“I am not sure,' Mordecai told Thomas, 'whether omens can be trusted.'
'Of course they can.'
'I should like to hear your reasons. But show me your urine first.'
'You said I was cured,' Thomas protested. 'Eternal vigilance, dear Thomas, is the price of health. Piss for me.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Vagabond
“It was while he was on the tower that
Robbie came to the rampart beneath.
'I want you to look at this,' Robbie called up to him, and flourished a newly painted shield. 'You like it?'
Thomas peered down and, in the moonlight, saw something red. 'What is it?' he asked. 'A blood smear?'
'You blind English bastard,' Robbie said, 'it's the red heart of Douglas!'
'Ah. From up here it looks like
something died on the shield.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Vagabond
“People like mystery. They want nothing explained, because when things are explained then there is no hope left. I have seen folk dying and known there is nothing to be done, and I am asked to go because the priest will soon arrive with his dish covered by a cloth, and everyone prays for a miracle. It never happens. And the person dies and I get blamed, not God or the priest, but I!”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Vagabond
“You're giving up the hunt for de Taillebourg?' Thomas asked. He had learned the priest's name from Robbie. 'No.' Robbie still had his head back as he stared at the magnificence of the transept's ceiling. 'I'll find him and then I'll gralloch the bastard.' Thomas did not know what gralloch meant, but decided the word was bad news for de Taillebourg.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Vagabond
“Does that girl work here?' Robbie asked, gesturing at the screen behind which Mary had disappeared. 'All her life,' Sir Giles said. 'You remember Mary, Thomas?' 'I tried to drown her when we were both children,' Thomas said.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Vagabond
“The first stone, thrown by Hellgiver, crashed through the roof of a dyer's house close to St Brieuc's church and took off the heads of an English man-at-arms and the dyer's wife. A joke went through the garrison that the two bodies were so crushed together by the boulder that they would go on coupling throughout eternity.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Vagabond
“The Holy Grail, the most precious of all Christ’s bequests to man, lost these thousand years and more, and he could see it glowing in the sky like shining blood and about it, bright as the glittering crown of a saint, rays of dazzling shimmer filled the heaven. Thomas”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Vagabond
“If the leader is a good man he will be liked and if he’s not, he won’t, and if he is a good man and a bad leader then he is better off dead.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Vagabond
“It baffles me when I see people saying, ‘I don’t focus on racism. I focus on sexism.’ It leaves me saddened when I hear people saying, ‘You’re OK, but you’re not.’ It makes people, in my opinion, guilty of the same crimes of thoughtlessness that lead to these problems […] Because that person on the bus being harassed is still being harassed whether she’s being harassed for being religious or for being an atheist or being black or being a woman or because of her clothing or because of her body-language or because of her appearance or because of her handbag or because of her accent. That’s all the same problem. It’s not recognizing the basic humanity of a person […] That’s the problem.”
― Laura Bates, quote from Everyday Sexism
“We're only passers-by, and all you can do is love what you have in your life. A person has to fight the meanness that sometimes comes with you when you're born, sometimes grows if you aren't in lucky surroundings. It's our challenge to fend it off, leave it behind us choking and gasping for breath in the mud. It's our task to seek out something with truth for us, no matter if there is a hundred-mile obstacle course in the way, or a ramshackle old farmhouse that binds and binds.”
― Jane Hamilton, quote from The Book of Ruth
“Little Lamb, who made thee Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bid thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Little Lamb, I'll tell thee; Little Lamb, I'll tell thee: He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb He is meek, and He is mild, He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little Lamb, God bless thee! Little Lamb, God bless thee!
- The Lamb”
― William Blake, quote from The Complete Poems
“We'd need a miracle," he says. "A real one. Do you think those happen anymore?”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Once Was Lost
“The girl's arms jutted out at awkward angles, not quite hands on the hips belligerent but not relaxed either, as if they weren't all the way under the girl's control. "I came to find you."
"I didn't know. If I'd known..."
"It doesn't matter now." The girl's attention was unwavering. "This is where you are.”
― Melissa Marr, quote from Graveminder
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