard Cornwell

Thirty paces, twenty, and you can see the eyes of the men who will try to kill you, and see the spear-blades, and the instinct is to stop, to straighten the shields. We cringe from battle, fear claws at us, time seems to stop, there is silence though a thousand men shout, and at that moment, when terror savages the heart like a trapped beast, you must hurl yourself into the horror. Because the enemy feels the same. And you have come to kill him. You are the beast from his nightmares.

It is a terrible thing," Beocca said to me. "War, it is an awful thing." I said nothing. I thought it was glorious and wonderful. "The shield wall is where men die," Beocca said, and he kissed the wooden cross that hung about his neck. "The gates of heaven and hell will be jostling with souls before this day is done," he went on gloomily.

I was doing everything wrong. I was confused. Confusion is inevitable in battle, but indecision is unforgivable, and I had hesitated to make any decision and then made all the wrong ones.

Mas o que é que você faria com o Graal? — Eu iria usá-lo. — Para quê? — Para livrar o mundo do pecado. — Seria um trabalho notável, mas nem Cristo conseguiu realizá-lo. — Você pára de eliminar ervas daninhas entre os vinhedos só porque elas sempre voltam a nascer?

So I woke, I listened, and I heard the small sounds of a wood at night, the things moving, the claws in the dead leaves, the wind's soft sighs.

My name is Uhtred. I am the son of Uhtred, who was the son of Uhtred and his father was also called Uhtred.

We live by oaths and we can die by them. To give an oath is to harness a life to a promise, and to break an oath is to tempt the punishment of the gods.

A vida é uma brincadeira dos deuses e não existe justiça. Você precisa aprender a rir ou então vai simplesmente chorar até morrer.

Tomorrow, he shouted, you do not fight for me! I fight for you! I fight for Wessex! I fight for your wives, for your children and your homes! Tomorrow we fight and, I swear to you on my father's grave and on my children's lives, tomorrow we shall win!

Seven kings will die, she had said, seven kings and the women you love. And Alfred's son will not rule and Wessex will die and the Saxon will kill what he loves and the Danes will gain everything, and all will change and all will be the same.

Wyrd bið ful ?ræd.

Everyone looks old to the young," Ravn said.

Yule is supposed to be a celebration and a consolation, a moment of warm brightness in the heart of winter, a time to eat because you know that the lean times are coming when food will be scarce and ice locks the land, and a time to be happy and get drunk and behave irresponsibly and wake up the next morning wondering if you will ever feel well again, but the West Saxons handed the feast to the priests who made it as joyous as a funeral.

And I looked,' Pyrlig said to me, 'and I saw a pale horse, and the rider's name was death.' I just stared in amazement. 'It's in the gospel book,' he explained sheepishly, 'and it just cam to mind.

My son smiled. "You taught me well, Father." "What did I teach you?" "That a spear-point in a prisoner's liver is a very persuasive thing.

I will never understand Christians. I have seen men and women whip themselves till their backs were nothing but strips of flesh hanging from exposed ribs, watched pilgrims limp on bleeding broken feet to worship the tooth of the whale that swallowed Jonah, and seen a man hammer nails through his own feet. What god wants such nonsense? And why prefer a god who wants you to torture yourself instead of worshipping Eostre who wants you to take a girl into the woods and make babies?

Passion, Baird reckoned, was what would take men across the river and up the breach. Damn scientific soldiering now. The science of siege warfare had opened the city, but only a screaming and insane passion would take men inside.

A battle in the shield wall. It's smelling your enemy's breath while he tries to disembowel you with an axe, it's blood and shit and screams and pain and terror. It's trampling in your friends' guts as enemies butcher them. It's men clenching their teeth so hard they shatter them. Have you ever been in a battle?

Except we were there, and I was in a vengeful mood. My cousin was still in Bebbanburg. Æthelhelm was trying to destroy my daughter and her husband. Constantin had humiliated me by driving me from my ancestral land. I had not seen Eadith, my wife, in a month. So someone had to suffer.

Am I to deny Mark justice because he is old and gross and ugly? Do youth and beauty deserve perverted justice? What have I fought for all these years, if not to make certain that justice is even-handed?

Hengall the Warrior hated war. The business of life, he liked to say, is to plant grain, not blades.

I have kept the faith, Planchard. -Then you are the only man who has Planchard said, and it is an heretical faith. -They crucified Christ for heresy Vexille said, so to be named a heretic is to be one with Him.

When a man cannot fight he would curse. The gods like to feel needed.

Together we would make reputation, we would have men in halls across Britain telling the story of our exploit. Or of our deaths. They were friends, they were oath-men, they were young, they were warriors, and with such men it might be possible to storm the gates of Asgard itself.