David Wishart > Quotes

“...the guy might be a cold-blooded amoral sadistic killer and a cartload of tiles short of a watertight roof, but there was nothing wrong with his intelligence. [Caligula in Marcus Corvinus's eyes]”
― David Wishart, Finished Business

“My tongue tasted like a gladiator's jockstrap [Marcus Corvinus after a night out]”
― David Wishart, Ovid

“a poker-rectumed pillar of the establishment [Marcus Corvinus on a Roman Senator]”
― David Wishart, Finished Business

“These pastoral-poet guys with their bleating goats and oaten pipes can stuff their phalaecean hendecasyllabics where the sun don't shine.”
― David Wishart, In at the Death

“of the Good”
― David Wishart, Last Rites

“tiles short of a watertight roof.”
― David Wishart, Foreign Bodies

“over again just what your husband said? Exactly, word for word, if you can.’ ‘If you want me to.’ She took a moment to think. ‘He said he was walking along the quay towards the bit at the end where the ship carrying his cargo was berthed. While he was about to pass another ship that was being loaded the crane that was doing it dropped a netful of amphoras right in front of him. I said something fatuous like, “Good heavens, you might’ve been killed!” and he laughed and said, “No, I was just lucky, that’s all.” And then he changed the subject and asked me how my day had been.’ I played the words back in my head, but they still didn’t make sense. ‘Hang on, lady,’ I said. ‘He said, “No”. You’re sure about that? “No”, not “Yes”?’ ‘That’s right. “No, I was just lucky”. I remember thinking was a bit strange at the time, but it was clear what he meant.’ Strange was right, and the more you thought about it the stranger it got.”
― David Wishart, Trade Secrets

“I pointed. 'That's the river ahead of us.' 'I'd never have guessed, Marcus. Does it always smell of roses?' Jupiter, she was crotchety! Still, I had to admit that the tendrils that were reaching out to us were pretty ripe. Pound for pound Tiber mud must be one of the evillest substances known to man. 'Yeah, well. Just be grateful we're still upstream from the Drain. The water's so thick there you can practically walk to the other side without a bridge. So long as you don't look down to see what you're standing in.”
― David Wishart, Ovid

“the emperor had chewed off his balls and stuffed a one-way ticket to the Black Sea up his rectum [Marcus Corvinus explains what happened to Ovid]”
― David Wishart, Ovid

“Senatorials are barred by law from trade, so you don't see many broad-stripers down that way. Not that the ban would be all that difficult to get round. All it'd need, for example, would be to set up dummy companies through one or two of your freedmen and cream off the profits. However for a senator to dirty his hands with trade is another of these things that's just not proper. We broad-stripers make our money respectably in other ways. Like from letting out rooms at sky-high rents in gimcrack tenements, for example. There're always plenty of punters looking for four walls and a floor to sleep on. And when the tenements collapse or burn down about their ears you can always shark up a few more and replace the dead tenants with new ones. Property's a seller's market that never loses its edge. Why get your hands dirty when you don't have to?”
― David Wishart, Ovid