Bernard Cornwell Quote

You will not say how you are haunted by the faces of the men you killed, how in their last gasp of life they sought your pity and you had none. You will not speak of the boys who died screaming for their mothers while you twisted a blade in their guts and snarled your scorn into their ears. You will not confess that you wake in the night, covered in sweat, heart hammering, shrinking from the memories. You will not talk of that, because that is the horror, and the horror is held in the heart’s hoard, a secret, and to admit it is to admit fear, and we are warriors.We do not fear. We strut. We go to battle like heroes. We stink of shit.

Bernard Cornwell

You will not say how you are haunted by the faces of the men you killed, how in their last gasp of life they sought your pity and you had none. You will not speak of the boys who died screaming for their mothers while you twisted a blade in their guts and snarled your scorn into their ears. You will not confess that you wake in the night, covered in sweat, heart hammering, shrinking from the memories. You will not talk of that, because that is the horror, and the horror is held in the heart’s hoard, a secret, and to admit it is to admit fear, and we are warriors.We do not fear. We strut. We go to battle like heroes. We stink of shit.

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About Bernard Cornwell

Bernard Cornwell (born 23 February 1944) is a British-American author of historical novels and a history of the Waterloo Campaign. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe. He has also written The Saxon Stories, a series of 13 novels about the making of England.
He has written historical novels primarily based on English history, in five series, and one series of contemporary thriller novels. A feature of his historical novels is an end note on how they match or differ from history, and what one might see at the modern sites of the events described. He wrote a nonfiction book on the battle of Waterloo, in addition to the fictional story of the famous battle in the Sharpe series. Three of the historical novel series have been adapted for television: the Sharpe television series by ITV, The Last Kingdom by BBC and The Winter King for MGM+. He lives in the US with his wife, alternating between Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and Charleston, South Carolina.