Guy Winter > Quotes

“For a moment the closing meeting was almost beautiful- like a ballet in space, like 2001. That was before it started, of course, while the meeting room was being set up.”
― Guy Winter, Watchdog- A Credit Crunch Fairytale

“I’m just a boy- standing in front of a screen- with a whole bunch of other people watching…”
Xavier’s box suddenly flickered back on, next to Monika on the big screen.
“Oh, piss off, Xavier!” I said.
Xavier disappeared again.
“…and asking you to love me!”
― Guy Winter, Watchdog- A Credit Crunch Fairytale

“The fog hung low over Smithfield, sweeping up the dirt and fumes of the meat market in its grimy vapours. No colour seemed able to break through it, except the livid red of offal and spilt blood.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“There’s something special about gemstones, isn’t there?” said Malthus. “Something primal. We covet them, even once we have lost our greed for so many other things in the world. I hardly eat at all now, nothing but the odd teaspoonful of raw foie gras marinated in Montrachet- and yet I still hunger for diamonds.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“The pipe-music filled the room with sound, until it seemed that the throbbing walls must burst asunder- or the very roof of the inn fly off, to release the pressure. The candle-light pranced around the room in a crazy reel of will-o’-the-wisps, distorted by the clouds of dust melting down from the ceiling like Hebridean mist. The Highlanders looked at each other in wild surmise, then started smashing tankards against the walls in time with the swirling strains of music, sending ale cascading up into the air, spattering the ceiling and soaking the revellers’ hair and plaids.”
― Guy Winter, Tam: The Three Changelings

“Somehow I always thought I’d die in London,” said Wright. “In the rain.”
“Death has no nation,” said Malthus, puffing out a dense cloud of cigar smoke. “You can find him anywhere if you look hard enough.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“Why would they burn you?” said Moreland. “Why, can’t you see it, man? People like you have been burned for centuries! Burned as witches and heretics, all over Europe! Murdered by the law. By humanity’s primitive ignorance of science. Hate- fear- stupidity... Nothing is more likely to actuate men in this world- even in this year of 1805. You are the monster in their own minds, that they pursue with fire and pitchfork. It is a superstition as old as humanity itself.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“Nothing teaches us despair like religion!” said Malthus. “For they too deal in the currency of control.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“The more the fox is cursed, the better he fares!”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“Just as the Mistral purifies the Provence climate, so will suffering purify him.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“Finally Mary understood everything. For the music, as it wound its way through that quiet countryside, scampering and chuckling gleefully along the pebbled shores of the River Doon, sweeping up hill and over moor, dancing in the wind over the purple-fringed sea-shore, told the story of Scotland. It told of the first great magic that had taken root so many millennia ago, and of the younger powers that had come along afterwards to vie with it. It told the deep secrets that Rannoch had spent so many lifetimes searching for, and would never guess at now, as though they were the passing gossip of a market-day. It told tales of great wrongs, of unbearable suffering- and of endless forgiveness and rebirth.”
― Guy Winter, Tam: The Three Changelings

“Old Ayr was seething with bargains, brawls, shaggy livestock, shaggier farmers and casual thieving. A typical market day, in other words.”
― Guy Winter, Tam: The Three Changelings

“Callum pulled a sgian dubh from out of his stocking and slammed it into the door-frame, where it lodged deep into the wood.
“They call it the black knife,” he said. “But it is true steel. That’ll keep the witches frae’ your door at least, Mistress Nansie! Dia leat!”
Nansie squeezed his hand.
“Dia leat! God with you too, my son!”
Callum crossed himself, touched the blade of the sgian dubh for luck and then padded softly down the stairs after the others.
“Tapadh leat mo mhàthair!” he called back quietly. “But somethin’ tells me there’s no God where we’re headed…”
He stepped out onto the moor, and plunged on into the darkness, until it swallowed him too.”
― Guy Winter

“And what is it that you believe in, Tam?” said the Cutty Sark, smiling. “In life? In love? In happiness? You don’t even know what they really are, none of you do! You’ve been deceived, by the greatest trick of them all! Here you live, like fabricated ships in a bottle. You can see the elements around you, but you can’t feel them- can’t even touch them…” She put her hand on his cheek again, and this time he didn’t move it away. “There’s a king, and a law, and a church, and they tell you exactly who you are, what you want- what you can have, and what you can dream of! But they’re just part of the deception, can’t you see? They’re just an illusion, a child’s play-thing, ready to be washed away like sand-castles on the beach when the tide comes in. Man-made institutions can never hold out against the real world forever. Against our world. Love it, hate it, desire it, fear it- but you can’t escape it!”
― Guy Winter, Tam: The Three Changelings

“The altiplano stretches every part of you to breaking point. Past it. The vast snow-capped bulk of Illimani, the highest mountain in the Cordillera Real, loomed over the Choqueyapu Canyon below like the walls of some mighty ice fortress. It felt like standing on the moon.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“They call it the mountain that eats men,” said Makepeace. “And now we’re all being sucked into the Salar de Uyuni, just like the Potosí miners were dragged into La Negra. The metal and the mine may change, but the greed stays the same. The greed and the pain.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“The vast salt flat sprawled out over the South American horizon in a white patchwork quilt, mineral formations laid out in perfect geometrical patterns, glowing orange and purple in the sunrise.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“They say we Highlanders take in dancin' wi’ our mother’s milk!” said Tam.
“You must have skipped your breakfast that day then!” said Souter Johnnie.”
― Guy Winter, Tam: The Three Changelings

“Bad faith, my lord?” said Joseph Naples KC. “They must be Cambridge men. This is All Souls College, Oxford that we are discussing. Two hundred years is but a scintilla temporis in its history, and it dates back to a time when all faith was good.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“There is no God, Mr Stevenson,” said Malthus. “Or Satan. There is only Death. And you must meet him on your own terms, if you will not take me for a guide.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“There’s a code amongst the restless spirits of the world. You have to show each other that there is something more to life than the action- the moments when you lose yourself in the flood.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“Scotland forever, ya bass!” said Tam, rocking back and landing the perfect head-butt on Rannoch’s nose.”
― Guy Winter, Tam: The Three Changelings

“Newgate was Hell enough for me!” said the Murderer. “That slow trudge through Birdcage Walk from the prison house to the scaffold, with the walls closing in on me with each step, the bars on the roof penning me in. The baying crowd outside, waiting for nothing but to see me die. And the damp- everywhere the damp, freezing my bones to their marrow. No earthly blanket can keep out that Old Bailey chill! So what was that, sir, if not a Hell on earth? And now the pain! It never leaves me…”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“Are you a man, sir, or a devil incarnate?”
“I’m someone who understands that there’s really no difference,” said Malthus.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club

“The prisoners scurried out through the fractured prison gates like emaciated rats, grabbing handfuls of provisions from the wrecked victual cart as they left the smouldering hulk of Newgate behind them.”
― Guy Winter, Billionaire Suicide Club