The great epic tales stank, I think, more than the historians give them credit for

'But ... I'm totally unprepared! I have no luggage with me, no nothing.'

'None of us do. We none of us expected this. That is, in general, the nature of adventures. Adventurers tend to smell. The great epic tales stank, I think, more than the historians give them credit for.' 

K. Rundell, Impossible creatures (2023), 111-2

Some sentences have the power to change everything

Some sentences have the power to change everything. They are the usual suspects: I love you , I hate you , I'm pregnant, I'm dying, I regret to tell you that this country is at war. But the words with the greatest power to create both havoc and marvels are these:

'I need your help.'

K. Rundell, Impossible creatures (2023), 57

A slowly decaying piece of meatish fallibility in clothes

The body is, in its essentials, a very, very slow one-man horror show: a slowly decaying piece of meatish fallibility in clothes, over the sensations of which we have very little control. Donne looked at it, saw it, and did not blink. He walked straight at it: no explanation, justification, so cheerful sallies. There was just the clear-eyed acknowledgement of the precise anatomy and scale, the look and feel, the reality of ruin.

K. Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (2022), 69

There were more books in Oxford, more people his own age, less dying

All students over sixteen were required to take an oath acknowledging royal supremacy over all questions of religion: but it was thought that a child under sixteen couldn’t be expected to understand the nature of the oath, and therefore the young brothers could live under the radar in Hart Hall, a place with a reputation for nurturing and protecting Catholics. There was less burning in the streets of Oxford than in London (at least since Archbishop Cranmer, condemned by Mary for refusing toe acknowledge papal supremacy, had med a fiery death in 1556). There were more books in Oxford, more people his own age, less dying.


K. Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne (2022), 32-33