“But fate, as Merlin always taught us, is inexorable. Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you'll just weep y...”

“You will not say how you are haunted by the faces of the men you killed, how in their last gasp of life they sought your pity and you had none. You will not speak of the boys who died screaming for...”

“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.”

“A sad, plangent music. In the British camp, Sharpe thought, they would be singing, but no one was singing here.”

“Some had hurled spears first. Those spears thumped into our shields, making them unwieldy, but it hardly mattered. The leading Danes tripped on the hidden timbers and the men behind pushed the fall...”

“Poor Uther. He believed that virtues are handed down through a man's loins! What nonsense! A child is like a calf; if the thing is born crippled you knock it smartly on the skull and serve the cow ...”

“It is for your own good to love a dare-devil rather than a holy coward. A dare-devil is a unique devil, battling your fears, your pains, conquering your uncertainties, carrying you his arms, and fl...”

“Life is not a battle to win but a melody to sing.”

“Every man should lose a battle in his youth, so he does not lose a war when he is old.”

“Tess was awake before dawn at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct ...”

“Our wings serve as flippers that carry us across the ocean; not in the sky!Why, us penguins have so much fun time in the water, we don't even want to fly!”

“The dead never truly die. They simply change form.”