Dorothy Dunnett quotes:

You all know that each title in the Chronicles has a chess theme; that's partly because of the overall design of the Chronicles themselves - the game of chess as an analogue of the game of life.

My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby's best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it. Says O'LiamRoe

But it's also because of something personal. My mother and father met while playing chess, so I've always had a fondness for the game. If it weren't for chess, I might not be here.

Facts are the soil from which the story grows. Imagination is a last resort.

So she was on her own, Kate thought, and instilled all the friendly helpfulness she could into her next question. â??Excuse me, but are you the bad company young Mr. Scott has got into?

And the English army, wheeling, started south at a gallop over the hill pass into Ettrick, followed by twenty men and eight hundred sheep in steel helmets.

I would give you my soul in a blackberry pie; and a knife to cut it with.

Music, the knife without a hilt,

Fools make news, and wise men carry it.

And at thirty-eight a brilliant exponent of arms and a knight of the great fighting and religious Order of St John, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had absolutely no use for common sense himself, but respected it in the laity.

After I convinced them that I was a harmless novelist, I actually got them to give me a tour of the harem - which is usually off limits for tourists.

Every ruin is packed like a biscuit box.

And habits are hell's own substitute for good intentions. Habits are the ruin of ambition, of initiative , of imagination. They're the curse of marriage and the after-bane of death.

You might, without my crediting it, fall deeply in love and forever, with some warped hunchback whelped in the gutter. I should equally stop you from taking him.

Man is a being of varied, manifold and inconstant nature. And woman, by God, is a match for him.

But I despised men who accepted their fate. I shaped mine twenty times and had it broken twenty times in my hands.

For an hour, blended with all she could offer, something noble had been created which had nothing to do with the physical world. And from the turn of his throat, the warmth of his hair, the strong, slender sinews of his hands, something further; which had. Though she combed the earth and searched through the smoke of the galaxies there was no being she wanted but this, who was not and should not be for Philippa Somerville.

Look up . . . and see them. The teaching stars, beyond worship and commonplace tongues.

Only common mortals like the Somervilles have good old rotten hates, dear,' said her mother. 'Sir Graham manages to love everybody and wouldn't know what you're talking about. Have a bun.' 'He doesn't love the Turks,' said Philippa. 'He kills them.' 'That isn't hate,' said Kate Somerville. 'That's simply hoeing among one's principles to keep them healthy and neat. I'm sure he would tell you he bears them no personal grudge; and they think they're going to Paradise anyway, so it does everyone good.

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.

It was one of the occasions when Lymond asleep wrecked the peace of mind of more people than Lymond awake.

Repressively, Lymond himself answered. â??I dislike being discussed as if I were a disease. Nobody â??gotâ?? me,â? he said.

A man of over thirty might be held to be at the height of his powers, but not necessarily of his wisdom.

Verily, God hath eighteen thousand worlds; and verily, your world is one of them, and this its bright axle-tree.

My son took many years to learn the simple truth. You cannot love any one person adequately until you have made friends with the rest of the human race also. Adult love demands qualities which cannot be learned living in a vacuum of resentment.

Where are the links of the chain ... joining us to the past?

[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.

Lack of genius never held anyone back. Only time wasted on resentment and daydreaming can do that.