Edward Rutherfurd Quotes

Don't you know there's another bubble as well? An expectations bubble. Bigger houses, private planes, yachts ... stupid salaries and bonuses. People come to desire these things and expect them. But the expectations bubble will burst as well, as all bubbles do.

We, the heirs of Saint Patrick, we who kept alive the Christian faith and the writings of ancient Rome when most of the world had sunk under the barbarians, we who gave the Saxons their education are to be taught a lesson in Christianity by the English?

Can you do it?' 'Maybe I can, and maybe I can't. But I am going to make MacDuff think that I can. And belief,' said Gabriel Love, with the smile of an angel, 'is a wonderful thing.

I first considered writing 'New York' in 1991. I'd been in the city for a decade, was married to an American wife, and sending my children to New York schools. I was even on the board of a coop building. But I wasn't sure how to organize such complex material, and for many years I put the project aside.

It was evident that Madame Restell not only liked to do as she pleased, but to talk about it as well.

Fate was cruel, but it was fate.

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.

Always remember this, Henri. Men trade for profit. They are driven by greed. But debt is about fear, and fear is stronger than greed. The true power, the weapon that defeats all others, is debt. Fools search for gold. The wise man studies debt. That is the key to all business.

It was politics and religion, in van Dyck's private view, that made men dangerous. Trade made them wise.

Paris. City of love. City of dreams. City of splendour. City of saints and scholars. City of gaiety.
Sink of iniquity.
In two thousand years, Paris had seen it all.

The great festival of Lughnasa was held at Carmun once every three years. The site of Carmun was eerie. In a land of wild forest and bog, it was an open grassy space that stretched, green and empty, halfway to the horizon. Lying some distance west of the point where, if you were following it upstream, the Liffey's course began to retreat eastwards on the way to its source in the Wicklow Mountains, the place was absolutely flat, except for some mounds in which ancestral chiefs were buried. The festival lasted a week. There were areas reserved for food and livestock markets, and another where fine clothes were sold; but the most important quarter was where a large racetrack was laid out on the bare turf.

If I had my life again, I'd act differently. It's hard for a man if he thinks his wife doesn't respect him.

They say that people should be free to do as they like. That's what I think. But if they start preaching at me, they can go to hell.

The whole area, manor house, Clink, all eighteen brothels and the handsome profits therefrom, belonged to and was ruled by the bishop.

The fault in his son lay not in his nature, which was honorable, but in his perceptions, which were limited.

What he needed Gorham to understand - what his son was heir to - the thing that really mattered - was the New Yorkers indomitable spirit

Oh Lord, we thank Thee for this thy gift of lobster Newburg. And grant us also, if it be Thy will, control of the Hudson Ohio Railroad.'
'But we ain't wanting control of the Hudson Ohio, Sean softly objected.
'True,' said Gabriel Love, 'but the Almighty doesn't need to know that yet.

I descend from both Philadelphia Quakers and Carolina colonists whose families were separated by the Revolutionary War. That helped give me insight into the agony of Patriots who, until the British government denied their claims, had always, like Ben Franklin himself, thought of themselves as free-born Englishmen.

Gotham admired Maeve. By day she managed money, and did it brilliantly, but she didn't find it satisfied her intellect. She spoke four languages. She played the piano seriously well. And she read books. Lots of them.

Slowly the silent bird turned its head. It could do so, if it chose, through more than three hundred and sixty degrees.

Then he noticed the belt. He pulled it out. The thing had been handed down in the family since God knows when. His father had told: 'Better keep it. It's wampum. Supposed to be lucky.' William shrugged. He could sure as hell use some luck today. On an impulse, he decided to put it on. Under his shirt of course
he didn't want to look like a damn fool. Then he dressed as usual, every inch the successful man. If he was going down, he'd go down in style. Anyway, you should never give up hope.

All empires become arrogant. It is their nature.

Never mind,' Gertchen said with a smile, 'you'll have to be pagan today.

