367 Quotes by Bernard Cornwell

I believe the Gods hate to be bored, so I do my best to amuse them. That way they smile on me. Your God,’ Merlin said sourly, ’despises amusement, demanding grovelling worship instead. He must be a very sorry creature.

At sea, sometimes, if you take a ship too far from land and the wind rises and the tide sucks with a venomous force and the waves splinter white above the shield-pegs, you have no choice but to go where the gods will.

Putting a cat into a stable doesn’t make it a horse.

My dear Lord,’ I said, but not to him. I spoke to Arthur. And I watched and wept, my arm around Ceinwyn, as the pale boat was swallowed by the shimmering silver mist. And so my Lord was gone. And no one has seen him since.

Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.

Everyone looks old to the young,” Ravn said.

The poets, when they speak of war, talk of the shield wall, they talk of the spears and arrows flying, of the blade beating on the shield, of the heroes who fall and the spoils of the victors, but I was to discover that war was really about food. About feeding men and horses. About finding food. The army that eats wins.

Passion, Baird reckoned, was what would take men across the river and up the breach. Damn scientific soldiering now. The science of siege warfare had opened the city, but only a screaming and insane passion would take men inside.

I suspect most copies were used to wipe arses or light fires.