Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

If one believes in God, but has learned not to pray, one offers only, in silence, one's apologies, and then asks the spirit to do what it can.

A reckoning formally appointed and now paid to the limit. A tribute to Janus, God of Gates, to prevent that other, deferred payment to Charon.

He held her eyes and said clearly, 'You have a great deal to be responsible for.' 'She gave you birth,' Richard said. 'That was her first mistake. The next was to spoil you. So that everything you want, you must have immediately.

He has merely broken, as always, every promise he ever made, before man or God.

For a moment no one spoke. Then Lymond got to his feet. 'I have a better idea. You marry her,' he suggested.

It sounded well. It sounded rational, even, if you were not Francis Crawford. Put him, blindfold, in a closed room anywhere in the world … Lymond said, 'And that is your only excuse?' And Sybilla met his gaze with eyes as uncompromising as his own. 'I thought I was the excuse for your whole way of life?' she said calmly. And nothing had prepared him for that.

Determined to look on the bright side of things, Philippa collected her winnings, and ate them. 'I don't know,' she said. 'We're a nice, representative group. I can do card-tricks, and you can train animals and Haji Ishak can he on nails and Sheemy Wurmit can do a comic turn with his parrot and Signor Manoli can swear in ten different dialects of Sicilian. We only need a good bass-baritone and a tenor rebec, and we could work out a tour.

Can you imagine what it feels like for me, to pledge my word to preserve a girl's honour and have it broken for me by Francis?

What do you want?" He considered. "Amusement, principally. Don't you think it's time my family shared in my misfortunes, as Christians should?

There was a brief silence, during which Philippa Somerville fought and won a battle to keep her eyes dry. Lymond said, 'I give you my word. It was a lie.' Philippa looked at him. 'And I don't deserve that ,' she said.

Extraordinary, is it not, how he cannot bear music?

he gave his mind and his eyes instead to the land, the mother of whiteness; to the falling snow, a host of dove-grey particles against the pale downy sky; a rush of white against the dark trees and bushes. To the sunlit snow, golden white against blue on the roofs of the villages, and the bright lime green and umber of the trunks of the thinning forests, their snow-white profiles lost to the vaster white space of the sky.

I am trying to go back. I thought, believe it or not, that nothing could stop me from going back. I was wrong.

This and your music … you have happiness. Why cannot I find it?' 'Because you do not look in the right places,' said Kiaya.

As everyone keeps insisting, parentage doesn't matter. Love him for what he is.

What about Odysseus?' said Kiaya Khátún. Marthe turned away, and moved to the door. 'He is not a man,' she said. 'He is Chaos, a mythical bird with a name, but no body; agreeable only to the eye of the mind.

Austin said, 'He is very plausible. I believed him when he gave me his oath.' 'Never do that,' said Richard flatly.

Discomfort without hope of betterment is not a great springboard.

Watch carefully. In forty formidable bosoms we are about to create a climacteric of emotion. In one short speech—or maybe two—I propose to steer your women through excitement, superiority, contempt and anger: we shall have a little drama; just, awful and poetic, spread with uncials and full, as the poet said, of fruit and seriosity. Will they thank me, I wonder?

Oh, well. I don't mind helping you to feel guilty if you must. On the other hand, I should point out that of all our various encounters, today is the only time you have favoured me with two civil words in sequence. I found it quite worrying.

His chest heaved, and he coughed. You have coughed before, his mother said. It is a sign of weakness. Control it.

Mariotta, collecting her wits, produced the only deterrent she could think of. "Your mother is in there." He received this with tranquil pleasure. "Then one person at least should recognize me," Crawford of Lymond said, and pushed the door gently open for her to walk through.

They were the élite of their corps, he began to realize; already stringently trained, and chosen to escort the Voevoda Bolshoia. That they were afraid of him to a man took nothing, he saw, from their zest, or the sparkling tension which clothed them like frost. He had seen that once before, in a company under the Duc de Guise, about to go into battle. It was the sign of success; the fire and stamp of natural leadership.

I am Hermes, Conductor of Souls. Come if you wish. Come if you dare. All things arise from Space and into Space they return: Space is the beginning and the final end. There isn't much of it here: watch your head on the newel-post.