Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

If you're coming with me, listen,' said Lymond. He ducked, and then swung a punch that did not quite go wide. 'And then knock me out cold.' 'With pleasure,' said Jerott. His dark eyes were bleak. 'And if I succeed?' 'You won't,' Lymond said.

What I cannot control is the stupid man, launched upon a war which is against his material interests. And there is no scavenger of the air, or beast of the earth, or ooze of the sea which will offend nature like two such, opposed to one another.

Remember, some live all their lives without discovering this truth; that the noblest and most terrible power we possess is the power we have, each of us, over the chance-met, the stranger, the passer-by outside your life and your kin. Speak, she said, as you would write: as if your words were letters of lead, graven there for all time, for which you must take the

I have given you nothing. I have shown you what was there in you already, and you have been man enough to destroy what is weak and to foster what is strong until it is unassailable.

What is there but untruth and heartbreak wherever you go?

Remember, some live all their lives without discovering this truth; that the noblest and most terrible power we possess is the power we have, each of us, over the chance-met, the stranger, the passer-by outside your life and your kin. Speak, she said, as you would write: as if your words were letters of lead, graven there for all time, for which you must take the consequences. And take the consequences.

His horse stumbled in the tussocky ground and made him realize, then, how thoughtlessly fast he was riding...how thoughtlessly fast he was thinking.

Her ripostes, on the whole, had been more successful than his. Or perhaps she, too, was feeling like this.

I tell you that whatever infatuation you have fallen into, you cannot keep that man at your side. He belongs where he belongs and he will arrive there, no matter how deep you bury him. Best free him at once and save the heart ache.

In his turn, Chancellor was looking into his tankard. "Cloth builds the vessel," he said. "And launches her; and pays for her crew." "But you do not travel by cloth," Lymond said. "But by sea card and compass and star.

Mime doesn't always mean comedy, my dear; far from it.

There is always a reason, a primary reason to start with. But a man who faces such dangers as the unknown world still offers must have, within himself, another compulsion. An agitation, as Nicolas de Nicolay would put it. Why should it not be spoken of?" "To fill an idle moment?" Chancellor said. He refused the lead. "To learn," Lymond said.

The moment is past. The chessboard has gone; and the people. You must let me take the room from you too.

Alec Guthrie's voice, serene from the shadows, said, 'You are not going to Russia. You are not going. All your life you have resented control and brooked no hint of instruction or guidance. This time, your will is not paramount.

No. I shall stay in Russia. I am too far away now from it all," Lymond said. "And if we are going to be metaphysical, I have no sea card, or compass, or star.

If he is tired, and they put a foot wrong, he will choose the one unmentionable response and make it. He did it last night.

Liberty to drink and to debauch are said to recreate and refresh the soul.' 'Then——' said Kiaya Khátún. 'I have no soul,' said Lymond. 'Forgive me.

Francis.… You are St Mary's. You and no other. It sounds trite, but it is precisely true. I don't know your secret. There is no spiritual bond between you and your company: no common faith, no rites, no rules of chivalry. How is it done?' 'Charm of personality,' said Lymond. 'Allied to a generous wage scale.

A lie is a broad and spacious and glittering thing, sweeping belief before it from its very grandeur. But the truth fits, like an old man cutting cloth in an attic. And that, Philippa did not need to be told, was the truth, which Lymond had guessed long before her.

man had blandly abstained. He had been right: it would have lost him money. But not in Scotland

I think it would be truer to say,' Philippa said, 'that both of us at the time had our reasons for hurting you.

Lymond said, 'Have I been talking?' 'We all have, in nightmares. But yours have not been about the sea.

Humility is a virtue Scotsmen require to be taught.

I regret Richard isn't with you. No matter. God hath a thousand hand?s to chastise and I have two—how can Richard escape us both?