Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

Welcome with hautbois, clarions and trumpets, noble lady. Welcome to the company of those who can be hurt.

You are offered love and won't accept it except on your own terms. That isn't tragic. It's the word you've just mentioned—it's childish.

He said, 'Then you don't know, Philippa, what I am.' 'I know what you think you are,' Philippa said.

He gave her his hand as she stepped up beside him. He said, 'I thought it was going to take twenty-five years.' 'It probably will,' Gelis said. 'But I thought I should like to spend them with you.' He

Oh God, thought Jerott. Don't let it happen. She doesn't deserve the torment. The lifetime of waiting, in return for a handful of moments of ecstasy. And standing behind him, always, the ghosts of his other, experienced women. The thoughts he did not share. The knowledge that one had his total friendship but never the key to the innermost door.

I rather think one of us drunk is sufficient.

Blue eyes stared into blue. "No," said Marthe. "Such things will not last. Music makes you a coward because you have no other key for your passions. One day it will come. And you forget. You have one child to see still to safety. I think you owe that to him, and to Philippa

You'll seek out strumpets, fumble with courtiers, fornicate with either parent of the heiress you are supposed to be marrying, but to embrace your wife sickens you?' The music stopped in the room; and the movement. 'Ah,' said Lymond. His face had emptied. 'From a new host and an old harlot, the good Lord deliver us.

I will give you to Catherine. I will not give you to a hole in the ground.

Versatility is one of the few human traits which are universally intolerable. You may be good at Greek and good at painting and be popular. You may be good at Greek and good at sport, and be wildly popular. But try all three and you're a mountebank. Nothing arouses suspicion quicker than genuine, all-round proficiency.

To be accomplished but resented. Or to hide behind the more outré of their pursuits and be considered erratic but harmless.

He said, 'Don't. That is not a weapon for you. And it destroys what we have.' 'But I have nothing, yet,' Philippa said. 'And all the nicety is on your side. Which means I choose any weapon that suits me.

You had good reason to hate me. I always understood that. I don't know why you should think differently now, but take care. Don't build up another false image. I may be the picturesque sufferer now, but when I have the whip-hold, I shall behave quite as crudely, or worse. I have no pretty faults. Only, sometimes, a purpose.

There was a little silence. Then Danny Hislop heaved a sigh. 'O beau sire Dieu, what a hell of an evening. Jerott, you either want to have another half-bottle, or vomit three ways what you have, like the Rosault.' In five months the professionals Hislop and Blyth had reached an understanding.

Why not? I thought we were speaking of death and dishonour? You would advance to your grave and I should join the ranks of your numerous dead: Diccon and Salablanca, Tosh and Christian Stewart; Oonagh; Will Scott and his father; Turkey Mat and Tom Erskine; the dog Luadhas; the child Khaireddin.… What shall I say to your son when I meet him? Don't be surprised: your sire loved me also?'

You must, of course, do as you please,' she had remarked. 'But I really think, through all these years, that Mr Crawford has learned to take care of himself. I am sure his unique sense of domestic responsibility will impel him, unswerving, to trace us wherever we go.' Which was precisely the kind of bitchy remark, thought Jerott furiously, that Lymond himself would have made.

Try to remember.… There is a difference between absence and death. And you are needed.

Before you die, there must be nothing you have not experienced. When you die—and I shall be there—it will be an experience which no man has savoured. Guard your health, Mr Crawford. I should not like you to leave us too soon.

Standing drunk in the yard, while the rain soaked his hair and spread cold through the cloth of his doublet, Jerott thought of the fine design, firmly executed, of the campaign of Guînes and of Calais. And of his own joy and his liberation, after these huckstering years, to be again under the hand of this man, his arts at their meridian.

Every other woman since Eve,' he said. 'Except you.

Truth's nothing but falsehood with the edges sharpened up, and ill-tempered at that: no repair, no retraction, no possible going back once it's out.

Lymond said, "Those who gather frankincense are dedicated unto divine honours, and use no carnal company with any woman.

He had survived that. He would survive this.

Archie raised his voice. "Chops me!" he said bitterly. "But ye're a thrawn, bloody, rackle-tongued limmer. I'll come with ye to Saint-Cloud. I'll cut your meat at Compiègne. But there's a limit. I tell you now, there's a limit to what I'll do for you.