The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Stories, #1)

by Bernard Cornwell

Start your killers young, before their consciences are grown. Start them young and they will be lethal.

War is fought in mystery. The truth can take days to travel, and ahead of truth flies rumor, and it is ever hard to know what is really happening, and the art of it is to pluck the clean bone of fact from the rotting flesh of fear and lies.

The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation and the Danes understood that. Men die, they said, but reputation does not die.

I did not know it but the three spinners were making my fate. They were thickening the threads, twisting them tighter, making me into what I am,

We are all lonely and all seek a hand to hold in the darkness. It is not the harp, but the hand that plays it.