“
I am Delilah Bard, she thought, as the ropes cut into her skin. I am a thief and a pirate and a traveler. I have set foot in three different worlds, and lived. I have shed the blood of royals and held magic in my hands.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic, #2))
“
We can't all turn blood and whispers into weapons.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1))
“
The exception, as ever, was the children. Freed from the constraints of silence which had been enforced during the bard’s performance, the children dashed into the woods with wild cries, and enthusiastically immersed themselves in a game whose rules were incomprehensible to all those who had bidden farewell to the happy years of childhood. Children of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, quarter-elves and toddlers of mysterious provenance neither knew
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1))
“
A man of your valor deserves not another breath.
”
”
Craig R. Key (A Sight Unseen)
“
My refusal to remove the book from the library was backed by a majority of the Board of Governors. I wrote back to Mr Malfoy, explaining my decision:
So-called pure-blood families maintain their alleged purity by disowning, banishing or lying about Muggles or Muggle-borns on their family trees. They then attempt to foist their hypocrisy upon the rest of us by asking us to ban works dealing with the truths they deny. There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles, and I should therefore consider it both illogical and immoral to remove works dealing with the subject from our students' store of knowledge.(4)
This exchange marked the beginning of Mr Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as Headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favourite Death Eater.
(4)My response prompted several further letters from Mr Malfoy, but as they consisted mainly of opprobrious remarks on my sanity, parentage and hygiene, their relevance to this commentary is remote.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (The Tales of Beedle the Bard (Hogwarts Library, #3))
“
My head feels like there's a bard with a bad voice inside, and he won't shut up.
”
”
Allan Walsh (Blood Rage (#3))
“
I am Delilah Bard, she thought as the ropes cut into her skin. I am a thief and a pirate and a traveler. I have set foot in three different worlds, and lived. I have shed the blood of royals and held magic in my hands. And a ship full of men cannot do what I can. I don’t need any of you. I am one of a damned kind. Feeling suitably empowered, she set her back to the ship, and gazed out at the sprawling night ahead.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic, #2))
“
If you still want to tell him you’re sorry tomorrow or a hundred years from now, you’re going to get that chance. Because you’re going to be around. And maybe when you say it there will be forgiveness and it will be good. And if there isn’t forgiveness, then it will still be good, because you will have done what’s right: He deserves that apology. And in the meantime, there is beer and blood and the songs of bards, the great wide world to live in, and all the planes too.
”
”
Kevin Hearne (Scourged (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #10))
“
My anthology continues to sell & the critics get more & more angry. When I excluded Wilfred Owen, whom I consider unworthy of the poets' corner of a country newspaper, I did not know I was excluding a revered sandwich-board Man of the revolution & that some body has put his worst & most famous poem in a glass-case in the British Museum-- however if I had known it I would have excluded him just the same. He is all blood, dirt & sucked sugar stick (look at the selection in Faber's Anthology-- he calls poets 'bards,' a girl a 'maid,' & talks about 'Titanic wars'). There is every excuse for him but none for those who like him. . . .(from a letter of December 26, 1936, in Letters on Poetry from W. B. Yeats to Dorothy Wellesley, p. 124).
”
”
W.B. Yeats
“
I am Delilah Bard, she thought as the ropes cut into her skin. I am a thief and a pirate and a traveler. I have set foot in three different worlds, and lived. I have shed the blood of royals and held magic in my hands. And a ship full of men cannot do what I can. I don’t need any of you. I am one of a damned kind.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic, #2))
“
I am Delilah Bard , she thought as the ropes cut into her skin. l am a thief and a pirate and a traveler. I have set foot in three different worlds, and lived. I have shed the blood of royals and held magic in my hands. And a ship full of men cannot do what I can. I don’t need any of you. I am one of a damned kind.
”
”
Victoria E. Schwab (A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic, #2))
“
This was a desperate contest. Each move and counter move a fear and sweat-soaked thread to be woven later into fireside verse by those who had the gift. For now, though, they made just a dreadful, discordant song. The clank of blade on shield boss. The dull thud of sword on limewood boards and, now and then, the scrape of a blade's edge across iron ringmail or down bronze scales. And always the breathing, ragged and urgent. A man's lungs pumping in his chest like forge bellows, feeding the fire of hate and the blood lust. These sounds told the true story. They were the lyre strings before they are tuned to melodious accord, before the bard's fingers caress them to lift our hearts and our ideals.
