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Dorothy Dunnett QUOTES

Dorothy Dunnett QUOTES

1 " Only eight months had gone since Henry VIII of England had been suspended in death, there to lie like Mohammed’s coffin, hardly in the Church nor out of it, attended by his martyrs and the acidulous fivefold ghosts of his wives. King Francis of France, stranded by his neighbour’s death in the midst of a policy so advanced, so brilliant and so intricate that it should at last batter England to the ground, and be damned to the best legs in Europe—Francis, bereft of these sweet pleasures, dwindled and died likewise. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)

2 " Words is but wind but dunts is the devil "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)

3 " For an hour, blended with all she could offer, something noble had been created which had nothing to do with the physical world. And from the turn of his throat, the warmth of his hair, the strong, slender sinews of his hands, something further; which had. Though she combed the earth and searched through the smoke of the galaxies there was no being she wanted but this, who was not and should not be for Philippa Somerville. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)

4 " But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)

5 " I am in love-desire, and unless you take me now, I shall fall in pieces...but I do not think I can be moderate. Forgive me, forgive me...'

But her breathing was as changed now as his, and all order retreating before the strength of the living force beating about them. She pressed the latch, and set the last door to lie open.
'Khush geldi: welcome: thou art come happily,' she said gently, and let him come, where he belonged, within her gouvernance. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)

6 " And then his true courtship of her had its beginning; and to the worship of his body, he joined the fairest garlands from the treasure-house of his mind, and made a bower for her.

Adored; caressed into delight; conducted by delicate paths into ravishing labyrinths where pleasure, like carillons on glass, played upon pleasure, she leaned on his voice, and sometimes answered it. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)

7 " And then the blue eyes, with gentleness, scanned all her new-made body and came to rest on her eyes. 'I have begun to eat,' said Francis Crawford. 'And I have begun to slake my thirst. But in you I have found a banquet under the heavens that will serve me for ever. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)

8 " My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby's best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it. Says O'LiamRoe "

― Dorothy Dunnett

9 " At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. ‘I cannot swim. You know it?”

In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. ‘Trust me.’ And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Disorderly Knights (The Lymond Chronicles, #3)

10 " You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , Checkmate (The Lymond Chronicles, #6)

11 " I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)

12 " I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Disorderly Knights (The Lymond Chronicles, #3)

13 " Today,’ said Lymond, ‘if you must know, I don’t like living at all. But that’s just immaturity boggling at the sad face of failure. Tomorrow I’ll be bright as a bedbug again. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Disorderly Knights (The Lymond Chronicles, #3)

14 " Repressively, Lymond himself answered. “I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody ‘got’ me,” he said. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)

15 " Jerott, for God’s sake! Are you doing this for a wager?’ said Lymond, his patience gone at last. ‘What does anyone want out of life? What kind of freak do you suppose I am? I miss books and good verse and decent talk. I miss women, to speak to, not to rape; and children, and men creating things instead of destroying them. And from the time I wake until the time I find I can’t go to sleep there is the void—the bloody void where there was no music today and none yesterday and no prospect of any tomorrow, or tomorrow, or next God-damned year. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Disorderly Knights (The Lymond Chronicles, #3)

16 " I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles, #1)

17 " Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , The Disorderly Knights (The Lymond Chronicles, #3)

18 " It was one of the occasions when Lymond asleep wrecked the peace of mind of more people than Lymond awake. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , Queens' Play (The Lymond Chronicles, #2)

19 " [Robin Stewart] was your man. True for you, you had withdrawn the crutch from his sight, but still it should have been there in your hand, ready for him. For you are a leader-don't you know it? I don't, surely, need to tell you?-And that is what leadership means. It means fortifying the fainthearted and giving them the two sides of your tongue while you are at it. It means suffering weak love and schooling it till it matures. It means giving up you privicies, your follies and your leasure. It means you can love nothing and no one too much, or you are no longer a leader, you are led. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , Queens' Play (The Lymond Chronicles, #2)

20 " I have learned,’ said Lymond, ‘that kindness without love is no kindness. "

― Dorothy Dunnett , Pawn in Frankincense (The Lymond Chronicles, #4)