If you understand everything,’ I said carefully, ‘then there’s no room left for magic. It’s only when you’re lost and frightened and in the dark that you call on the Gods, and they like us to call on them. It makes them feel powerful, and that’s why they like us to live in chaos.
BERNARD CORNWELLKnow that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.
More Bernard Cornwell Quotes
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I’ll happily mentor anyone who wants mentoring, and most of that goes on by internet rather than face to face.
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Writing is a solitary occupation.
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I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the first book had not sold… doesn’t bear thinking about, but I suppose we’d have made it work somehow.
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You’ll call me damned Jew, a Christ murderer, a secret worshipper of pigs and a kidnapper of Christian children. How absurd! Who would want to kidnap children, Christian or otherwise? Vile things.
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Of course some days are easier than others, but my worst day is better than being in most humdrum occupations.
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We don’t build,’ I said to my son, ‘we just destroy.
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We make children and wealth and amass land and build halls and assemble armies and give great feasts, but only one thing survives us. Reputation.
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I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,” I heard myself saying, “and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them.
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The only mercy of children is that they grow up, as my son has but then, tragically, they beget more children. We do not learn life’s lessons.
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The bards sing of love, they celebrate slaughter, they extol kings and flatter queens, but were I a poet I would write in praise of friendship.
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And yes, there’s a simplicity to writing books because you’re not a member of a team, so you make all the decisions yourself instead of deferring to a committee.
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Latin! The language of God! Or perhaps He speaks Hebrew? I suppose that’s more likely and it will make things rather awkward in heaven, won’t it? Will we all have to learn Hebrew?
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Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation… Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.
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Life is a jest of the Gods and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh… or else you’ll weep yourself to death.
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Because there could not be peace, not while two tribes shared one land. One tribe must win. Even the nailed god cannot change that truth. And I was a warrior, and in a world at war the warrior must be cruel.
BERNARD CORNWELL