Small wounds are healed by time, but time can only bandage great wounds, which continue to bleed in secret.

About the nobles - not just de Cygne, all of them. They don't care. Just remember that. Do what you have to do with them, because they have the power. I don't know if they'll always have it, but they do now, and they'll have it as long as you live, my son. So don't ever go against them. But just remember, no matter what they say, don't ever trust them. Because they don't care about you, and they never will, because you're not one of them. He

You can do what you like, sir, but I'll tell you this. New York is the true capital of America. Every New Yorker knows it, and by God, we always shall.

And he glanced down at Mercy beside him, and saw in her face such radiant goodness, such a calm certainty, that it seemed to him that if he could only be with her all his life, he should know a love, and happiness, and peace that he had never known before.

And suddenly it came to him. That Strawberry Fields garden he'd come from, and the Freedom Tower he'd been thinking of: taken together, didn't they contain the two words that said it all about this city, the two words that really mattered? It seemed to him that they did. Two words: the one an invitation, the other an ideal, an adventure, a necessity. "Imagine" said the garden. "Freedom" said the tower. Imagine freedom. That was the spirit, the message of this city he loved. You really didn't need anything more. Dream it and do it. But first you must dream it.

As I said,I believe in fate.Things happen as they are meant to be.We just have to recognize our destiny.

You can make money in a small way without politics. But to make big money, you need to buy the legislature. Can't be done otherwise.

She did not know what people of other nations ate, and did not care. For Italian food was the best.

This Plantagenet king comes from the devil.

True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated.
Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election.

I myself was born beside a river - the Avon in Sarum. So when I first encountered New York's great harbor and the Hudson River as a teenager, and came to understand their historic canal and railroad links to the vast spaces of the Midwest, I felt both the thrill of a new adventure and a deep sense of homecoming.

For novelists, the imagination is everything. The trick is to guide one's imagination using research. I love using old maps. When I wrote my novels on London and New York, I found wonderful historical atlases. Paris has the most lavish maps of all.

She was quiet for a moment or two. Then she said: 'Cruel words are a terrible thing, Quash. Sometimes you regret them. But what's been said cannot be unsaid.

I think you should weep, now. It's time.

The answer to Russia's problems lies here, in Russia. . . . The church is the key. If Russia's guiding force is not religion, then her people will be listless. We can have Western laws, independent judges, perhaps even parliaments -- but only if they grow gradually out of a spiritual renewal. That has to come first.

An unexpected guest, enjoying such lavish hospitality, should expect to sing for his supper.

For centuries my father's family lived on Britain's biggest tidal river, the Severn, on which there was a huge trade with the interior, and through the Port of Bristol with America.

From dawn each day the boats traveled, until their shadows grew so long that they joined each vessel with the one behind so that, instead of resembling a procession of dark swans in the distance, they seemed to turn into snakes, inching forward on waters turned to fire by the western sunset ahead. While on the bank, the last red light from the huge sky eerily caught the stands of bare larch and birch so that it appeared as if whole armies with massed lances were waiting by the riverbank to greet them.

A New Yorker can never be beat, Gorham, because he gets right back up again. Remember that.

The old man had smiled kindly. "It is in their nature, child. God has made woman the weaker vessel." It was an old belief, dating back to St Paul himself. "It is man who is made in God's image, my child. Man's seed produces his perfect likeness. Woman, being only the container in which the seed matures, is therefore inferior. She may still reach heaven, but, being inferior, it is harder.

In recent decades, Ireland in general and Dublin in particular, have been very fortunate in the quality of the historical attention they have received. During the extensive research required to write this book, I have been privileged to work with some of Ireland's most distinguished scholars, who have generously shared their knowledge with me and corrected my texts. Their kind contributions are mentioned in the Acknowledgements. Thanks to the scholarly work of the last quarter century, there has been a reevaluation of certain aspects of Ireland's history; and as a result, the story that follows may contain a number of surprises for many readers. I have provided a few additional notes in the Afterword at the end of this volume for those curious to know more.