Turk Quotes - page 2
Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master's call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.
Robertson Davies
Like a great big meaty stew,' Gallimard of the 32nd kept saying. In the sauce-coloured Nile blown corpses floated gently seaward, to be fished out with bent bayonets. There were good pickings here, since each Mameluke carried his gold about him. On the shore lay ornate pommels, daggers, pistols, all encrusted with pearl and jewels, worth a fucking fortune....he started to harpoon out a sogged and bloated dreaming Mameluke or Turk or whatever he was. 'Poor bugger's in paradise now, drinking sherbet, poor bugger.
Anthony Burgess
Like a good Turk he had no effeminate distaste for human blood; when, at the age of fourteen, he was invited to win the title of Ghazi-Slayer of the Infidel-by killing a Hindu prisoner, he cut off the man's head at once with one stroke of his scimitar. These were the barbarous beginnings of a man destined to become one of the wisest, most humane and most cultured of all the kings known to history.
Akbar
