Fortune's Favorites Quotes

“For thirty years and more,” he said to the slack featured Vatia and Appius Claudius, “I have denied my nature. I have denied myself love and pleasure at first for the sake of my name and my ambition, and later when these had run their course for the sake of Rome. But it is over. Over, over, over! I hereby give Rome back to you to all you little, cocksure, maggot minded men! You are at liberty once more to vent your spleen on your poor country to elect the wrong men, to spend the public moneys foolishly, to think not beyond tomorrow and your own gigantic selves. In the thirty years of one generation I predict that you and those who succeed you will bring ruin beyond redemption upon Rome’s undeserving head!”
― Colleen McCullough, Fortune's Favorites

“Is this dying? he asked himself, and knew that it was. But I don't want to die this way! Not spewing and airless, soiled and incapable of disciplining my unruly body to get the business over and done with in admirable control and a decent meed of Roman dignity. I was the uncrowned King of Rome. I was crowned with the grass of Nola. I was the greatest man between the Rivers of Ocean and Indus. Let my dying be worthy of all these things! Let it not be a nightmare of blood, speechlessness, fear!
He thought of Julilla, who had died alone in a welter of blood. And of Nicopolis, who had died with less blood but more agony. And of Clitumna, who had died with broken neck and broken bones. Metellus Numidicus, scarlet in the face and choking-I did not know how awful that is! Dalmatica, crying out his name in Juno Sospita. His son, the light of his life, Julilla's boy who had meant more to him than anyone else ever, ever, ever... He too had died an airless death.
I am afraid. So afraid! I never thought I would be. It is inevitable, it cannot be avoided, it is over soon enough, and I will never see or hear or feel or think again. I will be no one. Nothing. There is no pain in that fate. It is the fate of a dreamless ignorance. It is eternal sleep. I, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, who was the uncrowned King of Rome yet crowned with the grass of Nola, will cease to be except in the minds of men. For that is the only immortality, to be remembered in the world of the living.”
― Colleen McCullough, Fortune's Favorites

“I have always liked him, even though he became our enemy. Even though he is not a good person. My husband was a genuinely good person, and I loved him, and was faithful to him with my mind and my body. Yet-I know it now, though I did not until now-some little bit of me did I give to Lucius Cornelius Sulla. The bit my husband did not want, would not have known what to do with. We only kissed that once, Lucius Cornelius and I. But it was as beautiful as it was black. A passionate and engulfing mire. I did not yield. But ye gods, how I wanted to! I won a victory of sorts. Yet-did I perhaps lose a war?
Whenever he walked into my comfortable little world, a gale blew in around him; if he was Apollo, he was also Aeolus, and ruled the winds of my spirit, so that the lyre at my core hummed a melody my husband never, never heard.... Oh, this is worse than the grief of death and utter parting! I have looked upon the wreckage of a dream that was as much mine as his, and he knows it, poor Lucius Cornelius. But what courage! A lesser man would have fallen upon his sword. His pain, his pain! Why am I feeling this? I am busy, practical, unimaginative. My life is sifted out and very satisfying. But now I understand what bit of myself has always belonged to him; the bird bit, that might have lifted in soaring spirals singing its heart out while all the earth below burned away to an unimportant nothing. And no, I am not sorry I kept my feet upon the earth, never soared. It suits the way I am. He and I would never have known a moment's peace. Oh, I bleed for him! I weep for him!”
― Colleen McCullough, Fortune's Favorites

“I know nothing of grief beyond what I feel inside myself. That is grief’s tragedy-that each of us must always deem his or her own grief greater than anyone else's. But I am prepared to confess to you that perhaps I am a cold, hard man whose greatest love is for his own dignitas. So be it. Once I refused to divorce Cinna's daughter. At the time I thought I refused to obey Sulla's command to divorce her for my own private benefit and the possibilities it opened up. Well, I have explained to you what grief’s tragedy is. But that tragedy is as nothing to the tragedy of never knowing how much someone has meant to you until after that someone is dead.”
― Colleen McCullough, Fortune's Favorites

“Haven't you yet realized that love always means different things to different people, and that love given is not always returned in like measure? I have never blamed him. How could I when I am not inside his skin?”
― Colleen McCullough, Fortune's Favorites

“Even the Greeks, with all their political idealism, failed to legislate the wealthy man out of existence.”
― Colleen McCullough, Fortune's Favorites

“He's a bad man. You're not. You couldn't be.”
“I'm capable of murder, Pustula. All men are.”
“I didn't say you weren't, Pavo. The difference is that Sulla is a bad man and you are not.”
― Colleen McCullough, Fortune's Favorites

“Aurelia,”
― Colleen McCullough, Favoritos de la fortuna

“beaten with fists and then with lashes, he had only betrayed the fact that he found such treatment highly stimulating;”
― Colleen McCullough, Fortune's Favorites