Quotes from Dorothy Dunnett

Which reminds me -' 'The new ladies have arrived,' said Adam grimly. 'Guaranteed of clean stock, and inured to Russian practices. Osep has announced himself suited.' 'For the time being,' said Danny, open-eyed. 'That's ten since Pitsligo. Do you think it is a subversive attempt at colonization, or the long Russian nights that ought to be setting in about now in Vologda?' 'We shall have to wait till the spring,' Adam said, 'to find out.

The trouble about Mr Crawford,' said Kate, 'is that he puts up with his enemies and plays merry hell with his friends.

They are afraid of him?' D'Harcourt raised his comedian's eyebrows. Danny Hislop's bright teeth flashed in his hairless, unremarkable face. 'If they were afraid, they'd tear him to pieces like schoolgirls. My guess is that he's gorgeous. A terrible tease and nasty at moments, but oh Maeve, he has such a way with him.… Is he gorgeous, dear Adam?' Adam Blacklock, thus addressed, said quietly, 'Undoubtedly gorgeous.

Then you've had a good day of it, I suppose. Then you suppose wrong, said Lymond shortly. I've had a damned carking afternoon. A Moslem would blame my Ifrit, a Buddhist explain the papingo was really my own great-grandmother, and a Christian, no doubt, call it the vengeance of the Lord. As a plain, inoffensive heathen, I call it bloody annoying.

Are you implying,' said Philippa coldly, 'that I enjoyed being brought up surrounded by eunuchs?' 'No,' said Lymond. 'But I expect you enjoyed it more than the eunuchs did.

No. I won't. I won't bend my knee, or kiss your charming shoes either. I may possibly fall flat on my face, but that will be quite inadvertent.

One escapes; but one always has to come back. I found too I disliked not being in command of myself.

I," said Lymond, in the voice unmistakably his which honeyed his most lethal thoughts, "I am a narwhal looking for my virgin. I have sucked up the sea like Charybdis and failing other entertainment will spew it three times daily, for a fee.

You invited them without Lymond knowing?' said Danny Hislop. He wriggled into the circle. 'Can I be there when he hears about it?

The board is clearing. The old game is almost played, and the pieces broken.

Considering Lymond, flat now on the bed in wordless communion with the ceiling, Richard spoke. My dear, you are only a boy. You have all your life still before you. On the tortoise-shell bed, his brother did not move. But there was no irony for once in his voice when he answered. Oh, yes, I know. The popular question is, For what?

That was your son, man, who went out just now ... What better proof do you want? That and his looks … and his guts.' 'Thank you,' said Lymond. 'If that is a compliment.

I hope,' said Jerott, breathing softly and hard, 'that you never meet those who will judge what you have done. How would you recognize love? Or compassion? Francis at least has learned that.

I shall let you know,' Lymond said, 'when I am ready to embrace you, and with what. In the meantime should you seek a favour, ask elsewhere.

Gilles made up his mind, and snapped, 'D'you write Latin?' Sometimes Jerott forgot that the blazon of chivalry, with all the status it once had carried, was no longer his. In any case, he had an incredible headache. He stared at this enormous, round-shouldered old man in the filthy nightgown and buskins, and snapped back. 'Of course.

I would have forgone even the body for the sake of the mind. And I would have claimed neither body nor mind, had I discovered a soul.

It was the only field, so far, in which the Pearl of Fortune had shown any precocity, other than the feat of keeping her head, her reason and her sense of the ridiculous amid conditions of civilized lunacy.

Julius brooded. He could see Julius despising the medical school of Pavia. Tobie said, Nicholas managed the journey from Flanders all right. Deferred to you, joked discreetly with me, got on like a dyeworks on fire with the muleteers.

I'll take care of it,' said Richard Crawford quietly, and Lymond lifted his head. 'Oh, Richard. Timely as ever. I want.…' 'I know what you want,' said Lord Culter comfortably, and hooked an arm under his brother's stained shoulders. 'I doubt it,' said Lymond drily.

They play at gods,' said Piedar Dooly, and spat. 'French and English alike. Gods out of hell would you say, harrowing green land for their tennis courts and dressing lapdogs in treasure that would keep half Ireland in bread for a year. The heroes of Tara would have put them face to schisty face and used them for millstones.

So, as Lymond strode out and stopped, rigid and white by the doorpost, Sybilla set eyes on Francis, the son of her heart; and so Francis Crawford, after four years of unharnessed power, came face to face at last with his mother. And Kate, falling upon the door and looking up at her self-contained relative by marriage, saw his face torn apart and left, raw as a wound without features; only pain and shock and despair and appalled recognition, all the more terrible for being perfectly voiceless.

Look. If you are having pains, scream. If you are seeing thousand-pound elephant birds with reinforced iron nests, tell us and we shall believe you. If you want to climb up and jump from the roof, let me tell you that we feel exactly the same. Only don't lock your door like a maiden aunt with the gravel.

One battle in twelve might be won by a brilliant military stratagem. The rest stood or fell by somebody's blunders. Only rarely, there came the feel of a great campaign evolved by a stylist: imaginative, comprehensive, irresistible.

I see,' said Jerott slowly. 'You've thought it all out.' 'That's what I do,' said Lymond. 'I sit on my brood-patch and think.