There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot. - S. M. Stirling

The Mackenzie had never met folk so poor in story and song and legends, and it moved him to a pity that pricked at his eyes. Without that tapestry of colour and words and ritual, what was life but eating and mating, sleeping and moving your bowels? All of them good and necessary, but not enough; and they themselves needed that framework too, to give them meaning.

One of the pieces of advice his father had given him when he got his commission was that excitable women were wearing, but often worth the trouble.

The waxen line of the bowstrings struck their leather bracers with a light whapping sound ... A man dropped from each end of the attackers' rough formation, with the flat punching smack of arrowheads striking flesh loud enough to hear.