No glory now. Just two men hacking at each other with sharp steel. Each craving the other's death. Both desperate to live.
”
”
Giles Kristian (Lancelot (The Arthurian Tales, #1))
“
The difference becomes clear if we consider Herman Melville’s distinction between a thoughtful response to Shakespeare and that of the mere thrill seeker. Melville contrasted “those mistaken souls, who dream of Shakespeare as a mere man of Richard-the-Third humps, and Macbeth daggers,” with the contemplative reader, who was unconcerned with “blood-besmeared tragedy” for its own sake and attended instead to “those deep far-away things” in the Bard of Avon, “those occasional flashings-forth of the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis of reality . . . that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare.
”
”
David S. Reynolds (Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times)
“
You carry the blood of the horse lords," the Bard said... "Your mother must have been a descendant of King Hengist, who was said to take the form of a horse when he went into battle."
...
"So I could be royal," said the shield maiden.
"Or part horse," Jack added. She danced the stallion sideways, making him jump out of the way.
”
”
Nancy Farmer (The Islands of the Blessed (Sea of Trolls, #3))
“
I have the feeling,” she said when the other two turned, “that this is supposed to be a historic meeting. Fraught with significance. The sort of things bards might sing of, if there were bard anymore.”
“And it feels a little anticlimatic?”
“Yes.
”
”
Elizabeth Bear (Blood and Iron (Promethean Age, #1))
“
Every blue moon he dreamt of casting off all the expectations that sat heavy on him. Sometimes he imagined becoming a traveling bard who drank lore and spun it into song. He imagined gathering stories and reawakening places that were half dead and forgotten. And he wondered if remaining at the university, held within stone and glass and structure, was more akin to being a bird, held captive in an iron cage.
But these were dangerous thoughts.
It must be the isle blood in him. To crave a life of risk and little responsibility. To let the wind carry him from place to place.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (A River Enchanted (Elements of Cadence, #1))
“
Just as Adaira was taking a step forward to beseech the spirits, their gathering parted to make way for one of their own to come forward. Jack saw the threads of gold in the air; he felt the rock tremble beneath him. He watched as the south, the east, and the west drew in their wings, watched the spirits quiver and bow to the one who was coming to meet Adaira.
He was taller than the others. His skin was pale, as if he had forged himself from the clouds, his wings were the shade of blood, veined with silver, and his hair was long, the color of the moon. His face was beautiful, terrifying to look upon, and his eyes smoldered. A lance was in his hand; its arrowhead flickered with tendrils of lightning. A chain of stars crowned him, and the longer he stood, held by Jack’s music, the stormier the sky churned and the deeper the mountain quaked.
It was Bane, king of the northern wind. A name that Jack had only heard whispered in children’s stories, in old legends that flowed with fear and reverence. Bane brought storms, death, famine. He was a wind one wanted to evade. And yet, Jack knew the answers they sought were held in his hands; he had been the one to seal the mouths of the other spirits, to keep the truth concealed from them.
Bane motioned for Adaira to approach him, and Jack’s heart blazed with fear.
“Come, mortal woman. You have been clever, tricking this bard into summoning me. Come and speak to me, for I have long awaited this moment.
”
”
Rebecca Ross (A River Enchanted (Elements of Cadence, #1))
“
The exception, as ever, was the children. Freed from the constraints of silence which had been enforced during the bard's performance, the children dashed into the woods with wild cries, and enthusiastically immersed themselves in a game whose rules were incomprehensible to all those who had bidden farewell to the happy years of childhood. Children of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, quarter-elves and toddlers of mysterious provenance neither knew nor recognised racial or social divisions. At least, not yet.
