Dunnett Inc Quotes & Sayings

Why not,' said Gaultier viciously, 'play chess?'

It silenced Lymond. His head went back as if he had been struck, the indrawn air caught in his throat. He said nothing more. — Dorothy Dunnett

He is not going to come back now, for me, for you or for anyone. This time he has found the boatman, and the boatman has taken him over. — Dorothy Dunnett

It would have made a fitting tomb, she supposed, for Thady Boy Ballagh. That it was fitting for Francis Crawford she would not believe. — Dorothy Dunnett

Her eyes popped open in time to see flames shoot up behind the first-floor windows of Angie's Books. Angie! Where was Angie? Where were her children? The bookstore owner lived in the apartment above her shop with sixteen-year-old Beth and twelve-year-old Bradley.
The Moosetookalook Fire Department was located right next door, housed in part of the town's redbrick municipal building. The overhead door had already been raised. As Liss watched, unable to move, unable to look away, the truck pulled out, maneuvering so that it could get closer to the burning building. — Kaitlyn Dunnett

His defences are good. But it is his friends that will bring him low, not his enemies, Lady Culter. Keep you out of his way. That's the best advice I can give you. — Dorothy Dunnett

Don't you think you should retire again? The first retiral seems to have got mislaid. — Dorothy Dunnett

Intolerance drunk is bad enough, but intolerance sober is quite insupportable. — Dorothy Dunnett

It was a piece of advice only, and aimed at myself as much, I suppose, as at you. - For those of easy tongues, she said. Remember, some live all their lives without discovering this truth; that the noblest and most terrible power we possess is the power we have, each of us, over the chance-met, the stranger, the passer-by outside your life and your kin. Speak, she said, as you would write: as if your words were letters of lead, graven there for all time, for which you must take the consequences. And take the consequences. — Dorothy Dunnett

Only eight months had gone since Henry VIII of England had been suspended in death, there to lie like Mohammed's coffin, hardly in the Church nor out of it, attended by his martyrs and the acidulous fivefold ghosts of his wives. King Francis of France, stranded by his neighbour's death in the midst of a policy so advanced, so brilliant and so intricate that it should at last batter England to the ground, and be damned to the best legs in Europe - Francis, bereft of these sweet pleasures, dwindled and died likewise. — Dorothy Dunnett

Every ruin is packed like a biscuit box. — Dorothy Dunnett

Scott, deaf and enchanted in the gallery, and the whole row of pretty heads at his side saw the concerted rush on Lymond: his assailants downed him without malice and eighteen stones of Molly planted themselves on his chest. "A throw!" said Molly, and Lymond, half buried, gave a choked whoop of laughter and raised a defeated hand in signal to Tammas. — Dorothy Dunnett

I dislike untidy wars, as I dislike untidy peacemaking. — Dorothy Dunnett

I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. — Dorothy Dunnett

When Philippa had first demanded his help in eluding Kate and travelling to St Mary's, he had indignantly refused. He was there now because he had discovered, to his astonishment, that she was desperate, and perfectly capable of going without him. Why she had got it into her young head she must see this man Crawford, Cheese-wame didn't know. But after pointing out bitterly that (a) he would lose his job; (b) the rogues in the Debatable would kill them, (c) that she would catch her death of cold and (d) that Kate would never speak to either of them again, he went, his belt filled with knives and her belongings as well as his own in the two saddlebags behind his powerful thighs, while Philippa rode sedately beside him on her smaller horse, green with excitement, with her father's pistol tied to her waist like a ship's log and banging against her thin knees. — Dorothy Dunnett

I prize freedom of the mind above freedom of the body. — Dorothy Dunnett

Courtenay matter. There must be letters. Many of them appear, as you know, to concern the problems of navigation in which he was interested, but it is not difficult to read behind the lines. He died in Padua, and from what I can learn, all his papers were sealed in a casket and locked up by the Bailiff for safety. Rumour has it that Peter Vannes the English Ambassador has been told to — Dorothy Dunnett

That night at Dumbarton was a classic of its kind. She had hopes still, I think, of enslaving me despite myself with her charms. And I probably thought the same. We both found we were mistaken. It had its moments; but she has the mind and morals of a jungle cat. She didn't enjoy meeting ... another of the same. — Dorothy Dunnett

He can make you want to knock him down, if he feels like it, by simply saying "good morning". He possibly said simply "good morning" to Lord Culter. The difference was that, being his brother, Culter hit him. — Dorothy Dunnett

You 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. — Dorothy Dunnett

And deep within him, missing its accustomed tread, his heart paused, and gave one single stroke, as if on an anvil. — Dorothy Dunnett

I," said Lymond, in the voice unmistakably his which honeyed his most lethal thoughts, "I am a narwhal looking for my virgin. I have sucked up the sea like Charybdis and failing other entertainment will spew it three times daily, for a fee. — Dorothy Dunnett

Modern war is fought by a number of strong, sweaty horsemen with constipation, who have their eyes on power, on wealth and on glory, and who obey the rules just when it pleases them. — Dorothy Dunnett

At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. 'I cannot swim. You know it?"

In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. 'Trust me.' And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board. — Dorothy Dunnett

She gave up combing her hair, which the salt air had reduced to a kind of scrim of brown hessian, and, lying down, proceeded to keep her fingernails short in the way Kate admired least. Then she overslept. — Dorothy Dunnett

Darwin Award. That's not a real award, it's a joke. They give them to people who die doing something so stupid that it counts as a service to humanity. — Gregg Dunnett

A versatile commodity, death; except for those suffering it. — Dorothy Dunnett

I made one mistake. Who doesn't? But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands. Of course it left me deformed and unserviceable, defective and dangerous to associate with. ... But what in God's name has happened to charity? ... Self-interest guides me like the next man but not invariably; not all the time. I use compassion more than you do; I have loyalties and I keep by them; I serve honesty in a crooked way, but as best I can; and I don't plague my debtors or even make them aware of their debt. ... Why is it so impossible to trust me? — Dorothy Dunnett

There is a saying of my adoptive ancestors. Though he performs a miracle, or two miracles, if he refuses the third miracle, it is not as profit to him. I shall dine at the Court of France tonight, and in the course of that evening, acquire the royal consent for O'LiamRoe and myself to stay as long as we please. For, to be perfectly frank," said Lymond, gently reflective, "to be perfectly frank, I can't wait to sink my teeth into the most magnificent, the most scholarly and the most dissolute Court in Europe, which so lightly slid out The O'LiamRoe, Chief of the Name, on his kneecaps and whiskers. — Dorothy Dunnett

It was one of the occasions when Lymond asleep wrecked the peace of mind of more people than Lymond awake. — Dorothy Dunnett

Whatever fascination Lymond held for her mother, it had no power at five in the morning. — Dorothy Dunnett