Sarah Dunant · 368 pages
Rating: (21.6K votes)
“If grace belongs to God, there are those who say that luck belongs to the Devil and that he looks after his own.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“Outside, the city is changing. While we have been talking of God's laws and seacrets of the earth, a cold fog has come rolling off the sea, pushing through the allys, sliding over the water, rubbing up agienst the cold stone. As I walk the street falls away behind me, the shop's blue awning lost within seconds. People move like ghosts, their voices disconnected from their bodies; as fast as they loom up they dissapear agien. The fog is so dense that by the time I have crossed toward the Merceria, I can barely see the ground under my feet or tell if the gloom is weather of the beginning of dusk.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“I listen to people talking sometimes, that great river that is language, with all its undercurrents of grammar and nuance, and I wonder how we all learn so quickly to speak it, given that we begin when we are barely old enough to stand upright. I have no memory of finding it hard. Indeed, I have no memory of it at all.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“It is the ones who keep you in thrall to more than their snatches who command the houses and the gowns to go with them. And for that they have first to love themselves.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“in the chaos of war, I would have looked simply small, and therefore neither a promise nor a threat.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“I know what she is thinking. That she will never have those feelings. And she wants to have them. Oh, how much she wants to...I have seen it before, the way women yearn more for a child when they have fallen in love. It is part of the disease, like the ague that goes with fever. Maybe the real lover's prick goes deep enough to ignite some loning in the womb. Maybe it is the promise of a future, something left over once the passion is spent.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“beauty is your gift from God and it should be used and not squandered. Study this face as if it were a map of the ocean, your own trade route to the Indies. For it will bring you its own fortune. But always believe what the glass tells you. Because while others will try to flatter you, it has no reason to lie.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“no one bothered dressing up in priests’ robes, for even in chaos hierarchy rules and their cloth wasn’t rich enough.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“Venice the peaceful demands Venice the just.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“He turned to see three kids at his side. Tish and the two little boys. He had to admit the boys looked pretty normal to him — apart from the fact that they were both laden down with armour and weapons, and the dark harked one appeared to be wearing a dress, like they were on their way to a fancy-dress party.”
― Charlie Higson, quote from The Sacrifice
“Why would you do that for me?” Leesha asked.
Rojer smiled, taking her hand in his crippled one. “We're survivors, aren't we?” he asked. “Someone once told me that survivors have to look out for one another.”
― Peter V. Brett, quote from The Painted Man
“I tend to flood and freeze up if I’m feeling overwhelmed. When this happens, it’s usually because I feel like the world is crashing down and all is lost. One trick I’ve learned is to force myself to make a list of what’s actually wrong. Usually, soon into making the list, I find I can group most of the issues into two or three larger all-encompassing problems. So it’s really not all that bad. Having a finite list of problems is much better than having an illogical feeling that everything is wrong.”
― Ed Catmull, quote from Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
“Then, all of a sudden, there was a great black hull, stretching farther than my eye could see.”
― Ellen Emerson White, quote from Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, R.M.S. Titanic, 1912
“This girl's out of her mind, about two pebbles short of a cave-in.”
― David Estes, quote from The Earth Dwellers
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