Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

Marriage, like law, is a practice. Aut bibat, aut abeat. Subscribe, or get out of it.

Who in God's name do these rubies belong to?' 'You. But you wouldn't suit them,' said Philippa. 'Ffarewell Carboncle chosen chief. It's my husband-hunting equipment. What about you?' 'I don't hunt husbands,' said Lymond, getting up. 'It's the other way about.

The nursing brethren spoke in whispers to Jerott. Such stillness was what the overstrained body required. Pray God it would last. Downstairs, Jerott unleashed his anxious irritation on Marthe. 'They know it can't last. Why don't they admit it?' 'They are kind. They are innocent. They believe God is merciful,' said Marthe.

Of course. You have always tried to escape.' 'And I have always harmed the friends who have tried to stop me,' Lymond said. His voice was uninflected. He added, 'I have tried many times to warn you not to come too close to me.

And then the blue eyes, with gentleness, scanned all her new-made body and came to rest on her eyes. 'I have begun to eat,' said Francis Crawford. 'And I have begun to slake my thirst. But in you I have found a banquet under the heavens that will serve me for ever.

So music to this man was a weight or a counter-weight, like those working the delicate wheels of Gaultier's automata. It would be interesting to know, thought Gaultier, what change of balance had created the need for it now.

It cost something: it cost almost more than she could manage to fight, and to keep on fighting, by this time.

Level-headed and constructive to the end,' Philippa said, 'in confronting all your personal problems. And now? A trifle of hemlock?

Do you regret it?' said Sybilla. 'I would have kept it for you if I could. I did not know, you see, what you were to be.

He was the sort of person one could with justice kill if only - if only one had had the sense to bring a weapon.

As a highly qualified Turkish-trained concubine from the harem of Suleiman the Magnificent, Philippa Somerville settled into English court life as a kite among chickens, and as a kite among kites into the Spanish court of the new King-consort Philip.

My dear, there is no blame, where there lives a passion like that: do we not know it? Rest at peace. We are your children; and we love you.

She ought to be at home in Flaw Valleys, doing her morning exercise on the lute, at which, said her teacher, she would have had a distinguished future, had she not been born English.

Francis asked him to stand watch this evening on the Cessford road, and he's very anxious to save Francis from sin.' 'A risk which does not unduly trouble M. Crawford himself,' said the Chevalier pointedly

And you can't adjust to bastardy?' He said evenly, 'Give me, perhaps, until tomorrow instead of today to achieve it.

Do you think he will notice?' Danny said. 'I sometimes feel if I placed myself nude on the floor between the Voevoda and one of his meetings, he wouldn't even walk round me.

You sit on trouble, don't you, until it blows up in your face?

But I can't offer you a zoo at St Mary's. Can you make do with what I have?' 'With Hoddim and Guthrie and Blacklock? What you have is a zoo.

You are proving, aren't you,' said Philippa contemptuously, 'that to be base-born makes you a fourth-rate son of a fourth-rate little country?

It was because these men, whatever their profession—philosopher, architect, lawyer, painter, doctor, artist and priest—were by force of the times they lived in soldiers also, and understood that speed and skill and toughness and above all self-confidence came from being pushed again and again and again past the edge of endurance until that limit became as elastic as an extra muscle, held in reserve.

Adam!' said Danny. 'You mustn't drop out of the choir. We have too much to do. What do we have to do?

Lymond made no concessions on the grounds of language. If they fought abroad they would be expected as a matter of course to speak as their allies did. If they did not already know several European languages, then they must learn.

Men would fight well for their pay, but they would die for an aspiration.

A long time afterwards, she was to remember what an excellent chess-player Francis Crawford was.