Quotes by British Authors - Page 120

Thirty paces, twenty, and you can see the eyes of the men who will try to kill you, and see the spear-blades, and the instinct is to stop, to straighten the shields. We cringe from battle, fear claws at us, time seems to stop, there is silence though a thousand men shout, and at that moment, when terror savages the heart like a trapped beast, you must hurl yourself into the horror.Because the enemy feels the same.And you have come to kill him. You are the beast from his nightmares.
Bernard Cornwell
That joy. That madness. The gods must feel this way every moment of every day. It is as if the world slows. You see the attacker, you see him shouting, though you hear nothing, and you know what he will do, and all his movements are so slow and yours are so quick, and in that moment you can do no wrong and you will live forever and your name will be blazoned across the heavens in a glory of white fire because you are the god of battle.
Bernard Cornwell
Men do not relish the shield wall. They do not rush to death's embrace. You look ahead and see the overlapping shields, the helmets, the glint of axes and spears and swords, and you know you must go into the reach of those blades, into the place of death, and it takes time to summon the courage, to heat the blood, to let the madness overtake caution.
Bernard Cornwell
It took Caine a few beats to get it. “No. Go kill yourself. Eat your own gun. No. No no no.”“You’re happy here counting fish and nagging kids to work?” Edilio asked.“He’s not,” Virtue said, beating Toto to the punch and earning an annoyed glance from Caine.“He’s only done it for two days since the battle, and he’s already bored.
Michael Grant
For the first time in years, his heart raced, and the old excitement flickered inside him. The excitement of impending battle, clash of arms, danger and glory. Cei had almost forgotten it. To be alive, on the very cusp of death, was the greatest feeling of all.
David Pilling
Those were great big angry men with sharp swords actually wanting to cut pieces off me. It’s not until you’ve seen a red gaping wound and all the complex little bits inside a man all broken up and sliced open, and known that they weren’t ever getting back together again, and vomited your last two meals over the rocks . . . it’s not until then that you understand the business of swords properly and, if you’re a sensible man you vow to have nothing to do with it ever again.
Mark Lawrence
Under the Mountain dark and tallThe King has come unto his hall!His foe is dead,the Worm of Dread,And ever so his foes shall fall.The sword is sharp, the spear is long,The arrow swift, the Gate is strong;The heart is bold that looks on gold;The dwarves no more shall suffer wrong.The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,While hammers fells like ringing bellsIn places deep, where dark things sleep,In hollow halls beneath the fells.-from The Hobbit (Dwarves Battle Song)
J.R.R. Tolkien
And he smote the Balrog upon the mountainside.
J.R.R. Tolkien
[Babbington] "What did [the Doctor, Stephen] do to you, sir?"[Captain Aubrey] "Well, I am ashamed to say he took a pistol-ball out of the small of my back. It must have been when I turned to hail for more hands- thank God I did not. At the time I thought it was one of those vile horses that were capering about abaft the wheel.""Oh, sir, surely a horse would never have fired off a pistol?
Patrick O'Brian
Meantime the clang of the bows and the shouts of the combatants mixed fearfully with the sound of the trumpets, and drowned the groans of those who fell, and lay rolling defenceless beneath the feet of the horses. The splendid armour of the combatants was now defaced with dust and blood, and gave way at every stroke of the sword and battle-axe. The gay plumage, shorn from the crests, drifted upon the breeze like snowflakes. All that was beautiful in the martial array had disappeared, and what was now visibke was only calculated to awaken terror or compassion.
Walter Scott
Then he heard a terrible cry that pulled at his insides, that expressed agony of a kind that neither flame nor curse could cause, and he stood up, swaying, more frightened than he had been that day, more frightened, perhaps, than he had been in his whole life...
J.K. Rowling
You could be together forever, but one of you is going to have to go first. I want it to last. I love him and I want it to stay.
Emma Forrest
...I’m not going anywhere. Remember, I promised. I’m yours now, forever.
