They didn’t realize that if you take away the possibility of pain, and suffering, failure…you also take away the possibility of happiness, success, and joy.” -The Old Man: DOMINATUS

A man should not glory in what he already knows but in what he has yet to learn.

After all, that’s why we read historical fiction-to be transported to another time, and to be astonished at ancient people’s lives and traditions, just as they would probably be astonished at ours.

Everything changes except human behavior and its consequences.

How did I get here How did I end up in the arms of a boy I barely knew but knew I didn’t want to lose I wondered what I would have thought of Andrius in Lithuania. Would I have liked him Would he have liked me

Good men are often more practical than pretty ” said Mother. “Andrius just happens to be both.

Two hundred and fifty years of nameless, faceless, forgotten individuals. Yes, they were America’s founding fathers and mothers as much as the bewigged white men who laid the whips upon their backs. Why didn’t Lina know their names? Why hadn’t she studied their histories? Where was the monument? Where was the museum? What had they...

Brick walls towered over her. Decrepit staircases crowded about her. Nothing had changed. The line there, the lessons there, the rape there. Shouldn’t the place be crimson with blood and black with shame?

It wasn’t my choice to write this story…it was my responsibility.

If you find that life it’s not easy, let me tell you, death is worse.

Life is volatile.

I realize that I can laugh, that it is possible to be happy, that laughter and hope can come back to me.

In the face of all his handicaps, Jurgis was obliged to make the price of a lodging, and of a drink every hour or two, under penalty of freezing to death.

This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray.””Go astray?””Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure.

Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.–Ray Bradbury

If it makes you feel better, I pressed others to change as well. Guess I just didn’t fight hard enough for any of it.

Love should never be a game.

If you can walk with the crowd and keep your virtue, or walk with Kings-nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run- Yours is the...

You’re a lady. It’s written all over you, but the West doesn’t forgive any woman-unless she’s got a man.

Mogadishu the beautiful – your white-turbaned mosques, baskets of anchovies as bright as mercury, jazz and shuffling feet, bird-boned servant girls with slow smiles, the blind white of your homes against the sapphire blue of the ocean – you are missed, her dreams seem to say.

Don’t you understand brother? I want to find a love…that will free me from this love…

He (her son) is just like his father, doesn’t listen to a word I say!

From my Facebook Page: “You spend the first 50 years acquiring and the second 50 years getting rid of

It was not an unusual site to see Negro tenant farmers crossing the intersection of Spring and Barbrick on the way to the cotton warehouse

The curtains were not yet drawn and with the moonlight spreading across the room, I could see clearly. I undressed and slipped a soft cotton gown over my naked body. I pulled the blanket off the foot of my bed, covered my shoulders and wa…lked out on the balcony. The cool night air blowing through...

I stop to brace myself against the walls, which are painted with the fingerprints of family.

Sea and land may lie between us, but my heart is always there with you.

When you live in my house, you learn to be fine with whatever you come across. It’s the only way to stay sane in insanity.

How can one fight for a love that acts as the enemy?

Some girls are sweeter… Others have a tinge of bitterness… It is as if I can smell their souls. Their experiences and relationships are painted in warm, sour crimson.

{Summertime she speaks of winter, she eats ham, but speaks of beef, got a good man but, flirts with another. She might as well go to hell, cause she ain’t gonna be happy in heaven either!}

Listen, my child, to the voices of your ancestors. Take pride in our accomplishments; find your strength in our suffering. For WE are not just voices in the wind, WE are a living part of YOU

The sun had just slipped behind the trees and evening cast its dark, smoky shadow.

He is dressed in a long, white robe and in his hand is a white cap. I draw up as he passes down the hall; he does not see me. Shortly I hear a horse leaving. There is much I do not know about him, but tonight I know one of his secrets. He is...

She’s got a big belt around her hips. It has a shiny buckle with PRADA on it, which is Italian for insecure.

Elsa’s mother no longer spoke to her of men and love, but of duty and fate and accepting one’s burden. As far as Elsa could tell, if love really was the inherited female domain, then women were saddled with the biggest burden of all. It was pressing down upon them, the way the sea pressed...

Ain’t nothing too serious. Even death is a joke on the old devil, if we are living for the Lord.

Amy wondered if Bonaparte could declare war on Miss Gwen alone without breaking his peace with England

Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M. Kaye, and a host of other authors, in their crackly plastic library bindings. Whether...

God wanted him to go to Him with his deepest needs, to stop looking elsewhere, so that he could be made whole again.

Every day Fu-shee, the smaller children, and I fan out in the hills around Green Dragon to strip trees of their bark and leaves, dig up roots and search for wild grass. We’ll eat anything, and we have. But you can’t eat a leather belt like it’s a crisp cucumber. You soak it, boil it,...

He could never be anything more than what he was: the inheritor of weakness and unbridled emotion, a creature possessed by the past, and carrying its curse forever into the future–

All of my books are acts of subversion disguised as historical fiction.

There is a little bit of everybody in everybody.

Ann Boleyn…a Renaissance Audrey Hepburn in a little black dress.

Soeur Seraphina gently removed my lace fontanges. It was named for the King’s mistress Angelique de Fontanges, who had lost her hat while hunting one day and had hastily tied up her curls with her garter. The King had admired the effect, and the next day all the court ladies had appeared with their curls...

Auctus took the initiative again, eyeballing his foe as he strode towards him. Indavara bounced up and down on his toes and waited. His options were limited; he needed time to see what Auctus could do before he tried anything. The German jabbed the trident forward again, simultaneously swinging the net at his enemy’s knees.Indavara...

Something like that. He’s our man.

Nobody hates us as ourselves. In their minds we’re not human… They don’t hate us because we did something or said something. They make us stand for an evil they invent and then they want to kill it in us.

I’m learning not to hope for what I can’t control…