Quotes from Bernard Cornwell

Mais tarde, muito mais tarde, aprendi que a alegria e o medo são exatamente a mesma coisa, uma apenas se transformava na outra pela ação

I had unlaced my cheek-pieces, let them see the blood on my face, see the blood on my mail, the blood on my hands. I was a man of gold and of blood. I was a lord of war and I was filled with the rage of battle. The enemy were ten paces away and I walked five of those paces so that I stood alone, facing them. This, I snarled at them, is my rock.

I'm like mistletoe," she said, "I need a branch to grow on. Without the branch, I'm nothing.

makes money, for we shall need money

I remember Ravn, the blind poet and father to Ragnar, often telling me that courage was like a horn of ale. "We begin with a full horn, boy," he had told me, "but we drain it. Some men drain it fast, maybe their horn was not full to begin with, and others drain it slowly, but courage lessens as we age.

If you never write anything down then no one knows exactly what you said so you can always change it.

And you can use that sword, Weland Godfredson?" "As a woman can use her tongue, lord." "You're that good, eh?" Ragnar asked, as ever unable to resist a jest.

Where's your bowstrings?' Thomas asked, for the priest had neither helmet nor cap. 'I looped them round my…well, never mind. It has to be good for something other than pissing, eh? And it's dry down there.' Father Hobbe seemed indecently cheerful.

I charge more for prophecy," Offa said, "on the grounds that what is worthless must be made expensive.

Bugger Shekhar. How about a bibbi instead? Maybe I'll read. Your choice, Sharpe said carelessly.

So I do my duty," Sharpe said, "and land in the shit." "You have at last seized the essence of soldiering," Hogan said

And in the darkness, as I listen to the sea beat on the sand and the wind fret at the thatch, I remember what it was like to be young and tall and strong and fast. And arrogant.

Druids are not allowed to write anything down, it's against the rules. You know that! Once you write something down it becomes fixed. It becomes dogma. People can argue about it, they become authoritative, they refer to the texts, they produce new manuscripts, they argue more and soon they're putting each other to death. If you never write anything down then no one knows exactly what you said so you can always change it.

She was no Christian. Instead she believed that every place and every thing had its own god or goddess; a nymph for a stream, a dryad for a wood, a spirit for a tree, a god for the fire and another for the sea. The Christian god, like Thor or Odin, was just one more deity among this unseen throng of powers, and her dreams, she said, were like eavesdropping on the gods. One day, as she rode beside me on the hills above the empty sea, she suddenly said that Alfred would give me power.

Their wings will shadow the sun, their breath will scorch the earth, and their fire will consume the righteous! So we all die ? No, no, no! We fight them! How do you fight a dragon ? I asked him. With prayer, boy, with prayer. So we all die.

If you collect a fat flock, you don't leave it grazing beside a wolf's den.

When you are young and powerless you dream of possessing mystical strength, and once you are grown and strong you condemn lesser folk to that same dream

You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you'll just weep yourself to death.

Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.

I heard only last week that they want to make Erkenwald into a saint. Priests come to my home beside the northern sea where they find an old man, and they tell me I am just a few paces from the fires of hell. I only need repent, they say, and I will go to heaven and live for evermore in the blessed company of the saints. And I would rather burn till time itself burns out.

The men, who a moment before had been cursing and cumbersome creatures clambering down the clay bank into the clumsy boats, were mysteriously transformed into warrior silhouettes, spiky with weapons, who glided silent and noble through the vaporous night toward the misted shadows of the enemy shore.

He has a mouth, lord, Gerbruht said. I envy him, I said. Envy him, lord? Most of us have to lower our trews to shit.

My father tried to control you and said it couldn't be done. He also advised me never to underestimate you. He said you look stupid but act clever. I thought it was the other way around, lord.

Wyrd bi ful aræd, we say, and it is true. Fate is inexorable.