Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

Talk to me, Richard. It isn't difficult. Move the teeth and agitate the tongue. Tell me news of the family. Am I superseded yet? Oh, Richard, a blush!

And deep within him, missing its accustomed tread, his heart paused, and gave one single stroke, as if on an anvil.

He regards boredom, I observe, as the One and Mighty Enemy of his soul. And will succeed in conquering it, I am sure—if he survives the experience.

It seems to me,' said Philippa prosaically, 'that on the whole we run more risks with Mr Crawford's protection than without it.

If you can repress for a moment your spinster-like longing to meddle in my affairs,' said Lymond cuttingly, from the door, 'I am waiting to go.

I never expect anything,' said Marthe. 'It provides a level, low-pitched existence with no disappointments.' 'I'm all for a level, low-pitched existence,' said Philippa. 'And when you see your way back to one, for heaven's sake don't forget to tell me.' At which Marthe, surprisingly, laughed aloud.

Then Lymond's voice, the chill gone, said, 'Don't be an ass, Jerott? You know I can't do without you.' It was an obvious answer. But it was also something Jerott had never had from Lymond before: an apology and an appeal both at once.

Intentions, yours or anyone else's, don't matter; they never matter and never excuse.

Where are the links of the chain ... joining us to the past?

Tant que je vive, mon cueur ne changera Pour nulle vivante, tant soit elle bonne ou sage Forte et puissante, riche de hault lignaige Mon chois est fait, aultrene se fera *** Long as I live, my heart will never vary For no one else, however fair or good Brave, resolute, or rich, of gentle blood My choice is made, and I will have no other.

And if there's no trouble, you'll make it,' offered Will Scott, his eyes bright, his cheeks red. 'No. At the moment,' affirmed Lymond grimly, 'I am having truck with nothing less than total calamity.

So she was on her own, Kate thought, and instilled all the friendly helpfulness she could into her next question. "Excuse me, but are you the bad company young Mr. Scott has got into?

Go away and bleed to death,' said his onetime saviour sharply. 'On behalf of the female sex I feel I may cheer every lesion.

My dear, my dear,' said Kate, but to herself. 'I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.

He said, 'You have everything there is of me, save a little I gave to my people. Now you hold that as well.' And last of all, when he had released her and moved to the door, to stand outside where the sky was enclosed with thick hills and dark, heavy forests, he said, because he could not prevent himself, 'When next you stand by the sea, say goodbye for me.

The darts which make me suffer are my own.

She got in, as she had persuaded Jerott Blyth to bring her half across France, by force of logic, a kind of flat-chested innocence and the doggedness of a flower-pecker attacking a strangling fig.

But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.

It was a tragic and annihilating war, in which intellect fought naked with intellect, and the blows fell not upon the mind but upon the soul.

The crossroads may not be of your own seeking, but at least the road you choose will be your own.

I'm fairly bursting tae ken how ye guessed I spoke Scots?' Lymond looked up. Superficial pain, withstood or ignored for quite a long time, had made his eyes heavy, but they were brimming with laughter. 'Well, God,' he said. 'In the water, you were roaring your head off at a bloody bull elephant called Hughie.

It doesn't do my self-esteem much good though, does it?' 'Your self-esteem has had a lifetime of steady attention,' said Philippa abstractedly.

I've wed his two empty boots.' 'That you havena,' said Janet, Lady of Buccleuch, lowering her voice not at all in the presence of two hundred twittering Scott relations as they gazed after their vanishing husbands. 'They aye remember their boots. It's their empty nightgowns that get fair monotonous.

A Scott, having got his bride pregnant, was apt to file her as completed business for eight months at a time.