Quotes from Laura Kinsale

Keep it. It is thine," she said as he rose with the diamond between his thumb and fingers. "A token." She was smiling. Glowing, her eyes shining with tears of elation. "So thou wilt not forget her flight.

For God's sake. Don't build a wall to keep me outside." "I won't build one," she whispered. "I am the wall.

I hope," she said, "that you didn't stay out of some foolish romantical notion." He looked down, staring at the tumbled bedclothes. "Such as?" "Saving my life." He looked up again with a grimace. "Naturally not. I usually throw my houseguests off the cliff.

Reality revived. She frowned and gazed ahead, feeling numb still after all these months, yet unable to believe it was true, wanting to lift her face to the leaden clouds and shriek and scream that it wasn't, that it could not be, that she would not allow it. That so much love and life could not just… vanish, into nothing, as if it had never been. That they must be alive and snug and happy somewhere, waiting for her.

Its been six weeks," he murmured. "Six weeks I've wanted you. I know how you move, and how the sunlight makes a shadow on the curve of your cheek, and the shape of your ear." He chucked harshly then turned his head on the pillow to look at her. "I'm dying," he said. He dropped his fist against his chest. "Right here, you're killing me.

He liked radical politics and had a fondness for chocolate.

My books are mine, and yet they are alien to me--as a child belongs to a parent and yet has a life of its own. I can guide and hope and nudge my characters this and that way, but in the end, they become what they become. I don't always like what they become myself, but like a parent, there are times when I just don't know what to do about it. Other times when I'm so proud of them I could bust.

It had not seemed difficult, on a small income, to know what was right to do....Now, with so much, it was daily a decision: what was necessary, what was frivolous...It was so much gray--so little black and white; for a year she'd spent more of her time questioning herself and how she lived in Truth than she had done altogether in her life.

She hadn't ascribed to this modern notion of equality between the sexes. Woman were patently superior.

The flame in her was slow and deep-he was going to incite it with the fire in himself; he was going to make a blaze to burn down cities, to lay waste cathedrals and castles and plain meetinghouses-to make a world where it was only him, and only her, and this bed, and one flesh.

Dost though even know what would become of me? Thou dost not." She exhaled sharply. "Friends would disown me. It is our way. I would be alone!" "No," he said unexpectedly. He turned and held his hand to her, palm upward, empty, a simple masculine offering. "Maddygirl. With... me .

He lifted his eyes. They were the color of the deepest heart of hurricane clouds, deeper blue than the sky behind him.

But no monk am I in my head, God grant me pardon," he whispered. His body drew closer, velvet and taut elegance. "My confessor has chastised me oft, and bade me study on my sins at length. And so, lady"--he kissed her, the hunger in it sinking down through her like a comet falling--"I have studied.

She was afraid, too, frightened of what she found herself becoming. She felt that she was transforming into a malevolent black spider, hunched back in her crack, staring out at the world and despising everything and everyone for having what she did not.

He felt her draw a little shuddering breath, and then a wet tumble of water on her cheek. She whispered, "God forgive, Jervaulx—that I sh'dovethee." That I should love thee.It broke the spell that held him. Had she said that? He pushed back, gazing at her.

If you're not a criminal, then what are you doing stealing all these swords and things?" For a moment he was silent. Then he rubbed his chin and said, "There's no name for it in English." "Oh, is there not? 'Burglary' seems descriptive enough." "Kyojitsu." He looked levelly into her eyes, not wavering. "False-true.

The flowers were opulent, full-blown, topple shower petals at a touch. He thought that she might topple that way, falling all at once into his hand, a soft drift of blossom between his fingers. The roses bowed their extravagant heads, nodding, but she was all stiff prim and black, back in her bonnet, so that he could not see her face unless she looked directly at him.

There was no public to humiliate him here. They already knew he was a lunatic. They expected it. He could burst into howls of insanity, and they would only smile those gentle smiles at him and wrestle him into the chains.

He came down the nave, walking with his graceful stride, dangerous and tear-stained.

He didn't reckon that God owed him anything. He reckoned that he'd had it all, and wasted it. Burning lakes and howling fiends had just never seemed that convincing, perils hardly fit to frighten naughty children. He turned over, staring up at the darkess. Damned…having found out now what hell was really like.

Trev's smile turned into a grin. His dark lashes lowered. "Do you know," he said, "when you smile at me that way, I'd like to…" He broke off his sentence and cleared his throat. "Well. Slay dragons, or something along that line." "Mere dragons?" she inquired. "I was hoping it would be giant squids.

It was high time that she left behind these silly daydreams, before she became odd and ended up locked in some attic, collecting bits of string and candle wax and muttering.

I want to see your stockings," he growled. "The plain white ones." Her lips parted, as if to make a refusal, and then she blinked. Her puzzled look only made her more adorable to him. "Yes, I was driven demented in your closet." He bent down to kiss her. "I'm passionately in love with your hosiery.

It was quite settled by now. She was born to be a spinster.