“Tobie. Unless I'm giving off steam, behave normally. I remember what to do. One foot in front of the other, but not both at the same time unless I'm a robin.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Spring of the Ram
“Well, get the coffer out," said Tobie roundly. "You find his clean clothes and I'll cut his hair round his cap and wash his ears out. Then, when we get to the Palazzo Medici, you imitate his voice and I'll sit him on my knee and move his arms up and down. Where is the problem?”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Spring of the Ram
“Your state has been seen, and will be reported on. Only it is necessary that you do not yawn. Or, of course, speak. Discretion in all things in all things is needed." She was reminding them, and she hoped they realised it, that they were not circumcised. The circumlocution expected of a high-born Syrian princess was sometimes a trial to Sara Khatun.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Spring of the Ram
“Julius rose to his feet. The towel dropped, showering cut brown hair over Monna Alessandra's elegant tiles. His hair, finely tailored, clung to a thick-boned face with slanting eyes and a blunt profile which would have looked well on a coin. Tobie, who had almost no hair, gazed at him sadly.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Spring of the Ram
“Julius brooded. He could see Julius despising the medical school of Pavia. Tobie said, "Nicholas managed the journey from Flanders all right. Deferred to you, joked discreetly with me, got on like a dyeworks on fire with the muleteers.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, quote from The Spring of the Ram
Dorothy Dunnett
Born place: in Dunfermline, Scotland, The United Kingdom
Born date August 25, 1923
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“Vladimir Putin portrayed himself as an avowed democrat. And yet even then, at the dawn of democracy in Russia, he warned that the imperative of the strong state—and the people’s willingness to accept, even desire it—remained part of the collective Russian temperament.”
― quote from The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin
“Dandelion, staring into the dying embers, sat much longer, alone, quietly strumming his lute. It began with a few bars, from which an elegant, soothing melody emerged. The lyric suited the melody, and came into being simultaneously with it, the words bending into the music, becoming set in it like insects in translucent, golden lumps of amber.
The ballad told of a certain witcher and a certain poet. About how the witcher and the poet met on the seashore, among the crying of seagulls, and how they fell in love at first sight. About how beautiful and powerful was their love. About how nothing - not even death - was able to destroy that love and part them.
Dandelion knew that few would believe the story told by the ballad, but he was not concerned. He knew ballads were not written to be believed, but to move their audience.
Several years later, Dandelion could have changed the contents of the ballad and written about what had really occurred. He did not. For the true story would not have move anyone. Who would have wanted to hear that the Witcher and Little Eye parted and never, ever, saw each other again? About how four years later Little Eye died of the smallpox during an epidemic raging in Vizima? About how he, Dandelion, had carried her out in his arms between corpses being cremated on funeral pyres and buried her far from the city, in the forest, alone and peaceful, and, as she had asked, buried two things with her: her lute and her sky blue pearl. The pearl from which she was never parted.
No, Dandelion stuck with his first version. And he never sang it. Never. To no one.
Right before the dawn, while it was still dark, a hungry, vicious werewolf crept up to their camp, but saw that it was Dandelion, so he listened for a moment and then went on his way.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, quote from Sword of Destiny
“Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.”
― Lewis Carroll, quote from The Annotated Alice
“Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West
“But just understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I--well, you may say that at present, I do nothing; but that's a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell, he'll get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct profits.”
― George Gissing, quote from New Grub Street
Diaspora
Glimmerglass
The Wedding
Proof of Heaven: A N...
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