S.M. Stirling Quotes & Sayings

And the first king was a lucky soldier. — S.M. Stirling

Good to have powerful friends. Even better to be a powerful friend, neh? — S.M. Stirling

There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot. — S.M. Stirling

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. — S.M. Stirling

Bad writers have influences. Good writers steal. — S.M. Stirling

You can learn by listening, or by getting whacked between the eyes with a two-by-four. I always found listening easier. — S.M. Stirling

Sometimes the harshest lessons were the most valuable. — S.M. Stirling

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. — S.M. Stirling

pedal cars, so it went quickly. I was at my Order's new chapter house on our mission farm at Drumheller, and I carried it on snowshoes and skis over the mountain passes and down to Barony Vernon in the Okanogan country. Then by horse and rail to the Columbia and Portland. I came all the way myself rather than handing — S.M. Stirling

Words mean what they're generally believed to mean. When Charles II saw Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral for the first time, he called it "awful, pompous, and artificial." Meaning roughly: Awesome, majestic, and ingenious. — S.M. Stirling

Sacredness grew like a pearl, sometimes around the most unlikely bits of grit. — S.M. Stirling

They waited. Reiko let the silence and the sounds fill her. Having thought, I have acted, she thought. Let the arrow fly. In — S.M. Stirling

To take life was to understand your own death
that the Hour of the Huntsman also came for you. — S.M. Stirling

. . . you should always kick a man when he's down. It's much easier then. — S.M. Stirling

O God, You know me to be set in the midst of great peril. Grant me such strength of mind and body, that those evils which I suffer for my sins I may overcome through Thy assistance. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. — S.M. Stirling

Strange, isn't it, that it's always more difficult to talk people out of killing each other than into it? — S.M. Stirling

Many are the marvels of God's Creation, but none so marvelous as man. Or so cunning, for good or ill. — S.M. Stirling

Love isn't like money
the more you give away the more you get back, and the more you have to give. — S.M. Stirling

Leading means running fast enough to keep ahead of your people. — S.M. Stirling

A libertarian is someone who can believe that the police are no more than a gang of thugs without realizing that in the absence of police, thugs will gather into gangs. — S.M. Stirling

The heart has its reasons that the mind knows not? — S.M. Stirling

The Mackenzie had never met folk so poor in story and song and legends, and it moved him to a pity that pricked at his eyes. Without that tapestry of colour and words and ritual, what was life but eating and mating, sleeping and moving your bowels? All of them good and necessary, but not enough; and they themselves needed that framework too, to give them meaning. — S.M. Stirling

A fighter should not think only of his shete, just because he has a shete in his hand. Everything is a weapon in the warrior's mind. — S.M. Stirling

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? — S.M. Stirling

necessity had no respect for law. Even custom must bow to it at times. — S.M. Stirling

Nothing's free and only the cheaper things can be bought with money. — S.M. Stirling

I'm always diplomatic when heavily outnumbered by armed strangers. — S.M. Stirling

His grandmother had said to him once, smiling slightly, that if you compelled people to behave as if they believed something eventually all but the strongest-willed really did start to believe it, because it was easier on their pride than admitting every moment in the privacy of their soul that they were pretending. — S.M. Stirling

Stress" is mostly the result of not being allowed to kill some asshole you really want to slice and dice. — S.M. Stirling