Quotes from Mary Stewart

I suppose one gets to know men quickest by the things they take for granted.

But I have noticed this about ambitious men, or men in power, that they fear even the slightest and least likely threat to it.

Every man carries the seed of his own death, and you will not be more than a man. You will have everything; you cannot have more.

To plant a garden is the chief of the arts of peace.

It is never wise to turn aside from knowing, however the knowing comes.

It is harder to kill a whisper than even a shouted calumny.

Every life has a death, and every light a shadow. Be content to stand in the light, and let the shadow fall where it will.

I can say 'reduce your stress level' until I'm blue in the face.

There are few men more superstitious than soldiers. They are, after all, the men who live closest to death.

Folks will say anything, and next time round they'll believe it.

Where two Greeks are gathered together, there will be at least three political parties represented, and possibly more.

A good house, deep in the woods, with a garden all around it and a river flowing past it. Fruit trees, and flowers planted for the bees. A place to grow my herbs. Silence in winter, and in summer nothing but the birds. Lonely as the grave, and every bit as restful.

kissing me with a violence that was terrifying and yet, somehow, the summit of all my tenderest dreams.

Thinking and planning is one side of life; doing is another. A man cannot be doing all the time.

Every time your work is read, you die several deaths for every word, and poetry is like being flayed alive.

Time spent looking back in anger is time wasted.

A child thinks life is fair. A man stands by the consequences of his deeds.

The car whispered up the slope and nosed quietly out above the trees. He was driving like a careful insult.

The best words in the best order...one always go the same shock of recognition and delight when someone's words swam up to meet a thought or name a picture. Poetry was awful good material to think with.

I had always been content to know that there was more in the living world than we could hope to understand.

We have lived under the edge of doom, and feel ourselves now facing the long-threatened fate. But hear this Emrys: fate is made by men, not gods.

Mother and daughter got on very well indeed, with a deep affection founded on almost complete misunderstanding.

The place for truth is not in the facts of a novel; it is in the feelings.

There is no one so leadenfooted as the reluctant bringer of bad news.