Samantha Towle
Only debt is forever.
Charles Stross
Imagine. Freedom. Always.
Edward Rutherfurd
Forever isn't important-it's now that counts. Doing the right thing.
Gemma Malley
Antibiotics, viral tabs, painkillers, sterilisation spray,” Kasyanov said. “Other stuff. Bandages, medicines, contraceptives.Hoop raised an eyebrow.“Hey. Forever is a long time.
Tim Lebbon
Flynn was kissing her again, not to help her forget but to force her to remember. Everything he had meant to her then. Everything he meant to her now. How he always had been, and forever would be, her world.
Kate Meader
My darling I still love you,no matter that you're gone.You'll always be with me,forever and ever more.
Anthony T.Hincks
He says, "You know I love you. Still. Forever".
Sally Green
My mind cannot grasp forever," she told him. "There must surely be an end somewhere. But the big question is-what it beyond the end?
Mary Balogh
How long will you keep me?" I asked.You shrugged. "Forever, of course.
Lucy Christopher
Prices of semicolons, plot devices, prologues and inciting incidents continued to fall yesterday, lopping twenty points off the TomJones Index.
Jasper Fforde
This is a robbery. Sorry for the inconvenience'n'all but if you don't line up out here at the count of five then I'm gonna get all trigger-happy on your ass. One, two...
Philip Webb
Visitation Day - I was not even born yet when the world stopped turning, twenty years ago. It is hard for me to imagine that moment, though I have heard the tale many times, for I have never seen the light of the moon or a sunrise
Philip Webb
In many ways sci-fi is a natural progression from the magical worlds we inhabited as children. Speculative fiction opens up parallel universes to which we can escape and exercise our love for all things beyond our ken. close off these speculative worlds at your peril.
Ella Berthoud
What? An alien. You think I'm from outer space." She snorts in disbelief. "I'm Kelly Tillman, you dumb-ass. From 41 Montana Avenue, Valentine, Texas. What's left of it. I canned seventh grade for a piece-of-crap job with lousy tips and lousy hours. You ain't telling me I'm the outsider here. No way.
Philip Webb
Great," mumbles Kelly. "Bat stew cooked on a bat shit fire by an old bat.
Philip Webb
I don't really know who I am , and I don't know when to stop, so if I see a great big threatening button that should never ever be touched I just want to do this!
Russel T. Davies
Sorry, no. I refuse to join an army which practices human sacrifice and has no adequate pension plan.
Toby Frost
I let the happy times slip through my fingers and gripped on to the sad times as if they were my heart's desire
Charles Stross
Taking a chance on a new author, can open your mind to new experiences.
Jonathan Taylor
Moses threw the spent cigarette butt to the ground. It bounced once then lay still. A lazy wisp of smoke drifted towards the reaching shadows. He pushed himself to his feet and brushed flakes of grit from the seat of his jeans. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he moved away from the pipe and began to negotiate a route down the alley. A rivulet of cans, wrappers and remnants of kebabs dotted the ground like flotsam; the waste of nights past, discarded by the nameless, faceless masses marking their territories with futile gestures. Oh, sure, the trash was still emptied these days – there were still garbage men around, but it just delayed the inevitable, prolonging the agony of a tired and dying world.
Scott Kaelen
We were the lucky ones, the notthese, we were the ones who had survived the aerial bombing and fire-clusters, the final flash. Regrettable, unavoidable, a war to end all wars, a war for democracy, a war for freedom, peaceful war. Sometimes war is necessary. Sometimes war is right. But to the broken and the dead, to the wounded and the maimed, to the exploded and the shrapnelshattered, to minds gone dark, to eyes that have seen agony no tears can wash away, it hardly matters that the dead language of war repeats itself through time. The bodies that can say nothing have the last word. What is it — the last word? No.No more war.
Jeanette Winterson
The Law of Moronic Ubiquity: Anything in the universe that is generally considered to be idiot-proof will eventually be ruined by an idiot.
