Quotes from Bernard Cornwell

If the Danes are outnumbered," my father told me that night, "they won't fight. They're like dogs, the Danes. Cowards at heart, but they're given courage by being in a pack.

At sea, sometimes, if you take a ship too far from land and the wind rises and the tide sucks with a venomous force and the waves splinter white above the shield-pegs, you have no choice but to go where the gods will.

They're the sort of dozy bastards who don't think beyond their next pot of ale, but Thomas does, Thomas is a two-pot thinker, he is.

O orgulho faz o homem, impulsiona-o, é a parede de escudos ao redor de sua reputação, e os dinamarqueses entendiam isso. Os homens morrem, diziam eles, mas a reputação não.

There are seasons of our lives when nothing seems to be happening, when no smoke betrays a burned town or homestead and few tears are shed for the newly dead. I have learned not to trust those times, because if the world is at peace then it means someone is planning war. Spring

Anger leads to savagery,' I said curtly, 'and to stupidity.

You never, ever, tell others of your crimes, not unless they are so big as to be incapable of concealment, and then you describe them as policy or statecraft.

Cowardice is always with us, and bravery, the thing that provokes the poets to make their songs about us, is merely the will to overcome the fear.

I was just twenty-one and my name was known wherever men sharpened swords. I was a warrior. A sword warrior, and I was proud of it.

The gods are not kind to us, any more than children are kind to their toys. We are here to amuse the gods, and at times it amuses them to be unkind.

The crews of the Viking ships are Danish, Norse, Frisian, and Saxon.

How anyone could endure three or four hours of chanting monks and ranting priests was beyond my understanding, just as it was beyond my understanding to know why bishops needed thrones. They would be demanding crowns next.

There are times, Leofric grumbled, when you are an earsling. An earsling was something that had dropped out of a creature's backside and was one of Leofric's favourite insults. We were friends.

Tell Ragnall," I told him, "that the Saxons of Mercia are coming. Tell him that his dead will number in the thousands. Tell him that his own death is just days away. Tell him that promise comes from Uhtred of Bebbanburg.

The monks had murdered Danes and Ragnar had punished them, though these days the story is always told that the monks were innocently at prayer and died as spotless martyrs. In truth they were malevolent killers of women and children, but what chance does truth have when priests tell tales?

I recalled that a man named Judas had betrayed the nailed god. That never made any sense to me. The god had to be nailed to a cross if he was to become their savior, and then the Christians blame the man who made that death possible. I thought they should worship him as a saint, but instead they revile him as a betrayer.

Amavo moltissimo la mia Ceinwyn. Anche ora, dopo anni, sorrido quando la penso; a volte, di notte, mi sveglio con le lacrime agli occhi e so di averle versate per lei. Il nostro amore era nato in una vampata di passione e i saggi dicono che simili passioni si spengono sempre, ma la nostra non se era spenta: si era mutata in un amore intenso e duraturo.

I am Uhtred, son of Uhtred, who was the son of Uhtred, and his father was also called Uhtred, and they were all lords of Bebbanburg. I am that too, though these days folk call me the Lord of the North. My lands stretch from the wind-beaten North Sea to the shores facing Ireland and, though I am old, my task is to stop the Scots coming south into the land we have learned to call Englaland

Because I'm tired of Wessex," I said, "tired of priests, tired of being told what your god's will is, tired of being told that I'm a sinner, tired of your endless damned nonsense, tired of that nailed tyrant you call god who only wants us to be miserable. And I refused to give the oath because my ambition is to go back north, to Bebbanburg, and to kill the men who hold it, and I cannot do that if I am sworn to Edward and he wants something different of me.

Of the stupidity of men there seems no end.

I wanted to see a pattern in the strands of life. In the end I found one, and it had nothing to do with any god, but with people. With the people we love.

So a good man can be a bad Christian? I suppose so. Then a bad man, I said, can be a good Christian?

I sometimes think,' Merlin said when no more suggestions were offered, 'that I am doomed to live among idiots.

In other words," she said tartly, "women are supposed to do all that a man can't do. And right now it seems men can't fight, so I'd better do that too.