Bernard Cornwell Quotes
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Here, in this filthy stench of powder smoke, he felt at home. Other men learned how to plough fields or to shape wood, but Sharpe had learned how to use a musket or rifle, sword or bayonet, and how to turn an enemy's flank or assault a fortress.
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All gunners were deaf, they said. They were the kings of the battlefield and they never heard the applause.
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What did he want? A tournament? Who does he think we are? The knights of the round bloody table? I don't know what happens to some folk. They put a sir in front of their names and their brains get addled. Fighting fair! Whoever heard of anything so daft? Fight fair and you lose.
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To say anything was useless, to say nothing was cowardly. 'I think it a bad idea, Sir.'
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So far it's 43 books in 25 years.
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My God, I will not abide plundering, especially by officers. How can you expect obedience from the men when officers are corrupt?
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The Light Company were not worried by the French. If Richard Sharpe wanted to lead them to Paris they would go, blindly confident that he would see them through
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At risk of sounding foully pompous I think that writers' groups are probably very useful at the beginning of a writing career.
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Sharpe had been turbulent, ambitious, but one day, Hogan supposed, that restlessness would have found satisfaction. Then, curiously, Hogan found himself resenting Sharpe, resenting him because he had been killed and was thus denying his friendship to those who still lived.
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'There are rules, orders, regulations, Sharpe, by which our lives are conducted. If we ignore those rules, burdensome though they may be, then we open the gates to anarchy and tyranny; the very things against which we fight!'
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He had thought the army would pay for the voyage, but the army had refused, saying that Sharpe was accepting an invitation to join the 95th Rifles and if the 95th Rifles refused to pay his passage then damn them, damn their badly colored coats, and damn Sharpe. ... Britain had sent Sharpe to India, and Britain, Sharpe reckoned, should fetch him back.
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'You've never heard of Paul Revere?' 'No.' 'Lucky man, Sharpe. He called my father a traitor, and our family called Revere a traitor, and I rather think we lost the argument.'
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'Form them up Sergeant!' 'Aye aye, sir.' 'You're not a bloody sailor, Sergeant. A plain yes will do.' Aye aye, sir.'
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'It ain't justice, Richard, but politics, and like all politics it ain't pretty, but well done it can work wonders.'