S.M. Stirling

I'm always diplomatic when heavily outnumbered by armed strangers.

— S.M. Stirling

“He smiled, looking into the flames. "He used to sleep on the foot of my bed, bad breath and gas and all,…

— S.M. Stirling

“It was hard, to be stripped of the cold comforts of her simple atheistic faith in middle-age. The more so as the…

— S.M. Stirling

“Testosterone rots the brain . . .”

— S.M. Stirling

Now let's move on to the subject of how a real man treats his wife. A real man doesn't slap even a…

— S.M. Stirling

“It is easy to kill. It is equally easy to destroy glass windows. Any fool can do either. Why is it only…

— S.M. Stirling

“There may be a worse form of government than theocracy in the long run, but offhand I can't think of any.”

— S.M. Stirling

“God is no respecter of either persons or names - Dieu or Gott or Kyrie or Adonai or Wakantanka. He is the…

— S.M. Stirling

“(Referring to an obsession with Tolkien's Middle Earth): I meet a beautiful American heiress, I like her, she likes me . .…

— S.M. Stirling

And the first king was a lucky soldier.

— S.M. Stirling

“Wholly homelike was the wedge of apple pie with whipped cream, and a piece of yellow cheese beside it, sharp and dry…

— S.M. Stirling

Because those events are so real that they cast their shadow forward and backwards through all time, whenever men think of these…

— S.M. Stirling

“Stress" is mostly the result of not being allowed to kill some asshole you really want to slice and dice.”

— S.M. Stirling

Words mean what they're generally believed to mean. When Charles II saw Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral for the first time, he…

— S.M. Stirling

Many are the marvels of God's Creation, but none so marvelous as man. Or so cunning, for good or ill.

— S.M. Stirling

Sometimes the harshest lessons were the most valuable.

— S.M. Stirling

“The others saw him as he stumbled down the stairs, bleeding from nose and ears and eyes an mouth. The sheathed form…

— S.M. Stirling

“. . . you should always kick a man when he's down. It's much easier then.”

— S.M. Stirling

Bad writers have influences. Good writers steal.

— S.M. Stirling

To take life was to understand your own death--that the Hour of the Huntsman also came for you.

— S.M. Stirling

“Grief is the tribute we pay the dead," she said, matter-of-fact sympathy in her voice. "But they don't ask more than we…

— S.M. Stirling

Sacredness grew like a pearl, sometimes around the most unlikely bits of grit.

— S.M. Stirling

The heart has its reasons that the mind knows not?

— S.M. Stirling

“He was of the Old Religion, like nearly all Mackenzies, and wouldn't object to a Catholic ceremony - his faith taught that…

— S.M. Stirling

“Sandra was fond of an old Russian saying: When a man causes you a problem, remember: no man, no problem. ”

— S.M. Stirling