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1))
“
Titles available in the Harry Potter series (in reading order):
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Hogwarts Library Books:
Quidditch Through the Ages
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The Tales of Beedle the Bard
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two: The Official Playscript of the Original West End Production Based on an original story by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack Thorne A play by Jack Thorne
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter Series Box Set (Harry Potter, #1-7))
“
The average clan—and there were more than fifty of them in 1745—was no more a family than is a Mafia “family.” The only important blood ties were those between the chieftain and his various caporegimes, the so-called tacksmen who collected his rents and bore the same name. Below them were a large, nondescript, and constantly changing population of tenants and peasants, who worked the land and owed the chieftain service in war and peacetime. Whether they considered themselves Campbells or MacPhersons or Mackinnons was a matter of indifference, and no clan genealogist or bard, the seanachaidh, ever wasted breath keeping track of them. What mattered was that they were on clan land, and called it home.
”
”
Arthur Herman (How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything In It)
“
is no sure foundation set on blood, no certain life achieved by others’ death,
”
”
Laura Bates (Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard)
“
From the heights of Olympus, Aesculapius contemplated the miseries of the human condition. Out of mercy, he granted men divine knowledge of the art of medicine, to give dignity to the indignity of mortality. He repeated tirelessly: let no one be hurt, for his mortal workers, believing themselves to be gods, would adorn themselves in temples of blood, bones and flesh. At the end, he begged the bards to sing to the workers about the importance of the good and forgotten medical philosophy that precedes the intervention. They went mad, said Aesculapius, because they hid the rustic foundations of the temple only to highlight the beauty of the perfect forms of the upper parts. The divinity went mad and cried out from the Elysian Fields, together with Socrates: They place the supposed and false objectivity and supposed perfection of the method before the sovereignty of doubt, methodical and providential. If it were otherwise, we would still have to believe in myths and in the method.
”
”
Geverson Ampolini
“
And what if it’s the devil’s path?”
“All the better. We won’t have to walk too far.”
“Do you know, Geralt,” babbled the bard, following the witcher along the narrow, uneven path among the hemp. “I always thought the devil was just a metaphor invented for cursing: ‘go to the devil’, ‘to the devil with it’, ‘may the devil’. Lowlanders say: ‘The devils are bringing us guests’, while dwarves have ‘Duvvel hoael’ when they get something wrong, and call poor-blooded livestock devvelsheyss. And in the Old Language, there’s a saying, ‘A d’yaebl aep arse’, which means—”
“I know what it means. You’re babbling, Dandelion.
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (The Last Wish (The Witcher, #0.5))
“
The exception, as ever, was the children. Freed from the constraints of silence which had been enforced during the bard’s performance, the children dashed into the woods with wild cries, and enthusiastically immersed themselves in a game whose rules were incomprehensible to all those who had bidden farewell to the happy years of childhood. Children of elves, dwarves, halflings, gnomes, half-elves, quarter-elves and toddlers of mysterious provenance neither knew nor recognised racial or social divisions. At least, not yet.
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (Blood of Elves (The Witcher, #1))
“
There is something about the first frost that brings out the caveman--- one might even say the vampire--- in me. I want to wear fur and suck the meat off lamb bones, and on comes my annual craving for boudin noir, otherwise known as blood sausage. You know you've been in France for nearly a decade when the idea of eating congealed blood sounds not only normal, but positively delightful.
When I was pregnant, my body craved iron in silly amounts. I could have eaten a skyscraper. It's a shame that it's not on the French pregnancy diet--- forbidden along with charcuterie, liver, and steak tartare.
It's true that boudin noir is not the sort of thing I'd buy at any old supermarket. Ideally, you want a butcher who prepares his own. I bought mine from the mustached man with the little truck in Apt market, the same one I'd spotted during our first picnic in Provence. Since our first visit, I'd returned many times to buy his delicious, very lean, saucisses fraîches and his handmade andouillettes, which I sauté with onions, Dijon mustard, and a bit of cream.
I serve my boudin with roasted apples--- this time, some Golden Delicious we picked up from a farm stand by the side of the road. I toasted the apple slices with olive oil, sprinkled the whole lot with sea salt, and added a cinnamon stick and a star anise to ground the dish with cozy autumn spices. Boudin is already cooked through when you buy it, but twenty minutes or so in a hot oven gives it time to blister, even burst. I'm an adventurous eater, but the idea of boiled (or cold) boudin makes me think about moving back to New Jersey. No, not really.
