Sandi > Sandi's Quotes

“[Robin Stewart] was your man. True for you, you had withdrawn the crutch from his sight, but still it should have been there in your hand, ready for him. For you are a leader-don't you know it? I don't, surely, need to tell you?-And that is what leadership means. It means fortifying the fainthearted and giving them the two sides of your tongue while you are at it. It means suffering weak love and schooling it till it matures. It means giving up you privicies, your follies and your leasure. It means you can love nothing and no one too much, or you are no longer a leader, you are led.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Queens' Play

“Facts are the soil from which the story grows. Imagination is a last resort.”
― Dorothy Dunnett

“Where are the links of the chain ... joining us to the past?”
― Dorothy Dunnett, Checkmate

“I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Disorderly Knights

“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

“To save our friends’ nerves, I suggest we meet on a plane of brutal courtesy. It need not interfere with our mutual distrust.”
-Francis Crawford of Lymond”
― Dorothy Dunnett, The Disorderly Knights

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson