Damn it, the tiger played velvet paws with me, didn't he?

I knew that I had turned my world back to cinders, sunk my lovely ship with my own stupid, wicked hands.

— Mary Stewart

“Sometimes, when you're deep in the countryside, you meet three girls, walking along the hill tracks in the dusk, spinning. They each have a…

— Mary Stewart

The essence of wisdom is to know when to be doing, and when it's useless even to try

— Mary Stewart

“some man of power must have existed, with gifts that seemed miraculous to his own times.”

— Mary Stewart

It does not do to neglect the gods of a place, whoever they may be. In the end, they are all one.

— Mary Stewart

“I'd settle for what you had to give”

— Mary Stewart

“this might be a beauty to send men mad. Her body was slight with a child’s slenderness, but her breasts were full and pointed…

— Mary Stewart

“Literature and fiction are full of femmes fatales, but there is also an homme fatal, an altogether rarer bird, and pity help the lonely…

— Mary Stewart

“The village is perched on a precipitous hillside, and the houses are built in tiers, one up behind the other, the floor of one…

— Mary Stewart

“It is for you to choose. Choice is man's right, and for that I leave you free.”

— Mary Stewart

“I had been so used to God's voice in the fire and stars that I had forgotten to listen for it in the counsels…

— Mary Stewart

“It was over, the awkward moment, the dreaded moment, sliding past in a ripple of commonplaces, the easy mechanical politenesses that are so much…

— Mary Stewart

The gods only go with you if you put yourself in their path. And that takes courage.

— Mary Stewart

“Every time your work is read, you die several deaths for every word, and poetry is like being flayed alive.”

— Mary Stewart

Where two Greeks are gathered together, there will be at least three political parties represented, and possibly more.

— Mary Stewart