You must have faith. Miracles make belief easy, which is why you should never pray for one. Much better to find God through faith than through miracles.

We make oaths, we make choices, but fate makes our decisions.

You never, ever, tell others of your crimes, not unless they are so big as to be incapable of concealment, and then you describe them as policy or statecraft.

When a man must choose between nothing and everything he has small choice.

Always fight the horse, not the rider.

I liked those tales. They were better than my stepmother’s stories of Cuthbert’s miracles. Christians, it seemed to me, were forever weeping and I did not think Woden’s worshippers cried much.

All those separate people were a part of my life, strings strung on the frame of Uhtred, and though they were separate they affected one another and together they would make the music of my life.

To ask another man’s blessing is simply to avoid taking the responsibility.

Fear might work on a man, but confidence fights against fear.

Cowardice is always with us, and bravery, the thing that provokes the poets to make their songs about us, is merely the will to overcome the fear.