Facts are the soil from which the story grows. Imagination is a last resort.
Dorothy DunnettWhen you ran that roof race with me you started with one stocking marked, a loose row of bullion on your hoqueton, and your hair needing a cut. Your manners, social and personal, derive directly from the bakehouse; your living quarters, any time I have seen them, have been untidy and ill-cleaned. In the swordplay just now you cut consistently to the left, a habit so remarkable that you must have been warned time and again; and you cannot parry a coup de Jarnac. I tried you with the same feint for it three times tonight.... These are professional matters, Robin. To succeed as you want, you have to be precise; you have to have polish; you have to carry polish and precision in everything you do. You have no time to sigh over seigneuries and begrudge other people their gifts. Lack of genius never held anyone back,' said Lymond. 'Only time wasted on resentment and daydreaming can do that. You never did work with your whole brain and your whole body at being an Archer; and you ended neither soldier nor seigneur, but a dried-out huddle of grudges strung cheek to cheek on a withy.
Dorothy Dunnett[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 True for you, you had withdrawn the crutch from his sight, but still it should have been there in your hand, ready for him.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 DunnettI would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.
Dorothy DunnettWhere are the links of the chain ... joining us to the past?
Dorothy DunnettYou have only to lift your hand,' Thorkel Fostri said. And after a moment, 'What else were you born for?'
'Why not happiness, like other men?" Thorfinn said.
'You have that,' said his foster-father. 'But if you try to trap it, it will change. Why do you resist? It is your right.'
'I resist because it is no use resisting,' Thorfinn said. 'Do you not think that is unfair? I shall be King because I was King; and I shall die because I did die; and did I remember them, I could even tell what are the three ways it might befall me.
The coast's a jungle of Moors, Turks, Jews, renegades from all over Europe, sitting in palaces built from the sale of Christian slaves. There are twenty thousand men, women and children in the bagnios of Algiers alone. I am not going to make it twenty thousand and one because your mother didn't allow you to keep rabbits, or whatever is at the root of your unshakable fixation."
"I had weasels instead," said Philippa shortly.
"Good God," said Lymond, looking at her. "That explains a lot.
A man of over thirty might be held to be at the height of his powers, but not necessarily of his wisdom.
Dorothy DunnettThen she said, "Thorfinn!" quickly, and moved to him; but had hardly got to his side before he loosed his fingers and thumbs and plunged them down to the mattress like spear-points.
"No!Macbeth. Macbeth. Macbeth!" the name reached her like sling-shot.
Groa said, "They are the same man. I should know. I married both.
The English make bonny speeches, but they run to an awful wee man. And the Kerrs . . . there’s something unchancy about a left-handed race.’
‘I’m right-handed,’ offered Will Scott.
‘Aye.’
‘And six foot three in my hose.’
‘Uh-huh. I didna say I wanted to run up a beanpole. Nor have I heard hide nor hair of a speech, bonny or otherwise.’
‘I’m saving it,’ he said austerely, ‘till I’ve the theme for it.’
‘Oh!’ said Grizel Beaton (Younger) of Buccleuch, with a squeal of delight. ‘Will Scott! Are we having our first married set-to?
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