Bryn Hammond

“Temujin had had not the slightest notion that bad emotion can just grow and grow from inside you and squeeze out the universe.”

“I am a neighbour king to stretch my branches over him, just as Toghrul sheltered me when I was a weed-stalk next to a strong tree.”

“In the rare air of that altitude he forgot he was he. One way or another that was the aim of life. Shamans flew outside the self in ecstasy. Other people found love, or causes.”

“The animals haven't split apart into what they think and what they feel. They are whole and trust in their instincts.”

“People, and boys the worst, are so much more intelligent than what comes out of their mouths.”

“He only knows a single thing to clasp, that like God can't be split up into pieces: our honesty to one another.”

“Perceptions? Yesugei didn't give a goat's toenail about perceptions, but society was society. ...'Who gives a billy's balls what one or two wives have to say?''Quite, father.' This was strong language, to cite the nether parts, stronger than toenails.”

“Evil is abstract but existent. It's a negativity: untruth, dishonesty, abuse of trust. Evil, for us, isn't in-built - into people, into the cosmic scheme, but is a violation.”

“Tchingis, if you determine this is to be so, who can withstand you? You are poetry after an ugly day, and heal wounds I didn't know I had.”

“The glue between the horn that pushes and the sinew that pulls. The glue gets ignored, but you know, Ahai, up to half of a bow is glue. I suspect Ogodoi is the son I can least afford to lose.”

“Such coincidences were the rhymes that God wrote into fate, his chords of music.”