Ann Swinfen > Quotes

“It is always good – is it not? – when all that hard work of writing pages is turned into a solid book which will last for generations. You can be proud of that.”
― Ann Swinfen, The Bookseller's Tale

“You cannot often turn a fanatic from the path on which he has set his foot, whatever the catastrophe that lies ahead.”
― Ann Swinfen, The Bookseller's Tale

“The slaughter of Oxford’s dogs and cats had been well intentioned, but the result had been an explosion in the town’s population of rats, with few surviving predators to keep them down,”
― Ann Swinfen, The Bookseller's Tale

“It was thus that I, a Jewish girl in fear for her life, came to work for Thomas Phelippes, chief cryptographer and spymaster under Sir Francis Walsingham.”
― Ann Swinfen, The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez

“killing is evil in the eyes of God,’ I said. ‘Never forget that.”
― Ann Swinfen, The Bookseller's Tale

“You haven’t seen the mistress of the wardrobe. Twice the size of Master Burbage, with a fist like a bare-knuckle boxer.’ ‘Yet she made these?’ I gestured toward the costumes, which – for all their fakery – were exquisite. ‘She did. You cannot judge anyone in the theatre by their outward appearance, though outward appearance can be a help, if you want to play heroes, or comics.’ ‘Or dainty maidens?’ ‘Or dainty maidens indeed.’ I laughed. ‘And”
― Ann Swinfen, The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez

“There is a kind of hardness of heart amongst us now. We have seen too much, lost too much. ’Tis as if we all wear a kind of armour of indifference.”
― Ann Swinfen, The Bookseller's Tale

“Meals here consisted of a great deal of day-old bread (bought cheaply), porridge, boiled cabbage, large helpings of stodgy pease pudding, and barley frumenty, flavoured and moistened with a very small amount of mutton broth.”
― Ann Swinfen, The Bookseller's Tale

“John Wycliffe had argued – and indeed very persuasively – that the Bible should be translated into English, so that any man might read its words for himself.”
― Ann Swinfen, The Bookseller's Tale

“cannon fired, followed by the ear-splitting crack of the explosions,”
― Ann Swinfen, The Enterprise of England

“along this major road into London from”
― Ann Swinfen, The Play's the Thing

“infirm might rest weary bones, but the idea that those who were hale and hearty might sit down during service was a new one, at the time when Lord de Vere arranged for the pews to be carved by the village carpenter and installed some six years earlier. I was familiar with pews from those Oxford churches which had begun the practice, but here some of the older villagers had muttered their disapproval, saying that only by standing and kneeling throughout the service could one show proper respect and piety in God’s house, not by sitting relaxed and idle. However, I noticed now that none of these die-hard traditionalists any longer stood resolutely at the back of the nave, behind”
― Ann Swinfen, The Huntsman's Tale

“I urged him forward, he broke into a slow canter, as smooth and graceful as the noblest of the Queen’s stallions, quite at odds with his ugly appearance.”
― Ann Swinfen, The Secret World of Christoval Alvarez

“river, but we were both glad to sit and listen. After we landed, the walk”
― Ann Swinfen, Bartholomew Fair

“We may think that our skill lies in creating something out of nothing, but it is not so. God is the Creator of all things. Our years of training serve only to teach us how to recognise what lies beneath the surface.”
― Ann Swinfen, The Stonemason's Tale