historical-fiction

From my Facebook Page: "You spend the first 50 years acquiring and the second 50 years getting rid of

The sublime beauty was almost hidden withing the castle walls. She believed that the treasured things in life were often hard to find - a pearl in an oyster shell, a kind word in the heat of the moment.

Rooks have clustered on either side of the long road. It is as if they line a grand parade route for our passage. Their black feathers are stark as soot against the white road and the snow. They stab at the ground with their strange bare bills and gray unfeathered faces. The birds are like rough-edged black stones on a string around this stripped cold neck of road. The old books tell us rooks bring the virtuous dead to heaven__ gate.

Sometimes, the choices we make have devastating consequences

If Mary's blood is Spanish, at least it is royal. And at least she can walk straight and has control of her bowels.

Even still, it wasn't over. For if a battle could be won so easily, men would soon forget its horrors and clamor for it all the more. War would come more than once or twice a generation. Easy victories would produce men who were struck dumb with their own unbelievably improbable successes. Such men wold begin to think they had devised not the superior tactic, but rather the supreme tactic at winning

To those of you who are enslaved by your past, may my story set you free. For youth is innocent and its beauty is to always be cherished.

In any case how many took the oath and are now licking the toes of the whiteman?No, you take an oath to confirm a choice already made. The decision to lay or not lay your life for the people lies in the heart. The oath is the water sprinkled on a man's head at baptism

Our house has its back to the sea,' writes Hester in her journal. 'Below us, the ocean spreads to the sky, twitching wide and blue and hungry. One would think it to be infinite. But we, of course, know better.

All good things originate with the Creator God, he'd been taught, and the Song of Life was no exception.

But the living must fear death, or they would not struggle to stay alive. from 'The Fallen Kings.

This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray.""Go astray?""Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure.

In Venice, things not always as they first appear. I contemplate this observation from my post on the aft deck of one of Master Fumagalli__ gondolas, taking in the panorama of bridges, domes, bell towers, and quaysides of my native city. I row into the neck of the Grand Canal, and, one by one, the reflection of each colorful façade appears, only to dissipate into wavering, shimmering shards under my oar.

Mr Martinek turned back to Jana. 'Thirty-eight per cent alcohol, sixty-two per cent fire - all the way from Karlovy Vary.

And I tell her about his description because I want her to know what I now know, which is that the place where the pepper grows is not a place to be afraid of_I tell her: Mama, exile is not always the darkest corner of the earth. Sometimes it is lush and plentiful, sometimes it is full of life_

The urge to draw near to the female silhouette resided deep in the ancient center of a man...

There is a little bit of everybody in everybody.

Ann Boleyn...a Renaissance Audrey Hepburn in a little black dress.