Ruth Downie > Quotes

“One of the many difficult things about women was that they tended to pick the most unsuitable times to tell you something they considered to be important, and then became irrationally upset when you failed to remember it.”
― Ruth Downie, Terra Incognita

“I seem to remember sitting on a golden bench, and she started chattering about the sunset, or something. She seemed quite happy so I let her get on with it. Then she got hold of my hand and asked me what I was thinking about. So I said, "The treatment of anal fistulae".”
― Ruth Downie, Terra Incognita

“Back from where? you're not going out again and leaving me here are you?? Holy Hercules I sound like somebody's wife”
― Ruth Downie, Terra Incognita

“What color is time? Where do the thoughts of the dead go? How is it diseases spread but miracles don't? Have you ever thought of that?”
― Ruth Downie, Terra Incognita

“Quid nomen tibi est? She was not about to offer her name up to a stranger. It was almost the only thing she possessed that nobody had stolen.”
― Ruth Downie, Medicus

“But what if---
Most of what if never happens.”
― Ruth Downie, Persona Non Grata

“Women are not always what we seem to be. What our reputations would tell you. Nor do we only exist in reference to our fathers, husbands, and sons.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“There were many things a man might think he should be told when a woman agreed to marry him. She had choose not to mention several of them”
― Ruth Downie, Caveat Emptor

“...a little knowledge would unlock the gates to vast and unsuspected gates of ignorance.”
― Ruth Downie, Medicus

“Why did so many die in the night? As though they wished to kiss us and deliver us with sweet dreams before taking their leave of the world.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“Socrates was a wise man. Surveying the goods on a market stall, the great one was said to have remarked, "What a lot of things a man doesn’t need!”
― Ruth Downie, Medicus

“The Empress Sabina had long ago formed her own theory about the nonsense in travel books. No traveler, having gone to the expense and trouble of venturing where most civilized people were too sensible to go, was going to come home and admit that it had been a waste of time. Instead, he had to pronounce his destination to be full of strange wonders, like the elk with no knees that could be caught by sabotaging the tree against which it leaned when it slept (Julius Caesar) or the men from India who could wrap themselves in their own ears (reported by the elder Pliny, who seemed to have written down everything he was ever told), or the blue-skinned Britons (Julius Caesar again).
Strangely, no traveler had ever brought one of these creatures home for inspection. Doubtless they were impossible to capture, or died on the journey, or the blue came off in the wash.”
― Ruth Downie, Semper Fidelis

“But she’s only a woman!” The watch captain shook his head again. “So was Helen of Troy, sir. Look what she started.”
― Ruth Downie, Terra Incognita

“Even now he could not say in his heart of hearts for which side he would draw his blade when he was finally called upon. What was a child of two worlds to do?”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“It was a mystery why the army bothered with a signal communication system when its men were so good at gossip.”
― Ruth Downie, Medicus

“They say opposites attract, but like meets like, too.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“Such was the cost of dealing with the Romans: even when one fought against them, the stain of their violence licked and crackled at the soul like a fire about to engulf an entire forest.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“Blood for honor. That was the price then, as it was the price now. It was always the price of honor. Always blood. Always pain. And as the queen was scourged, he wondered if such a thing as honor really existed at all. For what was honor if it could not strip the pride from a barbarian woman even as she was beaten before her people? What was honor if he could only defend his own by doing this to her? Honor, Decianus thought, was just an excuse for war and mayhem. An excuse for taking. Whether the taking of a woman or the taking of one tribe against another, one empire over another, one emperor over the world. An emperor like the one he served . . . If this was honor, he wanted no part in it.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“Britannia's big enough to count, but remote enough not to matter.”
― Ruth Downie, Medicus

“Three years with Claudia had taught Ruso that when a woman said something did not matter and refused to tell you what it was, it usually mattered a great deal—to her, if not to you. Frequently her way of punishing you for not knowing what it was in the first place was to refuse to tell you until you gave up asking. This was her cue to accuse you of not caring about her, otherwise you would have known what she wanted you to know without having to be told. Finally, if you were lucky, she would explain the latest way in which you had failed her expectations. If you were not lucky, she would explain...”
― Ruth Downie, Terra Incognita

“That was one of the bad things about being able to read: people could nag you from a great distance.”
― Ruth Downie, Semper Fidelis

“Getting angry with her cousin, she reminded herself, was like getting angry with a sheep for being stupid. It ruined your day and the sheep was too dim to care.”
― Ruth Downie, Terra Incognita

“British rain was rarely that simple. For days on end, instead of falling, it simply hung around in the air like a wife waiting for you to notice she was sulking.”
― Ruth Downie, Terra Incognita

“Before long he felt the peaceful floating sensation of a man vaguely and happily aware that he is falling asleep.”
― Ruth Downie, Medicus

“Do you know what emperors do, Tilla?'
That was easy. 'Send soldiers to steal the land and make us pay taxes.”
― Ruth Downie, Persona Non Grata

“But how can an ordinary girl not know this? Had Varana's mother not bothered to teach her anything at all or just shouted complaints from a distance while her children fought and argued amongst themselves like wolf cubs?”
― Ruth Downie, Semper Fidelis

“Ruso’s working space contained three shelves, a collection of unmatched stools and chairs, an examination table by the window, and a desk whose migratory tendencies had been curbed by a previous incumbent with a hammer and several large nails.”
― Ruth Downie, Medicus

“But, when she was alone, someone rapped on the door and she found herself on her feet, knife in hand, before she had time to reason with her fear.”
― Ruth Downie, Semper Fidelis

“Life is short, Hades is long. As Agathon says, you can’t change the past, and as Aristotle says—paraphrasing—things are as they are, it’s how we deal with them that counts.”
― Ruth Downie, A Year of Ravens

“From somewhere in the garden came a burble of childish laughter. He [Ruso] reached forward, put his arms around her [Tilla’s] waist and rested his head against the belly that was not holding his baby, and perhaps never would. “Everyone else,” he said. “Why not us?”
― Ruth Downie, Caveat Emptor