Michael Dennis

“To remember a person is the most important thing in the novels of Alexandre Dumas. The worst sin anyone can commit is to forget.”
― Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo

“A greater hazard, built into the very nature of recorded history, is overload of the negative: the disproportionate survival of the bad side--of evil, misery, contention, and harm. In history this is exactly the same as in the daily newspaper. The normal does not make news. History is made by the documents that survive, and these lean heavily on crisis and calamity, crime and misbehavior, because such things are the subject matter of the documentary process-- of lawsuits, treaties, moralists' denunciations, literary satire, papal Bills. No Pope ever issued a Bull to approve of something.”
― TUCHMAN BARBARA, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century

“Oh, how I wish -- and here Jane astonished herself with the vehemence of her own feelings -- how I wish that once, just once in my life, I could see Emma Woodhouse receive a real set-down!”
― Joan Aiken, Jane Fairfax

“Don't meddle in the affairs of wizards,' " he said in lofty tones, " 'for they are subtle and quick to anger.' A fellow sorcerer said that. Good at his job, knew a lot about jewelry. Not bad at fireworks, either. Wasn't the snappy dresser Merlin was, though. Let's see, what his name? Raist--no, that was the irritating young chap, kept hacking and spitting up blood all the time. Disgusting. The other's name was Gand-something or other...”
― Margaret Weis / Tracy Hickman, Elven Star