I’m fortunate that the books sell, but even more fortunate to live in Chatham, to be very happily married and to have, on the whole, a fairly clear conscience.
BERNARD CORNWELLOf course some days are easier than others, but my worst day is better than being in most humdrum occupations.
More Bernard Cornwell Quotes
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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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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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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.
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Know 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.
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This is our land, mixed with our blood, strengthened with our bone. Ours!
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Then you start another book and suddenly the galley proofs of the last one come in and you have to wrench your attention away from what you’re writing and try to remember what you were thinking when you wrote the previous one.
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We discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination. Love is a voyage too, a voyage with no destination except death, but a voyage of bliss.
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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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A man does not see where he treads in battle, for he is watching the enemy.
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Book tours and research provide a lot of travel – too much, I sometimes think, but we do take vacations.
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We don’t build,’ I said to my son, ‘we just destroy.
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Research is a lifelong occupation so it’s hard to factor it in, but I reckon most books take 5 months from start to finish.
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Every day is ordinary, until it isn’t.
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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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Only a fool wants war, but once a war starts then it cannot be fought half-heartedly. It cannot even be fought with regret, but must be waged with a savage joy in defeating the enemy, and it is that savage joy that inspires our bards to write their greatest songs about love and war.
BERNARD CORNWELL