I have never learned to hate. Don’t let my first lesson come from you.

Fenella Doorn watched the unfamiliar wreck of a ship ghosting into her bay. Crippled by cannon fire, she thought. What else could do such damage? The foremast was blown away, as well as half the...

No valía la pena perder el tiempo en intentar cambiar el mundo; bastaba con evitar que el mundo lo cambiase a uno.

So why had he come? He’d said he’d had no choice, but for centuries men had chopped off their own limbs, faked insanity, gone into hiding or to prison rather than to war. Was there...

He could inspire ballads. He could inspire wars.

I am fond of history and am very well contented to take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in former histories and records, which may be as...

A glance would not be enough to tell you this was the daughter of Katherine Raquel Demure. Even a lingering gaze would not suffice. No. Only careful study of the original and a comparative inspection...

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

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...

Rebel Number Four” is waiting patiently by the door. I named him “Rebel Number Four,” for he is the fourth of his kind I have given the name “Rebel.” To many he may be just...

They watch on, evil, incredibly stupid, enjoying my destruction.’Poor Grendel’s had an accident,’ I whisper. ‘So may you all.

Without entering here into a dissertation upon the historical romance, it may be said that in proper hands it has been and should continue to be one of the most valued and valuable expressions of...

Dead man shouldn’t have no fears. Makes his passing easier.

John had been a footman nearly all of his adult life. He knew decorum and appropriate behavior for his situation. But when he glanced from one twin to another, he nearly ruined his reputation and...

They do not call him the terror of husbands and lovers for no reason…

I aim to make the fiction flexible so that it bends itself around the facts as we have them. Otherwise I don’t see the point. Nobody seems to understand that. Nobody seems to share my...

The sublime beauty was almost hidden withing the castle walls. She believed that the treasured things in life were often hard to find – a pearl in an oyster shell, a kind word in the...

There are some things you never say good-bye to

It takes courage to stand for what you believe in.

No life form on this planet undergoes such a slow and graceful death as the tobacco leaf.

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,...

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.

According to Robert, his friend Moses was a soldier in the first war, as he described it. He fought Indians and soldiers in red coats.

In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman?No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not lay your...

She dropped her head again on Marius’ knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. Eponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Marius fancied her asleep forever,...

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.

JAKE BAKER JOINING THE UNION ARMY IN NEW ORLEANS”I’d prefer to be back in Texas, taking aim at the Rebs…, but I just can’t do that,” said Jake. …”So, I’ll just do what I can...

But you see, Crumb, it is hard to give up what you have worked at since you were a boy. There were some Italian visitors once, they were cheering us on, Brandon and myself, and...

To see the years touch ye gives me joy”, he whispered, “for it means that ye live.

‘Are our gods better than Olaf’s god?’ Alfdis laughed. ‘That’s a silly question. Gods are gods. Our gods have been with us since the beginning of the world. We sacrifice to them, and they aid...

They would never forget the war. The world wouldn’t let them, and neither would history.

Wouldn’t you like to be my lord Duke of Exeter? Come on, Dom. Say something.””You have lost your mind.””Say something less insulting.

Both slaves had been oiled until their flesh shined like polished ebony, outlining every detail of their muscles.

Now you can be a kikei, too.

Are you a traveling man he asked?

Confession is good for the soul even after the soul has been claimed” (p. 381).

I don’t like coming over here at night, the girl said. The bayou is scary in the dark, all manner of things running wild out there.

Keep the guests company, and mind your asses! Stay out of the hall before my chamber!

He watched the newly arrived commuters as they stepped into the carriage, pushed their way down the tube, the odours from their damp clothes mingling, giving off varying degrees of mustiness: London grime, or smoke...

Snow crunched under the feet of three cloaked figures – a queen, her lady, and a gravedigger – as they hurried along a moonlit path in Windsor Castle’s lower ward. The gravedigger pushed a cart...

Largely, now, it was not anger he felt, but rather a kind of bone-scraping, quiet, ever-present sorrow. To come to the place that was supposed to stay the same, to come and find it changed....

He spent the next hours watching her sleep, taking in every detail of her face, of her body. The way the soft glow of the bedside lamp cast shadows on her cheeks. The way her...

Yessir, some things is sin ’cause God says so. Some things is sin ’cause they hurt other people. And some things is just pure-dee stupid.

It was all her doing. She had cried wolf and the wolf had come.

Loyal,” he tells me. St. Louis is a loyal town.

redoubtable” in front of it. I wondered if anyone ever called her redoubtable to her face. I redoubted it.

She smells of her cooking and the perfume Eau d’Hadrien. My mother wore it, too. She used to cook, like Lili. Our house smelled of garlic and thyme instead of sadness.

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

People think blood red, but blood don’t got no colour. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785....

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...