Likes Quotes (page 533)
He’d heard of this woman. The Dame de Doubtance, they called her: a madwoman and a caster of horoscopes. Gaultier gave her house-room and men and women came to her from all the known world and had their futures foretold—if she felt like it. She had given some help once to Lymond, on her own severe terms, because of a distant link, it was said, with his family. Plainly, a crazy old harridan. But if she was going to tell Lymond he ought to find a nice girl and marry her, Jerott wanted very much...
Dorothy Dunnett
My dear Gaultier,’ said Lymond. ‘It will send the Shadow of God into transports. I suppose I’ve seen objects more grisly before, but it doesn’t spring to mind where.… Twenty-four-carat gold, Jerott. Look. And studded with rubies like fish-roes.’
‘Yes. I think he’ll be pleased,’ said Georges Gaultier. For the first time satisfaction, animation and even cheerfulness rang in his voice. ‘Sickening, isn’t it?
Dorothy Dunnett
I would like to visit the factory that makes train horns, and ask them how they are able to arrive at that chord of eternal mournfulness. Is it deliberately sad? Are the horns saying, Be careful, stay away from this train or it will run you over and then people will grieve, and their grief will be as the inconsolable wail of this horn through the night? The out-of-tuneness of the triad is part of its beauty.
Nicholson Baker
Parent power is not a sign of democracy, it is a sign of barbarism. We are to regard education as a service industry, like a laundry, parents are the customers, teachers the washers, children the dirty linen. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. And what in the name of boiling hell do parents know about education? How many educated people are there in the world? I could name seventeen or eighteen.
Stephen Fry