Quotes from S.M. Stirling

Love isn't like money--the more you give away the more you get back, and the more you have to give.

Nothing's free and only the cheaper things can be bought with money.

Many are the marvels of God's Creation, but none so marvelous as man. Or so cunning, for good and ill.

Bad writers have influences. Good writers steal.

Leading means running fast enough to keep ahead of your people.

Sometimes the harshest lessons were the most valuable.

We had to become other than we were, or cease to be at all

Yes, she loved the Lord and Lady in Their many forms . . . but those forms spanned the universe of space and time that sprang from Them, and They could be as terrible as the fiery death of suns, as inexorable as Time. A mother's kiss on her child's face came from Them, but so also the glaciers that grind continents to dust.

Mackenzies buried a rapist at a crossroads, with a spear thrust in the soil above; and they buried him living when they could, as a sacrifice to turn aside the anger of the Earth Powers.

Like its elder sibling love, friendship was a set of obligations willingly assumed, truth and trust among them, not just a pleasure or a feeling. At least it was if you were to be a friend worth having.

Black soil flew up in divots; the horses' heads pounded up and down like pistons, and he felt a sensation of rushing speed no machine could quite match as the great muscles flexed and bunched between his legs. Havel

He was of the Old Religion, like nearly all Mackenzies, and wouldn't object to a Catholic ceremony - his faith taught that all paths to the Divine were valid. Christians tended to be a little more exclusive.

Clan custom and law held that it was the public declaration of intent and then living together that made a handfasting; the ceremonies simply bore witness to it and asked blessings and luck of the Powers on the new family. He knew Christians thought that the ceremony was the marriage, though.

And doesn't everything die and return; the grass, the trees, the fields? Why not us?

He chose to come onto your land uninvited with a weapon in his hand,? he said. ?When a man does that, he consents to his fate and makes you clean of his blood.?

you should always kick a man when he's down. It's much easier then.

Wholly homelike was the wedge of apple pie with whipped cream, and a piece of yellow cheese beside it, sharp and dry and crumbly, just right to cut the rich sweetness of the pie filling and the buttery taste of the crust.

It wasn't taking the trip well; cats seldom did, being little furry Republicans with an in-built aversion to change.

Referring to an obsession with Tolkien's Middle Earth): I meet a beautiful American heiress, I like her, she likes me . . . and then she turns out to be a fundamentalist with a more literal interpretation of scripture than I feel comfortable with. Only our bible was written by an Oxford don about sixty years ago.

Grief is the tribute we pay the dead," she said, matter-of-fact sympathy in her voice. "But they don't ask more than we can afford to give. They've never really gone from us, you know, those we love; they're part of our story, and we of theirs.

You can try and maybe fail, or not try and always fail

Testosterone rots the brain . . .

Sandra nodded. "Agreed. A…oh, God, let's not call it a United Nations, shall we? That would doom things from the start.

Oh Powers of Earth and Sky, what is it that you've brought back, to run wild once more upon the ridge of the world?