Quotes About Identity

Oh, Christ, Richard,' Lymond said. 'You don't need to remind me what country I belong to.

I have been told to live in Scotland, and I shall do it, but I doubt if it will be to Scotland's benefit. There are handicaps, I have found, more crippling than blindness. Even the part of me that did not come back from Dourlans would hardly have made you a whole man.

You will stand there and let me refer to Madame la putaine your mother? You will watch while I call my sergeant in to listen while I brand you bastard?' 'No,' said Lymond.

The door opened. 'Hercules?' said Danny tremulously. 'Isosceles? The Triangle? The Angel Apostate?

I don't know what you want to be called.' 'Home, like the cattle?' said Lymond.

I don't object to being called by my Christian name, on purely social occasions. The Russian version was Frangike. Rather scented, I thought. Or alternatively, like a new brand of onion.

And so the amber hair of Francis Crawford's father, which all his life had marked him out: for hurt, for passion; for treachery; performed its last destined office in the sunshine and fresh winds of England that morning. A single rider, a sober doublet and cloak might have escaped notice. But not the bare, golden head.

How nice to go through life being male, pretty and wanted.

She ought to be at home in Flaw Valleys, doing her morning exercise on the lute, at which, said her teacher, she would have had a distinguished future, had she not been born English.

You are proving, aren't you,' said Philippa contemptuously, 'that to be base-born makes you a fourth-rate son of a fourth-rate little country?

I do not ask,' said Dee. 'You note I do not ask—but I would swear, by all I have learned, that you are Scorpio.' 'With the sting in the tail?' Lymond said. 'You are probably right.

He said, 'Then you don't know, Philippa, what I am.' 'I know what you think you are,' Philippa said.

Every other woman since Eve,' he said. 'Except you.

Other people married young, to men they didn't know, and had no dispensation such as she had. To sleep alone; to plan her own destiny. A virgin married, with a son not her own….Kate always said, thought Philippa, blinking, that the Somervilles were mad to a man.

Mother of God, Francis Crawford of Lymond, you've made a slut of your art, have you not, as well as a whore of yourself?

You don't understand,' she said. In her lap, the loose hands had ground together: between the fair brows a single line showed, of anger and disgust and a kind of futile perplexity. 'You don't understand: how can you? You were born into a household, with parents and wealth; you knew your friends and your enemies; you knew your position in life; whom you were fighting for: whom you were against. I am alone. Every man is my enemy.

As everyone keeps insisting, parentage doesn't matter. Love him for what he is.

Mariotta, collecting her wits, produced the only deterrent she could think of. "Your mother is in there." He received this with tranquil pleasure. "Then one person at least should recognize me," Crawford of Lymond said, and pushed the door gently open for her to walk through.

I do not exist. What you have in your hand is my death certificate.

What I am?' he said. He laughed. 'Don't wait. Ask anyone in London, or Malta, or Russia.' He made his way to the casement and flung it open. The rumour of a crowd, muffled hitherto by the windowpanes, burst fresh upon them. The courtyard and the road beyond the gardens were jostling with people, and the name they were calling was audible: Sevigny. Sevigny. Sevigny.

We are not a problem people, we are people with problems.

What is repugnant to every human being is to be reckoned always as a member of a class and not as an individual person.

But -- my dear, my heart is BROKEN! I have seen the perfect Peter Wimsey. Height, voice, charm, smile, manner, outline of features, everything -- and he is -- THE CHAPLAIN OF BALLIOL!! What is the use of anything? ... I am absolutely shattered by this Balliol business. Such waste -- why couldn't he have been an actor?

Our speculations about Shakespeare are almost as multifarious and foolish as our speculations about the maker of the universe, and, like those, are frequently concerned to establish that his works were not made by him but by another person of the same name.