Wings to my wits

      There’s no doubt about it, I’m good at dealing with barmy savages. They scare the bile out of me, and perhaps terror lends wings to my wits, for when i think of the monsters I’ve conversed with and come away with a whole skin, more or less . . . Mangas Colorado, Ranavalona, General Sang-kol-in-sin, Crazy Horse, Dr. Arnold, God knows who else . . . well, it took more than luck, I can tell you. You must know when to grovel and scream for mercy, but also when to take ’em aback with impudence or argument or pure bamboozle.


Flashman on the March, pp.189-90, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, terror.

Little by little

A land of mystery and terror and cruelty, and the loveliest women in all Africa . . . a smiling golden nymph in her little leather tunic, teasing me as she sat by a woodland stream plaiting her braids . . . a gaudy barbarian queen lounging on cushions surrounded by her tame lions . . . a tawny young beauty remarking to my captors: “If we feed him into the fire, little by little, he will speak . . .”
       Aye, it’s and interesting country, Abyssinia.


Flashman on the March, p.14, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Cowering in cover

“He was lying deep in the bushes, in terror of his life . . . and I located him by the sounds of his heart beating! Yes, and it’s a sound that has stayed in my ears these many years, that awful drumming of a human heart, in agony and fear.”
      Well, I didn’t believe it for a minute; if a beating heart could give you away when you’re cowering in cover, I’d have been dead meat before I was twenty.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.225, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Expecting the Spanish Inquisition

…the great terror of my infancy was a lurid coloured print entitled “All Hope Abandon”, purporting to show what happened when the Spanish Inquisition got hold of you — which they undoubtedly would, my nurse assured me, if I didn’t eat my crusts, or farted in Church.

Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.117, Harper Collins, 1995.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, terror.

Terrifying yearning

She looked at me with a truly terrifying yearning; I’d seen nothing like it since the doctors were putting the strait-jacket on my guvnor and whisking the brandy out of his reach.

Flashman and the Redskins, pp.42-43, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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Run

That’s what you young chaps have got to remember – when you run, run, full speed, with never a thought for anything else; don’t look or listen or dither even for an instant; let terror have his way, for he’s the best friend you’ve got.

Flashman's Lady, p.103, Pan edition, 1979.

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