S.M. Stirling

“Ah, well, old girl, remember the definition of an Anglo-Saxon: A German who's forgotten his grandmother was Welsh.”

“. . . you should always kick a man when he's down. It's much easier then.”

“It was hard, to be stripped of the cold comforts of her simple atheistic faith in middle-age. The more so as the evidence seemed to lead to the conclusion that all the religions were true, including the ones that flatly contradicted each other.”

“Sacredness grew like a pearl, sometimes around the most unlikely bits of grit.”

“Sure it is that They have many faces. All the shapes the Divine shows us are true; and none are all the Truth.”

“Clan custom and law held that it was the public declaration of intent and then living together that made a handfasting; the ceremonies simply bore witness to it and asked blessings and luck of the Powers on the new family. He knew Christians thought that the ceremony was the marriage, though.”

“He was of the Old Religion, like nearly all Mackenzies, and wouldn't object to a Catholic ceremony - his faith taught that all paths to the Divine were valid. Christians tended to be a little more exclusive.”

“Stress" is mostly the result of not being allowed to kill some asshole you really want to slice and dice.”

“Sandra was fond of an old Russian saying: When a man causes you a problem, remember: no man, no problem.”

“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.”

“God is the greatest of artists! How good of Him to give us this world, and the change to imitate Him by bettering it. Wryly: If only we did not mar it, and ourselves, so often!”

“Be your own judge. But commit no trespass, remembering that where another's liberty begins your own inevitably meets its boundary.”

“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?”

“Testosterone rots the brain . . .”

“Mackenzies buried a rapist at a crossroads, with a spear thrust in the soil above; and they buried him living when they could, as a sacrifice to turn aside the anger of the Earth Powers.”

“It doesn't stop being magic because you can you explain it, Father.”

“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.”

“But then they were males, and therefore idiots about some things.”

“Fear worked both ways - if you suppressed the physical symptoms, it calmed your mind.”

“Myths are lies; but I believe in the power of myths the way I believe in rocks.”

“Strange, isn't it, that it's always more difficult to talk people out of killing each other than into it?”

“Against fashion, even tyrants struggle in vain, she thought.”

“There may be a worse form of government than theocracy in the long run, but offhand I can't think of any.”

“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.”

“(Referring to an obsession with Tolkien's Middle Earth): I meet a beautiful American heiress, I like her, she likes me . . . and then she turns out to be a fundamentalist with a more literal interpretation of scripture than I feel comfortable with. Only our bible was written by an Oxford don about sixty years ago.”

“You can learn by listening, or by getting whacked between the eyes with a two-by-four. I always found listening easier.”

“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.”

“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.”

“He smiled, looking into the flames. "He used to sleep on the foot of my bed, bad breath and gas and all, and I even took him hunting.""It's odd to take a dog hunting?""Max? Yeah, sort of like taking along a brass band. He saved a lot of deer from death.”

“(Dennis says) "Hey, you're playing confuse-the-unbeliever again. I have never been able to get a straight answer on whether you guys have two deities or dozens, taken from any pantheon you feel like mugging in a theological dark alley. Which is it? Number one or number two?" "Yes," Juniper said, with all the other coven members joining in to make a ragged chorus...”

“The others saw him as he stumbled down the stairs, bleeding from nose and ears and eyes an mouth. The sheathed form of the Sword lay across his palms. He met their eyes, and choked out:"Remember. Remember, all of you."Mathilda's voice was infinitely gentle. "Remember what?""That I was a man, before I was King. Remember for me, when I forget.His hand closed on the black double-lobed hilt, and the moonfire in the opal glowed. He drew the Sword, thrust it high.And screamed as pain beyond all bearing ripped through him like white fire, turning his body to a thing of ash smoke.He screamed, and knew.”

“The knife he held was obsidian, sharp enough to cut a dream.”

“... 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.”

“Likes to fight, does he?" Sandra said thoughtfully."Oh, yeah. He says there are only two reasons to fight." "Which are?""Joy and death."Her mother's brows went up. "Joy in death?""No, no... For joy, to stretch yourself with a friend; or death, to kill as quickly as you can. Nothing in between.”

“I was father to the land. I saved my people. I was... King."By... earth," he said, more a movement of the lips than a thing of the throat and air. "By... sky..."Another breath, and it did hurt a little now. The next was harder. The women leaned over him, the mothers of his children. He blinked once more. His own mother, her black braids swinging as she rocked his hurt away. She was singing to him:"Manabozho saw some ducksHey, hey, heya heySaid 'Come little brothers, sing and dance';Hey, hey, heya hey--”

“And the first king was a lucky soldier.”

“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.”