Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

I'm sorry,' said Jerott, his eyes elsewhere. What was the attraction here, in God's name? Not the little woman in the stained gown, surely? Or the plain fourteen-year-old who had been so courageous the night Trotty died?

Her suspicions seethed. Over sixty, with a life of violence behind him, Buccleuch had been a broken man after the affair at Liddel Castle. More recently, however, the light of purpose had entered his eye, and, nimble as an elderly rectangular goblin, he had vanished and reappeared at Branxholm until they had all gone off their food.

Au bout de la piste on trouve toujours ou le chameau ou le proprietaire du chameau . . .

Escape into self-destruction by all means; but not until your duty is done.

I have a suggestion in that case,' said Lymond. 'You two have the orgy, and I'll keep the drinker's headache.

There breaks a crutch Scotland never knew it possessed.

You've chosen a life of vice, and have been consistent and reliable and thorough and successful in carrying it out.

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.

All the linear delicacy of the boy he had once been stood exposed now in the still, blindfolded face of her son. The clinging yellow hair, orderly on the white linen, was the same silk that had veiled her rings when she had smoothed his pillow in childhood; the cheekbone under the bandage had once, fresh and firm, been pressed to her own; the beautiful hands, lying loose on the damask, belonged to him and also to another man, whom she had placed before all others, and always would.

Although I despise the hanging jaw of hunger, I do not intend that the needy should look to me for their banquet.

Blaspheme if you must,' said Blyth wearily. 'You'll get your wages all right. You'll survive.' 'I'm not going to die of laughing at any rate,' said Lymond, and Blyth nearly lost his temper again.

Our motive in locking it, if it matters, was to spare you the embarrassment of an interruption. Unless the comte de Sevigny of today is really so different from the Master of Culter of ten years ago?' Perfectly at his ease, the decorative young man he was addressing leaned back on the shutters and studied him. 'I hope so,' Lymond said. 'When you were twenty, Mr Erskine, you killed a priest in the belltower at Montrose. Would you do so again?

Happiness, that most childish of states, is infectious. Furthermore, in its innocence, it will not be hidden, even when tempered with sorrow

I should hesitate to attribute anything to him at the moment, even principles,' said Lord Culter, smiling. 'But you are free to try.

The world is full,' said Jerott wearily, 'of people who might have wanted to meet Francis Crawford, and who are going to be disappointed.

The drink was almost certainly safe. He would probably get pleurisy, quinsy and pox from the cup.

If you don't mind.' 'I do,' said Kate. 'I don't care to have my second-best bedroom looking like the den of a hibernating bear.

It isn't that music doesn't matter: the reverse, as it happens. So my defences against it are very strong. Can you understand that?

Bruges was the multiple voice of working water; and the quality of brick-thrown echoes, and the hiss of trees and the flap of drying cloths in the flat-country wind, and the grunting, like frogs in a marsh, of quires of crucified clothes, left to vibrate in the fields of the tenters.

At least this is a nation, with a religion, a head, a status, a policy. Not a damned Noah's ark: a chicken here, a lamb there, a family of wolves in the next field. I suppose you are proud of your French Queen, playing dice with Scots knucklebones for the greater glory of her native land?

I suppose that was just something you ate; or are you bloody well pregnant as well?

What shall we do with him? We have him at our mercy. Think of all the browbeaten Streltsi at Vorobiovo who would like to take their revenge at this moment. We could hire out his carcass for money!'

There is a Russian proverb,' Nepeja said. 'Beat your shuba, and it will be warmer; beat your wife and she shall be sweeter.' There was a brief silence, while his hearers considered the analogy. 'Beat your brother and he shall be deader?' at length Danny said.

We all die,' said Nostradamus. 'The man you love. The man who loves you. The man you married. But because of you there will be something, I promise you, by which men will know Francis Crawford has been.