Edward Rutherfurd Quotes

“You can do what you like, sir, but I'll tell you this. New York is the true capital of America. Every New Yorker knows it, and by God, we always shall.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

As I said,I believe in fate.Things happen as they are meant to be.We just have to recognize our destiny.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“So does nobody care about Ireland?"
"Nobody. Neither King Louis, nor King Billie, nor King James." He nodded thoughtfully. "The fate of Ireland will be decided by men not a single one of whom gives a damn about her. That is her tragedy.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“All empires become arrogant. It is their nature.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“She was quiet for a moment or two. Then she said: 'Cruel words are a terrible thing, Quash. Sometimes you regret them. But what's been said cannot be unsaid.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“Don't you know that there's another bubble as well An expectations bubble. Bigger houses private planes yachts ... stupid salaries and bonuses. People come to desire these things and expect them. But the expectations bubble will burst as well as all bubbles do.
Come to my gallery and I will sell you beautiful things at a more reasonable price. But the point is that they will have value. Things of real beauty things of the spirit.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

For the increase in the number of my Brennan cousins," Conall remarked dryly, "we must thank the potato.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“True the greater part of the Irish people was close to starvation. The numbers of weakened people dying from disease were rising. So few potatoes had been planted that, even if they escaped bight, they would not be enough to feed the poor folk who relied upon them. More and more of those small tenants and cottagers, besides, were being forced off the land and into a condition of helpless destitution. Ireland, that is to say, was a country utterly prostrated.
Yet the Famine came to an end. And how was this wonderful thing accomplished? Why, in the simplest way imaginable. The famine was legislated out of existence. It had to be. The Whigs were facing a General Election.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“Fate was cruel, but it was fate.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

However much you may fall in love, do not waste that love on a woman who is not considerate in return.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“In my opinion the best writer of historical novels. He makes you feel, smell, see every thing he describes in all his books. He doesn't only write, he makes you linked images in your mind with his words.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“What he needed Gorham to understand - what his son was heir to - the thing that really mattered - was the New Yorkers indomitable spirit”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“Paris. City of love. City of dreams. City of splendour. City of saints and scholars. City of gaiety.
Sink of iniquity.
In two thousand years, Paris had seen it all.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“Then he noticed the belt. He pulled it out. The thing had been handed down in the family since God knows when. His father had told: 'Better keep it. It's wampum. Supposed to be lucky.' William shrugged. He could sure as hell use some luck today. On an impulse, he decided to put it on. Under his shirt of course
he didn't want to look like a damn fool. Then he dressed as usual, every inch the successful man. If he was going down, he'd go down in style. Anyway, you should never give up hope.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“The fault in his son lay not in his nature, which was honorable, but in his perceptions, which were limited.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“You can make money in a small way without politics. But to make big money, you need to buy the legislature. Can't be done otherwise.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

Can you do it?' 'Maybe I can, and maybe I can't. But I am going to make MacDuff think that I can. And belief,' said Gabriel Love, with the smile of an angel, 'is a wonderful thing.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“And suddenly it came to him. That Strawberry Fields garden he'd come from, and the Freedom Tower he'd been thinking of: taken together, didn't they contain the two words that said it all about this city, the two words that really mattered? It seemed to him that they did. Two words: the one an invitation, the other an ideal, an adventure, a necessity. "Imagine" said the garden. "Freedom" said the tower. Imagine freedom. That was the spirit, the message of this city he loved. You really didn't need anything more. Dream it and do it. But first you must dream it.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“The English Church, it was claimed, was Catholicism purified and reformed. And what was the nature of this reform? The truth was that nobody, least of all Henry himself, had much idea.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“For the French army was going to war. In taxis.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

About the nobles-not just de Cygne, all of them. They don't care. Just remember that. Do what you have to do with them, because they have the power. I don't know if they'll always have it, but they do now, and they'll have it as long as you live, my son. So don't ever go against them. But just remember, no matter what they say, don't ever trust them. Because they don't care about you, and they never will, because you're not one of them. He

— Edward Rutherfurd

“Oh Lord, we thank Thee for this thy gift of lobster Newburg. And grant us also, if it be Thy will, control of the Hudson Ohio Railroad.'
'But we ain't wanting control of the Hudson Ohio, Sean softly objected.
'True,' said Gabriel Love, 'but the Almighty doesn't need to know that yet.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

That was the trouble with being too highly born, Finbarr considered. The gods paid too much attention to you. It was ever thus in the Celtic world. Ravens would fly over the house to announce the death of a clan chief, swans would desert the lake. A king's bad judgement could affect the weather. And if you were a prince, the druids made prophesies about you from before the day you were born; and after that, there was no escape.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“The great festival of Lughnasa was held at Carmun once every three years. The site of Carmun was eerie. In a land of wild forest and bog, it was an open grassy space that stretched, green and empty, halfway to the horizon. Lying some distance west of the point where, if you were following it upstream, the Liffey's course began to retreat eastwards on the way to its source in the Wicklow Mountains, the place was absolutely flat, except for some mounds in which ancestral chiefs were buried. The festival lasted a week. There were areas reserved for food and livestock markets, and another where fine clothes were sold; but the most important quarter was where a large racetrack was laid out on the bare turf.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

