Quotes from Sherry Thomas

There was a great deal of skill in her smile, a smile meant to make a boy who had done nothing with his life make him feel accomplis and remarkable-vile even.

Just before the start of Summer Half, in April 1883, a very minor event took place at Eton College, that venerable and illustrious English public school for boys. A sixteen-year-old pupil named Archer Fairfax returned form a three-month absence, caused by a fractured femur, to resume his education. Almost every word in the preceding sentence is false.

No one else spoke to him as she did, with as much frankness and . . . could he call it affection? Yes, he decided, exasperated affection, but affection all the same. "Will you ever stop suspecting me of ulterior motives?" "Yes, when you stop harboring as many of them as a Medici pope." "Then whom will you suspect for fun?" he answered cheerfully. He usually enjoyed himself around people. Her company, however, he adored.

Expect magic.

At least once in his life, he would like for her to look at him as she would a morsel of fine French pastry. Or a slice of Victoria sandwich. Or even a humble piece of buttered bread.

Titus's jaw dropped. 'Those caravanists, they were mages?' 'They most certainly were.' 'But one fainted and two reached for their rifles when they saw the sand wyvern.' 'It's a good policy for at least one member of the group to pretend to fall unconscious at a mage sighting. And I always think the rifles are a touch of genius - any time you see someone holding a firearm, your instinct is to dismiss that person as a nonmage.

He had wanted marriage, children, and an upstanding life. He still had the children, thank God, but a man who had salvaged his greatest treasures from the smoldering ruins of his home remained in the middle of smoldering ruins.

There was no idiocy bigger than that committed by a man who believed himself the cleverest creature under the sun.

Never mind what a man says; watch what he does.

She wasn't sure that she wanted to understand the full spectrum of human emotions?everything that remained seemed dire to one degree or another. But this warm, silly mutual delight, this she wouldn't mind experiencing until she comprehended its place in the world.

Even now her body yearned to be closer to him. She wanted to press her nose into his skin and inhale hungrily—he always smelled as if he'd just taken a walk across a sunny meadow. She wanted to rub her palm against his jaw to feel the beginning of stubbles. She wanted to slide her hands underneath his shirt and learn every single shape and texture, with the fierce dedication she'd once put into mastering the Grandes Études.

Her aunt would be appalled at her forwardness. But Penelope had long ago decided that while the meek might inherit the earth, the non-meek enjoys far more interesting conversations— to say the least.

He wanted to make cast models of her. He wanted to take a set of precision calipers and measure every distance between her features. He wanted her blood and glandular fluids analyzed by the finest chemists in the world—there must be something detectibly different in her inner workings for him to respond so dramatically, as if he'd been given a drug for which science had yet to find a name. But more than anything, he wanted to—

Now he could work her likeness into any story of his choosing. Now he could fight dragons for her. And now he could kiss her again.

He felt like a pilgrim standing on the shores of Lake Sahara, having walked barefoot over hundreds of miles, yet all the hardships forgotten, filled with only wonder and reverence at the marvel of it all.

It's far easier for people who want the same things to fall in love than for people who want different things to remain in love.

Millie was never possessive, never effusive, and never demonstrative. Her even-tempered approach to her marriage should have been enough to convince everyone that she admired, but did not love, her husband. Yet for years now, his sisters had suspected something else. Perhaps unrequited love was like a specter in the house, a presence that brushed at the edge of senses, a heat in the dark, a shadow under the sun.

She was proud one moment, covetous the next, and then fearful the moment after that. It would always be like this, wouldn't it, being the wife of a man she loved but couldn't trust, whose true motives were as murky as the bottom of the sea?

Sometimes people fall in love with those who do not return the same strength of feelings. It is as it is," he said with a quiet intensity. "What Igive, I give freely. You owe me nothing, not love, not friendship, not even obligation

You, sir, are a scoundrel. As if he'd heard her thought, he glanced her way. Their gazes held, a pair of miscreants recognizing each other in a roomful of upstanding people.

But you do not need to worry, Cooper. What is mine, I keep.

Brotherhood might be unique to men, but loyalty, devotion to friends, and a sense of fairness are not. They are the precise reasons I became a conscript in Dabao's place. I could never have been at peace with myself knowing that it was within my power to do something for Auntie Xia and Dabao and not have done it.

I only speak the truth. I quite despise myself for these desires that run amok. But run amok they do. I daresay for the rest of my life I will dream of being fondled by you.

I often question your actions, but rarely your reasoning. And this isn't one of those rare instances.