"That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain, she thought."
-SM Stirling, The Desert And The Blade (New York, 2016), Chapter Twenty-Nine, pp. 701-702.
And we find that we have already quote this line. See here. This could lead us back onto the theme of villains. However, I have exhausted what I have to say about such characters for the time being! Stirling's character quotes Hamlet after an interesting reflection on the difficulty of acting one way and thinking another. Those who find this easy are dangerous - smiling villains.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And those who find it easy to act one way while actually thinking in a very different way could be sociopaths. Again, I'm reminded both of how Stirling said a smart sociopath learns how to "mimic normal human responses" and Taylor Caldwell's disturbing novel WICKED ANGEL.
Sean
You smile when you're happy. Some people are made happy by... ummm... questionable things.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And you show very well, in many of your books, how happy some of your characters are when they do very questionable things! Count Ignatieff comes to mind!
Sean
Post a Comment