Rosemary Sutcliff > Quotes

“I do not think that you can be changing the end of a song or a story like that, as though it were quite separate from the rest. I think the end of a story is part of it from the beginning.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff

“It may be that the night will close over us in the end, but I believe that morning will come again. Morning always grows out of the darkness, though maybe not for the people who saw the sun go down. We are the Lantern Bearers, my friend; for us to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward into the darkness and the wind.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers

“You cannot expect the man who made this shield to live easily under the rule of man who worked the sheath of this dagger . . . You are the builders of coursed stone walls, the makers of straight roads and ordered justice and disciplined troops. We know that, we know it all too well. We know that your justice is more sure than ours, and when we rise against you, we see our hosts break against the discipline of your troops, as the sea breaks against a rock. And we do not understand, because all these things are the ordered pattern, and only the free curves of the shield-boss are real to us. We do not understand. And when the time comes that we begin to understand your world, too often we lose the understanding of our own.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth

“We shall have made such a blaze that men will remember us on the other side or the dark.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff

“Why should a deserter take the trouble to light Rutupiae Beacon?” Aquila demanded, and his voice sounded rough in is own ears.

“Maybe in farewell, maybe in defiance. Maybe to hold back the dark for one more night.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers

“Better to be a laughing-stock than lose the fort for fear of being one.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth

“Esca tossed the slender papyrus roll onto the cot, and set his own hands over Marcus's. "I have not served the Centurion because I was his slave," he said, dropping unconsciously into the speech of his own people. "I have served Marcus, and it was not slave-service...my stomach will be glad when we start on this hunting trail.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth

“And it came to Marcus suddenly that slaves very seldom whistled. They might sing, if they felt like it or if the rhythm helped their work, but whistling was in some way different; it took a free man to make the sort of noise Esca was making.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth

“And what will they do to you when you have told them this story?'

Esca said very simply, 'They will kill me.'

'I am sorry, but I do not think much of that plan.' Marcus said.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth

“The young Centurion, who had been completely still throughout, said very softly, as though to himself, "Greater love hath no man--" and Justin thought it sounded as though he were quoting someone else.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Silver Branch

“See now, for a good blade, one that will not betray the man in battle, rods of hard and soft iron must be heated and braided together. Then is the blade folded over and hammered flat again, and maybe yet again, many times for the finest blades... So the hard and soft iron are mingled without blending, before the blade is hammered up to its finished form and tempered, and ground to an edge that shall draw blood from the wind. So comes the pattern, like oil and water that mingle but do not mix. Yet it is the strength of the blade, for without the hard iron the blade would bend in battle, and without the soft iron it would break.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Shining Company

“...extraordinarily beautiful, and slightly out of focus.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, Frontier Wolf

“That is our Shield Ring, our last stronghold; not the barrier fells and the totter-moss between, but something in the hearts of men.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Shield Ring

“No, don't draw away from me. Whatever else I am, I am your son - your most wretched son. If you do not hate me, try to love me a little, Father; it is lonely never to have been loved, only devoured.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff - Sword at Sunset

“I sometimes think that we stand at sunset,' Eugenus said after a pause. 'It may be that the night will come close over us in the end, but I believe that morning will come again. Morning always grows again out of the darkness, though maybe not for the people who saw the sun go down. We are the Lantern Bearers, my friend; for us to keep something burning, to carry what light we can forward into the darkness and the wind.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers

“The wind blustered in from the sea, setting the horses’ manes streaming sideways, and the gulls wheeled mewing against the blue-and-grey tumble of the sky; and Aquila, riding a little aside from the rest as usual, caught for a moment from the wind and the gulls and the wet sand and the living, leaping power of the young red mare under him, something of the joy of simply being alive that he had taken for granted in the old days.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers

“So Aquila took his father’s service upon him. It wasn’t as good as love; it wasn’t as good as hate; but it was something to put into the emptiness within him; better than nothing at all.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers

“I have a special "ah, here I am again, I know exactly what they are going to have for breakfast" feeling when I get back into Roman Britain, which is very nice.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff

“For a moment they stood looking at each other in the firelight, while the old harper still fingered the shining strings and the other man looked on with a gleam of amusement lurking in his watery blue eyes. But Aquila was not looking at him. He was looking only at the dark young man, seeing that he was darker even than he had thought at first, and slightly built in a way that went with the darkness, as though maybe the old blood, the blood of the People of the Hills, ran strong in him. But his eyes, under brows as straight as a raven's flight-pinions, were not the eyes of the little Dark People, which were black and unstable and full of dreams, but a pale clear grey, lit with gold, that gave the effect of flame behind them.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers

“Before he left Rome, Marcus had been in a fair way to becoming a charioteer, in Cradoc's sense of the word, and now desire woke in him, not to possess this team, for he was not one of those who much be able to say "Mine" before they can truly enjoy a thing, but to have them out and harnessed; to feel the vibrating chariot floor under him, and the spread reins quick with life in his hands, and these lovely, fiery little creatures in the traces, his will and theirs at one.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth

“But tonight, because Rome had fallen and Felix was dead, because of Valerius’s shame, the empty hut seemed horribly lonely, and there was a small aching need in him for somebody to notice, even if they were not glad, that he had come home.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers

“Who so pulleth out this sword from this stone and anvil is trueborn King of all Britain.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff

“Here is one with a gift for loving and a gift for hating, and when he hates, God help the man who earns his hatred.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, Tristan and Iseult

“Always, in these times, I am wretched save when sleep comes to me. Therefore, I have come to look upon sleep as the best of all gifts.” - Helen, about the war”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, Black Ships Before Troy: The Story of The Iliad

“Quietness rose within Aquila, easing his wild unrest as the salve was cooling the smart of his gashed side. But that was always the way with Brother Ninnias-- the quietness, the sense of sanctuary, were things that he carried with him.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Lantern Bearers

“I have provided a possible explanation for Antiochus's insane foolhardiness when left in command of the Athenian Fleet, because Thucidides's bald account is so unbelievable (unless one assumes that both Antiochus and Alkibiades were mentally defective) that any explanation seems more likely than none.
Alkibiades himself is an enigma. Even allowing that no man is all black and all white, few men can ever have been more wildly and magnificently piebald. Like another strange and contradictory character Sir Walter Raleigh, he casts a glamour that comes clean down the centuries, a dazzle of personal magnetism that makes it hard to see the man behind it. I have tried to see. I have tried to fit the pieces into a coherent whole; I don't know whether I have been successful or not; but I do not think that I have anywhere falsified the portrait.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Flowers of Adonis

“I simply--don't know," Flavius said, and then suddenly explosive: "I don't know and I don't care! Go to bed.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Silver Branch

“The gilded wreaths and crowns that the Legion had won in the days of its honour were gone from the crimson-bound staff; the furious talons still clutched the crossed thunderbolts, but where the great silver wings should have arched back in savage pride, were only empty socket-holes in the flanks of gilded bronze.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, The Eagle of the Ninth

“Presently I went back to my Companions, and slept under the apple trees, wrapped in my cloak and with my head on Cabal's flank for a pillow. There is no pillow in the world so good as a hound's flank.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset

“It is lonely never to have been loved, only devoured.”
― Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset