Isn’t it sometimes more expensive to accept favours than it is to buy them? He
Eside him, on a low table stood a chess set she remembered. The heavy pieces of rock crystal and silver stood, darkly glimmering below the light of the window, and the fire, seeking them, had placed w...
Any country which has suffered a reverse of fortune instantly turns on its nonconformists.
You’ve chosen a life of vice, and have been consistent and reliable and thorough and successful in carrying it out.
You’ve changed the metre,’ said Philippa.‘I reserve the right,’ said Lymond, ‘to change the metre. Don’t interrupt.
You’re so damned brilliant, said Phelim. You know everything. It’s hard-set you’d be to give yourself a dull Saturday afternoon. We’re all puppets—not the old Queens only, but the rest of us, man, wom...
Your state has been seen, and will be reported on. Only it is necessary that you do not yawn. Or, of course, speak. Discretion in all things in all things is needed. She was reminding them, and she ho...
Your husband appears to possess an uncanny gift for seducing his enemies.
You wouldn’t expect me to make social calls if you had the remotest idea of the work entailed in bringing two unfortunate persons to the altar.’Careless words. ‘It takes ten minutes, in my experience,...
You summon and you throw away. You treat love like a bird for the table … Like a pawn, now in frankincense, now discarded and thrown in the dirt. You don’t know what love is, either of you. And God he...
You promise food and horses and nonresistance and when they invade, you do or don’t lick their boots according to the thickness of your walls and the kind of conscience you have.
You mean my reputation is ruined? No wealthy gentlemen suing for my favours?’‘No respectable wealthy gentlemen suing for your favours,’ he said.
You don’t understand,’ she said. In her lap, the loose hands had ground together: between the fair brows a single line showed, of anger and disgust and a kind of futile perplexity. 'You don’t understa...
You called me Alec just now,’ Guthrie said. ‘If I have dispensation to do the same, let me say it. Francis Crawford, I wish you away from this country; and if I had the hearing of a friend, and not th...
You Scotsmen: you wish to be like the elephant, hacked to pieces for refusing to bow. You should follow my rule: here am I, supple and amenable as a goatskin glove of Vendôme and pleasant to all, Duke...
With his education and heritage, Harry Darnley will be the only turncoat in England who can practise sodomy in Alcaic stanzas.
Why not,’ said Gaultier viciously, ‘play chess?’It silenced Lymond. His head went back as if he had been struck, the indrawn air caught in his throat. He said nothing more.
Why did you decide to join me?Why … ? repeated Redhead, needing time to think.Word of three letters, said Lymond. Come along, for God’s sake: no need to let me have it all my own way. What was it? Rap...
What will you not achieve next time? You should be relieved. A lifetime of desertion, and you are still her favourite son.
What intelligent remedy, like jumping in the river, do you suggest if we find this man Lymond irreconcilably dreadful?