I admit, when you first take it out of the oven, there are some visual hurdles. There's always a brief moment--- particularly when I serve the dish to guests--- that I think, But that looks like large Labrador shit on a plate. True enough. But once you get past the aesthetics, you have one of the richest savory tastes I can imagine. Good boudin has a velveteen consistency that marries perfectly with the slight tartness of the roasted apples. Add mashed potatoes (with skin and lumps), a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and wake me in the spring.
”
”
Elizabeth Bard (Picnic in Provence: A Memoir with Recipes)
“
When we'd arrived in Céreste, our neighbor Arnaud said we should go to the Musée de Salagon, in Mane. In addition to its twelfth-century church and Gallo-Roman ruins, the museum has a wonderful medieval garden. The monks used these herbs to heal as well as to flavor. I've met many people in Provence who use herbal remedies, not because it's trendy, but because it's what their grandmothers taught them. My friend Lynne puts lavender oil on bug bites to reduce the swelling; I recently found Arnaud on his front steps tying small bundles of wild absinthe, which he burns to fumigate the house. Many of the pharmacies in France still sell licorice root for low blood pressure. We drink lemon verbena herbal tea for digestion.
I also like the more poetic symbolism of the herbs. I'm planting sage for wisdom, lavender for tenderness (and, according to French folklore, your forty-sixth wedding anniversary), rosemary for remembrance. Thyme is for courage, but there is also the Greek legend that when Paris kidnapped Helen of Troy, each tear that fell to the ground sprouted a tuft of thyme. All things being equal, I prefer courage to tears in my pot roast.
”
”
Elizabeth Bard (Picnic in Provence: A Memoir with Recipes)
“
Bard Blood at the Palace,” the Daily Mail announced, reporting that Professor Wells had “crossed swords” with Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Wells had apparently asked the queen’s consort if he was a heretic. Philip, never one to tread lightly, responded, “All the more so after reading your book.
”
”
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
“
Bard Blood at the Palace,” the Daily Mail announced, reporting that Professor Wells had “crossed swords” with Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Wells had apparently asked the queen’s consort if he was a heretic. Philip, never one to tread lightly, responded, “All the more so after reading your book.” Meanwhile, Prince Charles had written to Professor Jonathan Bate, then at Oxford, asking for a list of arguments backing Shakespeare. Was the Prince of Wales plagued by a faltering faith? If he had doubts, it would not be wise to let on—not as president of the Royal Shakespeare Company and not, certainly, as he approached his throne.
”
”
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
“
A duel may be triggered by a seemingly trivial offence. In 1806, the poet Thomas Moore’s Irish blood boiled following a scathing review of his poems by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review. He challenged Jeffrey to a duel and bought pistols and ammunition in a Bond Street shop. Fortunately the duel (at Chalk Farm) was stopped by some Bow Street Runners. Moore and Jeffrey were arrested and taken before the Bow Street magistrates, and their guns examined. To Moore’s dismay, it was found that his pistol was loaded but Jeffrey’s was not: the ball had fallen out, probably when the duel was interrupted. A rumour spread that both pistols were unloaded, implying that the duellists were cowards; Moore wrote to the newspapers in an attempt to clear his name. Meanwhile, Lord Byron mocked Moore’s ‘leadless pistol’ in his poem English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). Moore sent a challenge to Byron but his lordship had gone abroad. The two poets later became great friends.
”
”
Sue Wilkes (A Visitor's Guide to Jane Austen's England)
“
The waiter slapped down my pavé au poivre. It was not a particularly impressive plate- a hunk of meat, fat fried potatoes piled carelessly to one side. But something happened as I sliced the first bite- no resistance, none at all. The knife slid through the meat; the thinnest layer of crusty brown opening to reveal a pulpy red heart. I watched as the pink juices puddled into the buttery pepper sauce.
Gwendal looked up. I must have uttered an audible gasp of pleasure. "I don't know why you can't get a steak like this in England," I said, careful, even in my haste to lift the first bite to my mouth, not to drip on my sweater. "Since mad cow, I think it's illegal." My fork and knife paused in midair as I let the salt, the fat, the blood settle on my tongue.
”
”
Elizabeth Bard (Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes)