Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

Poor bloody bastard: he hasn't a chance, has he? Kicked from cradle to whorehouse; his mother slaughtered by Gabriel, his father propped up by opium.

The door opened. 'Hercules?' said Danny tremulously. 'Isosceles? The Triangle? The Angel Apostate?

All these were barred to him because of the vow he had made to Sybilla. Because of it, he could not resign himself to what, easy or difficult, was coming; but instead had to turn again to his lessons: the long, bitter schooling thrust at him, for no purpose, throughout every twist of his lifespan.

I don't know what you want to be called.' 'Home, like the cattle?' said Lymond.

The child, level with the kneeling man, had moved nearer, his eyes wide, his face uplifted as if to embrace him. Before he could touch him, Lymond rose, and, looking down, smiled. 'Keep thy kisses. Thou art almost a man; and a man chooses to kiss only the persons he loves. Then thy kiss will be a big gift indeed.

Whatever is wrong, I am sure with his sense of the picturesque, Francis will succeed in manifesting a fadeur exquise.

My son ... my son,' said Francis Crawford before the blurred, failing candles, their light searching over his disordered, bent head and closed eyes and the long, scarred lines of his hands, laid flat on the steel. 'So small a spirit, to lodge such sorrows as mankind has brought you. Live ... live ... Wait for me, new, frightened soul. And though the world should reel to a puny death, and the wolves are appointed our godfathers, I will not fail you, ever.

There is a new game about to begin. Will you leave it to others?' 'As you will leave it to your son,' said Francis Crawford. 'It is all I find I can do.

I don't object to being called by my Christian name, on purely social occasions. The Russian version was Frangike. Rather scented, I thought. Or alternatively, like a new brand of onion.

Boy,' he said. 'Listen to me, and learn the first lesson of man, the political animal. When you wage war, you wage it for ever. When war is over, it has never existed. There is a truce, and there will shortly be a peace between England and Scotland. Crawford of Lymond is the Queen's friend, and my friend, and your friend.

I am good?' said the strained treble. 'Thou art good,' said Francis Crawford in a dry voice.

I know,' said Danny Hislop. 'I want to see them being fond of one another. I want to see everybody brazening it out. And then I want to see what your petit François does to you when the party's over.

And so the amber hair of Francis Crawford's father, which all his life had marked him out: for hurt, for passion; for treachery; performed its last destined office in the sunshine and fresh winds of England that morning. A single rider, a sober doublet and cloak might have escaped notice. But not the bare, golden head.

He knew what would happen. He has laid wagers with himself, I imagine, for days: how many hours, how many miles towards safety before he has to drop out.

The beauty of worthy things is not in the face but in the backside, endearing more by their departure than their address.

Are we going to have a sensible discussion?' she said. 'Well, you are sensible,' Lymond said. 'And I am not unconscious, yet.

He had admitted her to the sexless friendship she had asked of him. She had been treated at last as a partner and adult. She was free, as he had said, to join her invention to his; to expect and give co-operation without fear or favour, as might be done by Adam or Jerott or Danny.

You are the only person with a shaky interest in ethics and the emotional stability of a quince seed in a cup of lukewarm water.....

A moment later the music began, and Kate shrank beneath the onslaught of its message: the fury of hope and joy that towered in the notes, outburning the sunlight and outpouring the volumes of the sea. All that was bold and noble and happy in created sound burst from the metempirical quills, and it was a blasphemy not to rejoice. Christian died in its midst, purposeful and successful; the last struggle unseen by anyone but Kate, and laying no bridle on the living.

At pointblank range, there was no possibility of missing. He aimed into the fair, weary, rancourless face, and then at the heart, and both balls found their mark and brought death in the end, not with the sweet ambiguity of an arrow but with the finality which frees the earth at once of body and soul, and all that was good or bad in either.

That made Richard leave her, to walk back over the hill. After a moment Jerott rose and walked back also, to meet Adam and Kate and say what had to be said to Sybilla. That now she had one son only living. That Francis, the best loved of the three, had now left her.

Daniel Hislop, the son of the bishop?' 'The Bishop's bastard,' said Hislop, with a cold-eyed assumption of coyness. 'Sir. My lord. Jesus.' Lymond's eyes turned to him, open. Then changing position, he seated himself, and placed his hands gently on the table before him. 'Sir will do,' said Lymond calmly, 'unless you receive divine witness to the contrary.

Jerott had no reason to challenge her wit. For a woman, it seemed to him at times excessive to tiresomeness.

He never said what he meant. He never said what he meant.… All through their encounters, their clashes, their crossing of swords she had known that and learned a little to deal with it, and to translate, if only to herself, what lay under the stream of hurtful, facile words. And, suddenly, this time she felt panic, a seizure of fear so unexpected that she stared at him, quite unseeing, listening to the tone of the words. And then she saw what was behind it, and sat down.