Ian Strang
The Law of Chaos: Any activity or event that seems to lie beyond the boundaries of possibility will usually be the first thing to occur.
Ian Strang
We all have it in us to be something other than what we are, I thought, but we don't often get a glimpse of what we could have been
Alastair Reynolds
Perhaps everything you say is true and these are the death throes of the human race, but even if that was true, I would not lose faith. There must be hope, and I must fight for my Emperor against Chaos and it's servants. That is insanity.Wrong, it's being human.
Ben Counter
For some people,being mean to others is the point of their lives.
Jacqueline Rayner
Oh, traccy traccy ply ply bracket doints and divs
Yahtzee Croshaw
In accordance with the terms of the Clarke-Asimov treaty, the second-bestscience writer dedicates this book to the second-best science-fictionwriter.[dedication to Isaac Asimov from Arthur C. Clarke in his book Report on Planet Three]
Arthur C. Clarke
He may become like a glass filled with a clear light for eyes to see that can.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Having solved all the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except for his own, three times over, [Marvin] was severely stuck for something to do, and had taken up composing short dolorous ditties of no tone, or indeed tune. The latest one was a lullaby.Marvin d
Douglas Adams
Share and Enjoy' is the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints Division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium-sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years. The motto stands-- or rather stood-- in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young Complaints executives-- now deceased.The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig," and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.
Douglas Adams
Do interesting things and interesting things will happen to you.
John Hegarty
We should always be grateful for the faults in our partner because if they didn't have those faults from the start, they would have been able to marry someone much better than us
Ajahn Brahm
Love means to commit yourself without guarantee.
Anne Campbell
One summer at the fag end of the nineties, I had to go out of London to talk to a literary society, of the sort that must have been old-fashioned when the previous century closed. When the day came, I wondered why I'd agreed to it; but yes is easier than no, and of course when you make a promise you think the time will never arrive: that there will be a nuclear holocaust, or something else diverting.
Hilary Mantel
[Gina] I got them Bad Old Cosmic C-Word Blues Again.[Mark] What does ‘c-word’ mean?[Gina] It means continuing to believe even when you don’t feel it. Not letting go even when you can’t find squat to hold onto. Going all the way from the beginning to the end.
Pat Cadigan
Our life together's like a tale with a happy end, no matter what turns it took in the way.
Kazuo Ishiguro
However much I doubted the man's ability to accomplish the task he had set himself, I could not help admiring his faith and his industry.
Jim Corbett
Some things become true simply by being spoken. When she said to the little girl “I’m here for you”, the architecture of her mind, her definition of herself, shifted and reconfigured around that statement. She became committed.
M.R. Carey
In my imagination you're waiting lying on your side with your hands between your thighs.
Arctic Monkeys
It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn't do anything to match up to your wife.
Colin Firth
I bought the Heartbreak Hotel, on my own with no investors. Closed it down and opened the Fuck You, Get Over It bed and breakfast.
Scroobius Pip
I didn't have a heart until I meet you.That smile is killin me too.I can't look away.Can I always stay?I can't look away.I need to stay.I didn't have a heart until I meet you.
Jenni James
Then I heard your voice as clear as day, And you told me I should concentrate, It was all so strange, And so surreal, That a ghost should be so practical. Only if for a night And the only solution was to stand and fight, And my body was bruised and I was set alight, But you came over me like some holy rite, And although I was burning, You're the only light Only if for a night
Florence Welch
Got your fingerprints as evidence all on my bodyPut your right hand on the book and you were found guiltyI can’t wait forever but that’s how it’s gonna beFor me they’ll never beCase Closed
Little Mix
So when your hopes on fire,But you know your desire,Don't hold a glass over the flame,Don't let your heart grow cold, I will call you by name, I will share your road.
Mumford & Sons
The sun is up, the sky is blueIt's beautiful, and so are you
John Lennon