S.M. Stirling Quotes

Now let's move on to the subject of how a real man treats his wife. A real man doesn't slap even a ten-dollar hooker around, if he's got any self respect, much less hurt his own woman. Much less ten times over the mother of his kids. A real man busts his ass to feed his family, fights for them if he has to, dies for them if he has to. And he treats his wife with respect every day of his life, treats her like a queen - the queen of the home she makes for their children.

It was hard, to be stripped of the cold comforts of her simple atheistic faith in middle-age. The more so as the evidence seemed to lead to the conclusion that all the religions were true, including the ones that flatly contradicted each other.

Leading means running fast enough to keep ahead of your people.

Strange, isn't it, that it's always more difficult to talk people out of killing each other than into it?

O God, You know me to be set in the midst of great peril. Grant me such strength of mind and body, that those evils which I suffer for my sins I may overcome through Thy assistance. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The knife he held was obsidian, sharp enough to cut a dream.

Be your own judge. But commit no trespass, remembering that where another's liberty begins your own inevitably meets its boundary.

There may be a worse form of government than theocracy in the long run, but offhand I can't think of any.

Good to have powerful friends. Even better to be a powerful friend, neh?

. . . you should always kick a man when he's down. It's much easier then.

Testosterone rots the brain . . .

And the first king was a lucky soldier.

(Referring to an obsession with Tolkien's Middle Earth): I meet a beautiful American heiress, I like her, she likes me . . . and then she turns out to be a fundamentalist with a more literal interpretation of scripture than I feel comfortable with. Only our bible was written by an Oxford don about sixty years ago.

necessity had no respect for law. Even custom must bow to it at times.

Sacredness grew like a pearl, sometimes around the most unlikely bits of grit.

I was father to the land. I saved my people. I was... King.

"By... earth," he said, more a movement of the lips than a thing of the throat and air. "By... sky..."

Another breath, and it did hurt a little now. The next was harder. The women leaned over him, the mothers of his children. He blinked once more. His own mother, her black braids swinging as she rocked his hurt away. She was singing to him:

"Manabozho saw some ducks
Hey, hey, heya hey
Said 'Come little brothers, sing and dance';
Hey, hey, heya hey--

Words mean what they're generally believed to mean. When Charles II saw Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral for the first time, he called it "awful, pompous, and artificial." Meaning roughly: Awesome, majestic, and ingenious.

Manure grew the fodder for the cow that made that ice cream and fertilized the beets that gave us the sugar, my girl," Juniper said sternly. "Earth must be fed or we all go hungry.

A libertarian is someone who can believe that the police are no more than a gang of thugs without realizing that in the absence of police, thugs will gather into gangs.

Likes to fight, does he?" Sandra said thoughtfully.

"Oh, yeah. He says there are only two reasons to fight."

"Which are?"

"Joy and death."

Her mother's brows went up. "Joy in death?"

"No, no... For joy, to stretch yourself with a friend; or death, to kill as quickly as you can. Nothing in between.

The others saw him as he stumbled down the stairs, bleeding from nose and ears and eyes an mouth. The sheathed form of the Sword lay across his palms. He met their eyes, and choked out:

"Remember. Remember, all of you."

Mathilda's voice was infinitely gentle. "Remember what?"

"That I was a man, before I was King. Remember for me, when I forget.

His hand closed on the black double-lobed hilt, and the moonfire in the opal glowed. He drew the Sword, thrust it high.

And screamed as pain beyond all bearing ripped through him like white fire, turning his body to a thing of ash smoke.

He screamed, and knew.

Sure it is that They have many faces. All the shapes the Divine shows us are true; and none are all the Truth.

Sandra was fond of an old Russian saying: When a man causes you a problem, remember: no man, no problem.

The Mackenzie had never met folk so poor in story and song and legends, and it moved him to a pity that pricked at his eyes. Without that tapestry of colour and words and ritual, what was life but eating and mating, sleeping and moving your bowels? All of them good and necessary, but not enough; and they themselves needed that framework too, to give them meaning.

They waited. Reiko let the silence and the sounds fill her. Having thought, I have acted, she thought. Let the arrow fly. In

There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot.

It is easy to kill. It is equally easy to destroy glass windows. Any fool can do either. Why is it only the wise who perceive that it is wisdom to let live, when even lunatics can sometimes understand that it is better to open a window than to smash the glass?

A fighter should not think only of his shete, just because he has a shete in his hand. Everything is a weapon in the warrior's mind.

Ah, well, old girl, remember the definition of an Anglo-Saxon: A German who's forgotten his grandmother was Welsh.

His grandmother had said to him once, smiling slightly, that if you compelled people to behave as if they believed something eventually all but the strongest-willed really did start to believe it, because it was easier on their pride than admitting every moment in the privacy of their soul that they were pretending.

... and he kills without fear, or anger, or hate, with regret even, simply because its necessary. That's rare, and it's rare still among the really first-rate. God help the enemy that finally frightens him or makes him mad.

Clan custom and law held that it was the public declaration of intent and then living together that made a handfasting; the ceremonies simply bore witness to it and asked blessings and luck of the Powers on the new family. He knew Christians thought that the ceremony was the marriage, though.

You can learn by listening, or by getting whacked between the eyes with a two-by-four. I always found listening easier.

He was of the Old Religion, like nearly all Mackenzies, and wouldn't object to a Catholic ceremony - his faith taught that all paths to the Divine were valid. Christians tended to be a little more exclusive.

Grief is the tribute we pay the dead," she said, matter-of-fact sympathy in her voice. "But they don't ask more than we can afford to give. They've never really gone from us, you know, those we love; they're part of our story, and we of theirs.

To take life was to understand your own death
that the Hour of the Huntsman also came for you.