Quotes from Bernard Cornwell

It was while he was on the tower that Robbie came to the rampart beneath. 'I want you to look at this,' Robbie called up to him, and flourished a newly painted shield. 'You like it?' Thomas peered down and, in the moonlight, saw something red. 'What is it?' he asked. 'A blood smear?' 'You blind English bastard,' Robbie said, 'it's the red heart of Douglas!' 'Ah. From up here it looks like something died on the shield.

I'm getting old, I said again, and that was true. I had lived more than fifty years and most men were lucky to see forty. Yet all old age was bringing was the death of dreams.

Choose your battles," I snarled at Æthelstan. "That space between your ears was given so that you can think! If you just charge whenever you see an enemy you'll earn yourself an early grave.

Defend what's left. You can have fifty men." "Fifty! That's not enough..." "Forty," I snarled, "and if you lose the fort I'll cut your kidneys out and eat them." We were at war.

I once asked a bishop whether there were any women in heaven. 'Of course there are, my lord,' he answered, happy that I was taking an interest in doctrine, 'many of the most blessed saints are women.' 'I mean women we can hump, bishop.' He said he would pray for me. Perhaps he did.

Just what do you plan to do, Sharpe? the Lieutenant asked. Don't know, sir. Won't know till we get there. You're going to the mine? Aye, sir. There'll be guards. Like as not. And only two of us. I can count, sir. Sharpe grinned. It's reading I find hard. But my letters are coming on, aren't they?

They laughed, but I was melancholy. The remnants of Rome always make me sad, simply because they are proof that we slide inexorably towards the darkness. Once there was light falling on marbled magnificence, and now we trudge through mud. Wyrd bið ful ?ræd. We

Language is now my trade, boy, because I have become a skald.' 'A skald?' 'A scop, you would call me. A poet, a weaver of dreams, a man who makes glory from nothing and dazzles you with its making. And my job now is to tell this day's tale in such a way that men will never forget our great deeds.

But we do not choose our deaths. The Norns do that at the foot of Yggdrasil and I imagined one of those three Fates holding the shears above my thread. She was ready to cut, and all that mattered now was to keep tight hold of my sword so that the winged women would take me to Valhalla's feasting-hall.

You know why farts smell?" "I don't." "So the deaf can enjoy them too.

No man wanted to face warriors like Finan in battle.

Assim que você escreve alguma coisa ela se torna fixa. Vira dogma. As pessoas passam a discutir a respeito, ficam autoritárias, referem-se aos textos, produzem manuscritos, discutem mais e logo estão matando umas às outras. Se você nunca escreve nada, ninguém sabe exatamente o que disse, de modo que sempre pode mudar.

Anything that comes from the north is bad news.

I forget your name, I said. Most people spew shit from their arse, he retorted, you manage it with your mouth. Your mother gave birth through her arse, I said, and you still reek of her shit.

Ensign Fitzgerald had somehow managed to get himself a jewelled sabre that he was now flashing around like a shilling whore given a guinea fan.

Besides, as I have never tired of telling my Christian followers, we pagans rarely persecute Christians. We believe there are many gods, so we accept another man's religion as his own affair, while Christians, who perversely insist that there is only one god, think it their duty to kill, maim, enslave, or revile anyone who disagrees.

Skin the colour of chestnuts

The Holy Grail, the most precious of all Christ's bequests to man, lost these thousand years and more, and he could see it glowing in the sky like shining blood and about it, bright as the glittering crown of a saint, rays of dazzling shimmer filled the heaven. Thomas

A man without honour has no reputation

We were the wolf pack, we were the killers of Britain, we had fought from the south coast of Wessex to the northern wilds, from the ocean to the sea, and we had never been beaten, and these men knew it.

God offers his protection to sinners," Ceolnoth said unctuously. "Especially to sinners," Ceolberht said. "I'll remember that," I said, "when I've finished sinning.

La gente non rinuncia alle proprie speranze, solo perché è delusa, Derfel; semmai vi si aggrappa con un'intensità ancora maggiore. Siamo davvero degli sciocchi.

Ti amava - protestai. Lei mi fissò. Pensavo che stesse per esplodere, ma si limitò a sorridere e a scuotere la testa. - Mi venerava, Derfel - disse in tono stanco - e non è la stessa cosa che essere amata. Si lasciò cadere su uno sgabello, accanto alla cassapanca di legno. - Essere venerata, Derfel, è una cosa che stanca, a lungo andare.

And on my conscience, he said, I will for ever bear the weight of all those men who died in a hopeless cause. Two thousand against five thousand? How can 1 justify leading so few against so many? You know how. So I can be king? So that we are not slaves in our own land, I said.