In recent decades, Ireland in general and Dublin in particular, have been very fortunate in the quality of the historical attention they have received. During the extensive research required to write this book, I have been privileged to work with some of Ireland's most distinguished scholars, who have generously shared their knowledge with me and corrected my texts. Their kind contributions are mentioned in the Acknowledgements. Thanks to the scholarly work of the last quarter century, there has been a reevaluation of certain aspects of Ireland's history; and as a result, the story that follows may contain a number of surprises for many readers. I have provided a few additional notes in the Afterword at the end of this volume for those curious to know more.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“It was politics and religion, in van Dyck's private view, that made men dangerous. Trade made them wise.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“They say that people should be free to do as they like. That's what I think. But if they start preaching at me, they can go to hell.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

An unexpected guest, enjoying such lavish hospitality, should expect to sing for his supper.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“It was evident that Madame Restell not only liked to do as she pleased, but to talk about it as well.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“And Dirk van Dyck the Dutchman realized that he never had been, and never would be, as proud of any child as he was of his elegant little Indian daughter at that moment.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“Don't you know there's another bubble as well? An expectations bubble. Bigger houses, private planes, yachts ... stupid salaries and bonuses. People come to desire these things and expect them. But the expectations bubble will burst as well, as all bubbles do.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

You believe it?" "A man should always believe his wife, sir.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“Slowly the silent bird turned its head. It could do so, if it chose, through more than three hundred and sixty degrees.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“The old man had smiled kindly. "It is in their nature, child. God has made woman the weaker vessel." It was an old belief, dating back to St Paul himself. "It is man who is made in God's image, my child. Man's seed produces his perfect likeness. Woman, being only the container in which the seed matures, is therefore inferior. She may still reach heaven, but, being inferior, it is harder.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

Unfortunately he's just sold all his stock. We gave him the funds today." "Sold everything?" "I tried to persuade him not to, but he came in on Monday and said he'd decided not to tempt fate." The clerk smiled. "Said he'd had a sign from St. Anthony.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“In less than a month it would be the magical feast of Samhain. Some years this took place at the great ceremonial centre of Tara; other years it was held at other places. At Samhain the excess livestock would be slaughtered, the rest put out on the wasteland and later brought into pens, while the High King and his followers set off on their winter rounds. Until then, however, it was a slow and peaceful time. The harvest was in, the weather still warm. It should, for the High King, have been a time of contentment.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“England's Protestant," they declared. "Why else did we throw out the Stuarts? The government and their placemen are selling us down the river. If they'll give way over Catholics, what will they give way over next?”

— Edward Rutherfurd

And he glanced down at Mercy beside him, and saw in her face such radiant goodness, such a calm certainty, that it seemed to him that if he could only be with her all his life, he should know a love, and happiness, and peace that he had never known before.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“Doesn't private vice make a man unworthy of public office?" And now kindly Mrs. Albion looked at Mercy with genuine astonishment. "Well," she laughed, "if it did, there'd be no one to govern the land.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“Frank Master wasn't really her lover yet. Though he didn't quite know it, he was still on trial. She found him intelligent, kindly, somewhat ignorant of opera, but maybe improvable.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“We, the heirs of Saint Patrick, we who kept alive the Christian faith and the writings of ancient Rome when most of the world had sunk under the barbarians, we who gave the Saxons their education are to be taught a lesson in Christianity by the English?”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“The whole area, manor house, Clink, all eighteen brothels and the handsome profits therefrom, belonged to and was ruled by the bishop.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“We have all been robbed of the land we have loved for a thousand years. Do you not see that, Welshman? Can you not imagine his rage? We were not even conquered. We were deceived.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

I myself was born beside a river - the Avon in Sarum. So when I first encountered New York's great harbor and the Hudson River as a teenager, and came to understand their historic canal and railroad links to the vast spaces of the Midwest, I felt both the thrill of a new adventure and a deep sense of homecoming.

— Edward Rutherfurd

“I descend from both Philadelphia Quakers and Carolina colonists whose families were separated by the Revolutionary War. That helped give me insight into the agony of Patriots who, until the British government denied their claims, had always, like Ben Franklin himself, thought of themselves as free-born Englishmen.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“For me, playing music while I write is important. Several of the romantic scenes in 'Paris' were written with Debussy's 'String Quartet,' his 'L'Apres-midi d'une Faune,' or Canteloube's 'Songs of the Auvergne' playing in the background.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“For novelists, the imagination is everything. The trick is to guide one's imagination using research. I love using old maps. When I wrote my novels on London and New York, I found wonderful historical atlases. Paris has the most lavish maps of all.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“For centuries my father's family lived on Britain's biggest tidal river, the Severn, on which there was a huge trade with the interior, and through the Port of Bristol with America.”

— Edward Rutherfurd

“I first considered writing 'New York' in 1991. I'd been in the city for a decade, was married to an American wife, and sending my children to New York schools. I was even on the board of a coop building. But I wasn't sure how to organize such complex material, and for many years I put the project aside.”

— Edward Rutherfurd