12 Quotes by L.H. Leonard

An ember burns crimson beneath the black coals. A fire left for dead, forgotten. I crouch and cup my hands. I remember its promise. In the rush of my breath, the ember glows brighter. It remembers, too.

Wit is a sword. Comedy is a wolf hidden amidst the sheep. A few clever words can crumble even the hardest held prejudices.

My dear, maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’ve grown old. I speak my mind because I’m no longer expected to bite my tongue. Age is a high price to pay for the liberty, and I intend to enjoy it.

Age whittles away at beauty, chips away at strength, and erodes sharpness of mind. Few are born with a notable endowment of any of those traits. Fewer still manage to fend off the merciless attack of time. Rotharia had battled its ravages and held her own for far longer than most.

If ever a man was too clever for his own good, it was the learned Daor Ranald. A middle-aged scholar with silver-rimmed spectacles and a curly brown mop of hair that refused any efforts at taming, he was always moving, talking, or reading. Often all at once.

Pastor Ben Bonner was a balding man with a face lined by laughter and pain, and eyes that always held more hope than despair. Barely as tall as Calum’s chest but stout as an oak, he clasped Calum’s forearm and pulled him into a fatherly embrace.

Of average size for a plow horse, but conspicuously large for a man, the Buchanan shouldered between his companions with the apologetic restraint of one accustomed to fitting his bulk into an undersized world and wishing it wouldn’t cower like that.

Fehan’s unremarkable eyes went round as saucers behind the oversized spectacles perched on his narrow nose, making him look like an underfed owl.

Dara pinched the bridge of his nose, no doubt fending off a headache she’d brought on him. Madelyn-induced headaches tended to come on him regularly and had ever since that incident with the snapping turtle when she was ten, although that honestly had not been her fault.“What have you done now?” he said.“Stop looking at me that way,” she said. “It does not inspire confidence.