Quotes from Bernard Cornwell

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.

What happens to you, Uhtred, is what you make happen. You will grow, you will learn the sword, you will learn the way of the shield wall, you will learn the oar, you will give honor to the gods, and then you will use what you have learned to make your life good or bad.

There is such joy in chaos. Stow all the world's evils behind a door and tell men that they must never, ever, open the door, and it will be opened because there is pure joy in destruction.

He tolerated his fellow Englishmen, but the Welsh were cabbage-farting dwarves, the Scots were scabby arse-suckers, and the French were shriveled turds.

Why do we fight?" he asked. "Because we were born.

Life is simple," I said. "Ale, women, sword, and reputation. Nothing else matters.

We are all lonely and all seek a hand to hold in the darkness. It is not the harp, but the hand that plays it.

Laughter in battle. That was what Ragnar had taught me, to take joy from the fight.

Words are like breath," she said, "you say them and they're gone. But writing traps them.

Five things make a man happy," I told him, "a good ship, a good sword, a good hound, a good horse, and a woman." "Not a good woman?" Finan asked, amused. "They're all good," I said, "except when they're not, and then they're better than good.

All those separate people were a part of my life, strings strung on the frame of Uhtred, and though they were separate they affected one another and together they would make the music of my life.

I hated Alfred. He was a miserable, pious, tight-fisted king who distrusted me because I was no Christian, because I was a northerner, and because I had given him his kingdom back at Ethandun. And as reward he had given me Fifhaden. Bastard.

At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.

Book tours and research provide a lot of travel - too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.

How much of our earth has been wet by blood because of jealousy! And at the end of life, what does it all matter? We grow old and the young look at us and can never see that once we made a kingdom ring for love.

I'm in pain all the time,' I said, 'and if I gave into it then I'd do nothing.

If a man can't remember the laws," Ragnar said, "then he's got too many of them.

Only the gods tell him what to do, and you should beware of men who take their orders from the gods.

He had always thought there was an answer to all life's mysteries in the stars, yet whenever he stared at them the answer slipped out of his grasp... But he had to think now, and he stared at the smoke-dimmed stars in the hope that they would help him, but all they did was go on shining.

The poets, when they speak of war, talk of the shield wall, they talk of the spears and arrows flying, of the blade beating on the shield, of the heroes who fall and the spoils of the victors, but I was to discover that war was really about food. About feeding men and horses. About finding food. The army that eats wins.

And you look bloody young to be a sergeant I was born late, sir

victory does not come to men who listen to their fears.

Latin! The language of God! Or perhaps He speaks Hebrew? I suppose that's more likely and it will make things rather awkward in heaven, won't it? Will we all have to learn Hebrew?

You will not fight in the shield wall," my father said. "No, Father." "Only men can stand in the shield wall," he said, "but you will watch, you will learn, and you will discover that the most dangerous stroke is not the sword or ax that you can see, but the one you cannot see, the blade that comes beneath the shields to bite your ankles.