Oscar

“I wish to God,” said Gideon with mild exasperation, “that you’d talk—just once—in prose like other people.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Game of Kings

“The coast's a jungle of Moors, Turks, Jews, renegades from all over Europe, sitting in palaces built from the sale of Christian slaves. There are twenty thousand men, women and children in the bagnios of Algiers alone. I am not going to make it twenty thousand and one because your mother didn't allow you to keep rabbits, or whatever is at the root of your unshakable fixation."

"I had weasels instead," said Philippa shortly.

"Good God," said Lymond, looking at her. "That explains a lot.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Pawn in Frankincense

“Depose him,’ said Will Scott, astonished.

‘The Grand Master’s holy office terminates with his life.’

‘And can nobody think of an answer to that?’ said Will Scott.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Disorderly Knights

“Jerott, for God’s sake! Are you doing this for a wager?’ said Lymond, his patience gone at last. ‘What does anyone want out of life? What kind of freak do you suppose I am? I miss books and good verse and decent talk. I miss women, to speak to, not to rape; and children, and men creating things instead of destroying them. And from the time I wake until the time I find I can’t go to sleep there is the void—the bloody void where there was no music today and none yesterday and no prospect of any tomorrow, or tomorrow, or next God-damned year.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Disorderly Knights