mists of avalon → sentence meme
This is part one of a many part series of lines and dialogue taken from The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Feel free to change pronouns or anything else to better suit your needs.
But what can a virgin know of the sorrows and travail of mankind?
My fingers ache! Why must I spin, spin, spin all the time, as if I were a waiting-woman?
Romans make a great matter of worrying over who lay with their women.
And why could you not come before, why did you leave me all alone?
No single God can rule all things.
The principle of woman, so they say, is the principle of all evil.
There is some fantastic Jewish tale about an apple and a snake.
Those who are the Lords of this world permitted me to come back, but in another body of flesh.
But if men do not believe in more than one life, how will they avoid despair?
What just God would create some men wretched, and others happy and prosperous, if one life were all that they could have?
I will not let you play again at skipping-stones with my life!
Do you think I will let you plot against my child’s life as you have plotted against mine?
You are almost a woman, you must not behave like a spoilt child!
Will you fly so recklessly in the face of fate?
Such love we might well pray to be spared in a God.
Will you walk the road to your destiny, or must the Gods drag you to it unwilling?
And I suppose you will give me a charm so that he will fall so deep in love with me that he cannot resist it?
You are young, and I do not think you have any idea how beautiful you are.
She is a puppy bitch with eyes hot for anything in the shape of a man.
I suspect he’s no good Christian.
He’s a lecherous man with a dozen bastards, no woman’s safe around him.
He’s soldier enough for a Caesar; the men will follow him through hell, if they have to.
Have you a wish to be queen?
You say that because you are too young to know what it means.
I do not want to spend the rest of my lifetime at war.
I like not the way he looks at you. He is no man for a decent woman to know. Avoid him.
Forgive my clumsiness, lady. I am all too big to sit in your lap!
I do not want to be old, and think of Heaven and peace, for they seem very dull to me. I want war and plunder and women – oh, yes, women – and the priests do not approve of any of those things.
Do you truly think women know nothing of state matters?
You will not play the shrew with me, madam!
You will not speak to me in that voice or I shall beat you in earnest.
Touch me at your peril, or I shall teach you that a daughter of the Holy Isle is no man’s slave nor servant!
I trust him no further than I could kick his arse on a muddy day!
I love you with a love that is stronger than death, and if sin is the price of binding us together, life after life across the ages, then I will sin joyfully and without regret.
I will throw myself into the river before ever you touch me again!
You lie, and you know you lie!
You knave whose mouth and mind are as foul as your filthy kisses!
Be silent, you evil-minded scold!
Is that how you seduced my king into your arms?
Do you think I would ever look at you again except with the loathing I would feel for a snake?
Your Christian piety permits you to ravish your own wife!
I could not bear it, that you should look like that at that lustful and vicious man, and look on me only with duty and resignation.
I am innocent of whatever sins your evil mind believes I have committed!
If you think so evil of me, that I am adulteress, witch, all these ill things, why then did you not rejoice at the prospect of getting quit of me so simply?
Have you put some spell upon my manhood, you accursed bitch?
I am no longer a pliant girl but a woman with a mind of her own, and perhaps he thinks you would be easier to deal with.
Even should I never again look upon his face in this life, I am bound to him and I shall be so bound until I die.
And I cannot believe the Goddess would have wrought this upheaval in my life, if I was never meant again to see him.
Go and the Devil take you, so that you come not into my presence.
Why should I waste my breath with a curse? I would as willingly bid you Godspeed to your own heaven, and may your God find more pleasure in your company than I do.
Why do you seek to go where it is forbidden to go?
Have you no words of love for me?
I have waited so long – I had begun to fear it would never come, and now you have no word of love or look of kindness for me.
Did I dream it, after all, that you loved me, wanted me?
I do not want to frighten you, but I have dreamed so long of this moment.
Surely the time for dreaming is over?
And why, when first I looked upon your face, did I feel that I had known you before the world was made?
You are my love, my wife, my queen. I swear to you by my crown and by my manhood, you shall be my queen and I will never take another woman before you or put you aside.
You are my love and my lord and my king, and I will love you as long as I live, and as long thereafter as God wills.
Whatever comes of this, I love you.
I will kill him before he can touch you again.
Lie still, dear love, dawn is still far away.
