The Last Kingdom Quotes
"Destiny is all, Ravn liked to tell me, destiny is everything."
"I would choose my own tribe in time, but that time had not yet come, and so I crept across the field feeling very small and vulnerable."
"Gods fight each other! Everyone knows that."
"Watch and learn, my father had said, and I was learning."
"What mattered was that my uncle had usurped Bebbanburg. He was calling himself ealdorman."
"You will grow, you will learn the sword, you will learn the way of the shield wall, you will learn the oar, you will learn to give honor to the gods, and then you will use what you have learned to make your life good or bad."
"The joy with which the Danes faced battle. Ragnar was whooping with joy as he leaned on the steering oar and ran the ship into the bank."
"I was just from another tribe. There were three main tribes among the Northmen—the Danes, the Norse, and the Svear—but Ragnar said there were others, like the Getes, and he was not sure where the Northmen ended and the others began."
"He was also praying and sometimes beating his chest with his fists. I sensed he was a young man."
The flesh, father," he groaned, "the flesh.
"Bring the girl into your service, and resist her. Lay that tribute before God, let him see your strength, and he will reward you."
"We are all sinners, and we are all fallen short of the glory of God."
"Welcome the temptation, lord, welcome it, resist it, and give thanks to God when you succeed."
"Sometimes the mongrel you find in the field turns out to be useful."
"Start your killers young, before their consciences are grown."
"A ship, they say, is like a woman or a sword, sharp and beautiful, worth dying for, and certainly worth fighting for."
"I have never seen him so angry, not even when Sven had exposed himself to Thyra."
"If you can read them, yes. I was good at reading the runes before I lost my eyes."
"I will learn to read well, and learn to pray well, and learn to be a good honest Christian."
"We can only hold it with the help of Englishmen. A man cannot live in a home that is forever besieged."
"To be all night in the dark, beside the warm burn, was to be a sceadugengan."
"We are stubborn creatures, we cling to life and are very hard to kill."
"He was already so feeble that even my puny blows drove him to swift unconsciousness, but even so it took a long time to kill him."
"I have always been surprised by how much effort is needed to kill a man."
"There’s war between the gods, Uhtred, war between the Christian god and our gods, and when there is war in Asgard the gods make us fight for them on earth."
"The poets make it sound easy, but it rarely is."
"Ragnar made me leave my arm rings and Serpent-Breath behind for, he said, the city was full of thieves."
"He was a tall, heavily bearded man, and I thought I could never fight such a man."
"What we want is peace. You need it, and it is my duty to give it to my country."
"A soldier who reads is a soldier who can read orders, a soldier who will know what his king wants."
"We must make you into a true Englishman."
"I loved that sword, and I wanted her back before my life took whatever path the spinners required of me."
"You are my second son now," he told me that night.
"Enemies come soon enough in a man's life."
"I half feared and half longed for my first shield wall."
"I have never really understood why people think religion has a place in the midwinter feast."
"Luck is good, or so my own warriors tell me. I have not yet worked out a theology of luck."
"The sword joy. I was dancing with joy, joy seething in me, the battle joy."
"I’m already happy. I hump Brida and I kill Danes."
"I’m not a horse, father. I’m a lord of Northumbria."
"Alfred thought this experience would humble you."
"A reeve’s daughter, not an ealdorman’s daughter?"
"I’m a damned lord, and you can read, can’t you?"
"If you can’t read, and I can’t learn to read."
"It is a miracle, a demonstration of God’s power!"
"You must have faith. Miracles make belief easy."
"I’m not his man, Father. I’m Uhtred of Bebbanburg."
"He can be ruthless. He’s a king. He should be ruthless."
"I live in hope. Poor man, he had a squint, a palsied hand, and a face like a sick weasel."
"I’m not the only good-looking one in my family, earsling."
"We are all lonely and all seek a hand to hold in the darkness."
"We live, we die, we go to the corpse hall."
"They are all part of my life, strings strung on the frame of Uhtred, and though they are separate they affected one another and together they would make the music of my life."
"Pride makes a man, it drives him, it is the shield wall around his reputation."
"The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong."
"The battle madness was on him, the runesticks were forgotten, and Ubba Lothbrokson was making his legend."