Home > Author > S.M. Stirling
1 " Leading means running fast enough to keep ahead of your people "
― S.M. Stirling , The Sunrise Lands (Emberverse, #4)
2 " Sacredness grew like a pearl, sometimes around the most unlikely bits of grit. "
― S.M. Stirling , Lord of Mountains (Emberverse, #9)
3 " Because those events are so real that they cast their shadow forward and backwards through all time, whenever men think of these matters at all. Even if they are mired in ignorace, they will see...fragments of the Truth, as men imprisoned in a cave see shadows cast by the sun. Likewise, all men derive their moral intuitions from God; how not? There is no other source, just as there is no other way to make a wheel than to make it round. "
― S.M. Stirling
4 " Now let's move on to the subject of how a real man treats his wife. A real man doesn't slap even a ten-dollar hooker around, if he's got any self respect, much less hurt his own woman. Much less ten times over the mother of his kids. A real man busts his ass to feed his family, fights for them if he has to, dies for them if he has to. And he treats his wife with respect every day of his life, treats her like a queen - the queen of the home she makes for their children. "
― S.M. Stirling , Dies the Fire (Emberverse, #1)
5 " You can learn by listening, or by getting whacked between the eyes with a two-by-four. I always found listening easier. "
― S.M. Stirling , The Protector's War (Emberverse, #2)
6 " It is easy to kill. It is equally easy to destroy glass windows. Any fool can do either. Why is it only the wise who perceive that it is wisdom to let live, when even lunatics can sometimes understand that it is better to open a window than to smash the glass? "
― S.M. Stirling , The Scourge of God (Emberverse, #5)
7 " Stress" is mostly the result of not being allowed to kill some asshole you really want to slice and dice. "
― S.M. Stirling , The Sword of the Lady (Emberverse, #6)
8 " 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. "
9 " It doesn't stop being magic because you can you explain it, Father. "
10 " Be your own judge. But commit no trespass, remembering that where another's liberty begins your own inevitably meets its boundary. "
11 " But then they were males, and therefore idiots about some things. "
12 " There may be a worse form of government than theocracy in the long run, but offhand I can't think of any. "
― S.M. Stirling , A Meeting at Corvallis (Emberverse, #3)
13 " Manure grew the fodder for the cow that made that ice cream and fertilized the beets that gave us the sugar, my girl," Juniper said sternly. "Earth must be fed or we all go hungry. "
14 " God is no respecter of either persons or names - Dieu or Gott or Kyrie or Adonai or Wakantanka. He is the Great Spirit whose pity we ask. "
15 " Sure it is that They have many faces. All the shapes the Divine shows us are true; and none are all the Truth. "
― S.M. Stirling , The High King of Montival (Emberverse, #7)
16 " Ah, well, old girl, remember the definition of an Anglo-Saxon: A German who's forgotten his grandmother was Welsh. "
― S.M. Stirling , The Tears of the Sun (Emberverse, #8)
17 " Truth is a ladder of many rungs, and that from each we gain a new perspective?″ "
18 " Being ignorant is truly bliss compared to being misinformed, especially if you’re aware of the depths of your own ignorance. As Mother says, it isn’t what you don’t know that will kill you, it’s what you think you know that just isn’t so. "
― S.M. Stirling , The Given Sacrifice (Emberverse, #10)
19 " ... and he kills without fear, or anger, or hate, with regret even, simply because its necessary. That's rare, and it's rare still among the really first-rate. God help the enemy that finally frightens him or makes him mad. "
20 " 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. "
