Destiny is all, Ravn liked to tell me, destiny is everything. He would even say it in English, “Wyrd biõ ful ãræd.
Every day is ordinary, until it isn't.
We all suffer from dreams.
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.
He tolerated his fellow Englishmen, but the Welsh were cabbage-farting dwarves, the Scots were scabby arse-suckers, and the French were shriveled turds.
The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation... Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.
Fate is inexorable.
Life is simple," I said. "Ale, women, sword, and reputation. Nothing else matters.
A leader leads,” Ragnar said, “and you can’t ask men to risk death if you’re not willing to risk it yourself.
Wyrd bið ful āræd. Fate is inexorable.
Madness ends sometimes. The Gods decree it, not man.
Why do we fight?" he asked. "Because we were born.
Wyrd biõ ful ãræd,” I said. Fate is fate. It cannot be changed or cheated.
And you look bloody young to be a sergeant" "I was born late, sir
All those separate people were a part of my life, strings strung on the frame of Uhtred, and though they were separate they affected one another and together they would make the music of my life.
Doubtless there were insanely frenzied warriors, but there is no evidence that lunatic nudists made regular appearances on the battlefield.
There is such joy in chaos. Stow all the world's evils behind a door and tell men that they must never, ever, open the door, and it will be opened because there is pure joy in destruction.
Latin! The language of God! Or perhaps He speaks Hebrew? I suppose that’s more likely and it will make things rather awkward in heaven, won’t it? Will we all have to learn Hebrew?
I wondered why the gods no longer came to earth. It would make belief so much easier.
Robin Hood’s Lament”?’ Every archer knew that tune.
It was funny, Richard Sharpe thought, that there were no vultures in England.
Who do you serve?” Lanferelle asked. “Sir John Cornerwailled,” Hook said proudly. Lanferelle was pleased. “Sir John! Ah, there's a man. His mother must have slept with a Frenchman.
We are all lonely and all seek a hand to hold in the darkness. It is not the harp, but the hand that plays it.
And, in her fury, she slapped the king with a skinned eel.
Wyrd bið ful āræd. Fate is inexorable. We are given power and we lose it.
Religion makes strange bedfellows.
If a man can’t remember the laws,” Ragnar said, “then he’s got too many of them.
She was as faithful as a morning mist, as hard as a sword-bayonet, and that, he thought, made her a suitable reward for a soldier.
Shun epic verse.
It was an unsettling thought, that somehow we were sliding back into the smoky dark and that never again would man make something so perfect as this small building.
