Cf. Hollywood

…she had decided a career as a mistress was no great shakes, and had determined to try her luck on stage — she’d been born with a talent for mimicry, and being vicious, immoral, and vain, she had taken to the theatre like a pirate to plunder.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.201, Harper Collins, 1995.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, theatre.

Did they not Sir Harry?

. . . that glittering pyramid of light, broad as a crown piece, alive with an icy fire that seems to shine from its very heart. It’s a matchless, evil thing, and shouldn’t be a diamond at all, but a ruby, red as the blood of the thousands who’ve died for it. But it wasn’t that, or its terrible beauty, that had shaken me . . . it was the memory, all unexpected. Aye, I’d seen it before.
      “The Mountain of Light,” says the Queen complacently. “That is what the nabobs called it, did they not Sir Harry?”
      “Indeed, ma’am,” says I, a mite hoarse. “Koh-i-Noor.”


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, pp.16-17, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, diamond.

The effect of plunder

“It’s a marvelous thing, the effect of plunder on soldiers, I suppose they feel real power for once in their wretched lives — not the power to kill, they all know about that, it’s just brute force against a body — but the greater power to destroy a creation of the mind, something they know they could never make."


Flashman and the Dragon, p.267, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, plunder.