Here Be Dragons Quotes

“Poor Wales. So far from Heaven, so close to England.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“The Welsh were a god-cursed, stiff-necked, and utterly vexatious people, John said bitterly, but they did have an inexplicable ability to rise phoenixlike from the ashes of defeat, to soar upwards on wings too scorched for flight.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“If disliking Richard be grounds for accusing a man of conspiracy, I daresay you could implicate half of Christendom in this so-called plot. Richard endears himself easiest to those who've yet to meet him.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“Oh, John is clever enough. But what do brains avail a man if he does lack for backbone?”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“Whilst stupidity may indeed be a sin, it is also possible to be too clever. I sometimes fear, John, that you are too clever by half.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“Eleanor would have been indifferent to the immorality of her adultery, but would never have forgiven the stupidity of it.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“Indeed. But I was not thinking of his immortal soul, Matilda. I was thinking that history is chronicled by monks.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“Just because something has always been done a certain way does not make it right.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“There are secret sins and found-out sins, and it is foolish to worry about the first until it becomes the second.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“I’ve never been so hungry that I was willing to lick honey off thorns.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“War is the least productive of men’s pastimes, and the most indulgent.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“If that’s how you’d rather remember it. But I did not mean that as a reproach. I do not, in truth, think less of you for having the common sense to abandon a ship once waves began to break over the bow. Nor, after sixteen years shut away from the sun, am I likely to find tears to spare for Henry Plantagenet.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“. "Why do you not want to marry John the Scot?”

“I do not like him, Mama.”

Exasperation and bafflement—familiar emotions to Joanna where her daughter was concerned. “But you do not know him well enough to make a judgment like that,” she pointed out, striving for patience.
Elen tossed her head. “His eyes are too close together. And he has a weak chin.”

“Elen, for the love of God! What does that have to do with marriage?”

Elen knew her mother was right; marriages were based upon pragmatic considerations of property and political advantage.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“Shall I tell you how to mend a broken trust? Pluck the feathers from a goose, scatter them to the four winds. Then gather them all up, each and every one, and put them back on the goose. It is as easy as that.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“Is it not a wondrous thing, to see your child born?”

He nodded. “Indeed. But I’ll tell you what is no less wondrous to me right now. That after a woman endures all this, why she is then willing to let any man ever again get within ten feet of her bed!”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“Fretting about time’s passing will not slow it down one whit.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“Memory is merciful, Joanna, more so than man. It fades past pain, yet holds bright the colors in recalled joy.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“The day that he accused a reigning King of murder was the day he signed his own death warrant, and he knew it.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“Poor Wales, so far from Heaven, so close to England!”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“The Welsh do make the worst enemies. They do not play by your rules, they win when they’re not supposed to, and they do not know when they’re beaten.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“She’d been torn, naked and defenseless, from a cocoon of privilege and power, with no skills for survival in this harsh new world.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“[I]f I truly thought we had a chance to succeed…But the risk is too great. I’ve never been so hungry that I was willing to lick honey off thorns.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“...nothing in life turns out as we thought it would, nothing...”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“Otherwise, I’d like nothing better than…conversing with you. You’re such a deep, penetrating conversationalist, after all,”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“I would look dreadful in black.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here be Dragons

“In a contest of wills between John and his mother, he did not think John would prevail, indeed he hoped he would not. But he did not care to be a witness to their confrontation; he suspected Eleanor's methods would be neither maternal nor merciful.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons

“Richard forced him from his sickbed, broke his power, his pride. But you, John, you broke his heart. I truly wonder which be the greater sin.”
― Sharon Kay Penman, Here Be Dragons