Bryn Hammond > Quotes

“Our children aren't here to fix our mistakes, but to have lives, lives we can't guess at.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“Temujin: "You are hard to get a plan past, my wife the queen."
Borte: "Indeed; that is what your wife the queen is for.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“If I laid a wager on which was to panic first, a block of granite or Jamuqa, I'd go the granite.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“In steppe epic, a steed and a sister are your trustiest, most intelligent and indefatigable aid: the hero doesn't have to be heroic, but these do.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“... a snuggery of grandmothers.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“Such coincidences were the rhymes that God wrote into fate, his chords of music.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“Temujin had had not the slightest notion that bad emotion can just grow and grow from inside you and squeeze out the universe.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“They met eyes and had a moment and had to glance elsewhere.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“Tchingis, if you determine this is to be so, who can withstand you? You are poetry after an ugly day, and heal wounds I didn't know I had.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“I am a neighbour king to stretch my branches over him, just as Toghrul sheltered me when I was a weed-stalk next to a strong tree.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“A howl, neither human nor animal but from a creature not invented yet, punctuated their departure. It was Jochi's battlecry, that he had worked on for years.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“The glue between the horn that pushes and the sinew that pulls. The glue gets ignored, but you know, Ahai, up to half of a bow is glue. I suspect Ogodoi is the son I can least afford to lose.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“Evil is abstract but existent. It's a negativity: untruth, dishonesty, abuse of trust. Evil, for us, isn't in-built - into people, into the cosmic scheme, but is a violation.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“A Tartar's heart is a quarter poetry, a quarter fire, a quarter wind of heaven, and a quarter the terror of his enemies.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“Divine guidance can be a faint touch - gone in a trice - like dreams.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“Perceptions? Yesugei didn't give a goat's toenail about perceptions, but society was society. ...

'Who gives a billy's balls what one or two wives have to say?'

'Quite, father.' This was strong language, to cite the nether parts, stronger than toenails.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“And what did Bo'orchu answer? "Kids For Nokods." After that they ran away.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“The Mongols have been twenty years without a khan. Now is he your warm coat against the winter; unwrap him not. Now is he your neck-scarf of fur; discard him not.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“Hoelun stepped into her tent with thyme in her coatskirts that were hitched up in her belt, and leeks in her hat, that was off. The blue spire of bark she had worn as Yesugei's wife never left her, but often did more than perch on her head.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“For a few heady weeks of the year the steppe in a binge throws out a wilderness of flowers that tangle your hooves and confuse your horse.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“In the rare air of that altitude he forgot he was he. One way or another that was the aim of life. Shamans flew outside the self in ecstasy. Other people found love, or causes.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“Besides, they cast an eye to the past, they didn't disgrace the ground they trod and they believed in the future again. That's what a victory does for you.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“The gallantry was the women's. ... The woman's chivalry in such circumstances is obviously expected.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“It wasn't that Yesugei was harsh, but people found a sad eye from him very hard to stand.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“And I saw you and I thought, she'd be a cosy fit inside my arm.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“Temujin watched Borte's ballet, her elegance on the fulcrum of her hips.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“People, and boys the worst, are so much more intelligent than what comes out of their mouths.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“He only knows a single thing to clasp, that like God can't be split up into pieces: our honesty to one another.”
― Bryn Hammond, Imaginary Kings

“Temujin nodded. He had every intention to do his bit in the battle, like his mother.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls

“Spring weather is turbulent. Every afternoon for a fortnight a gang of bruise-coloured clouds grumbling with their brew slunk up to the massy black stone of the tor. After a face-off of pops and hisses the clouds slunk south, to burst into storm on the horizon.”
― Bryn Hammond, Against Walls