Quotes from Megan Chance

Now here was beautiful, vibrant Goldie, saying that we would be the best of friends, and I was foolish enough to think it was what I wanted above all else.

Is it optimism or madness that keeps one forging ahead despite failure after failure?

I looked again at the library, my vision made real, beautiful yes, but a terrible betrayal. I would never be able to come here again, I knew. Goldie and my uncle had been cruel and avaricious, but their greed was not so personal as Ellis's. Not so intimate. And yet, I knew also, in a way I had not known before, that its very intimacy made me stronger. I would not forgive him this,

The earth had set me free. The city was at my feet. I forgot where I was and that I had not touched a pencil in months.

There are many opportunities in a life. It's not a failing to take whatever comes one's way. In fact, I rather think it a strength.

The echo of my thought startled me. The weight of the future it contained frightened me more than anything else

One day you'll want for nothing. You don't belong here. You are meant for something finer than this.

My ever-present loneliness only grew worse. How could I complain? I'd come from nothing. I was the luckiest girl in the world. I had a family now. How ungrateful I was, to want anything more.

we despise most those who know us at our worst. It's true. It's so true.

All facade, all vacant, enjoyment without sustenance, celebration without boundaries or purpose.

Mama had never said anything of her family having such wealth, not once, in all our years of suffering. But then again, neither had she told me she had a sister. I should not be surprised. She'd kept so many secrets. But this . . . Why had she said nothing of this?

Don't you wonder what happened, Goldie?" "What happened to what?" "To our family. Aunt Florence just told me that she and my mother were close. Like twins, she said.

You must tell me the truth. I've seen you sneak out. I know it must be where you go.

Again, that sense of being stifled, cloistered, removed from the world and locked away.

proper city growth isn't what Older wants to talk about. All he cares about are his graft hobgoblins.

Then, at last, I had what I didn't know I was looking for: the antidote to my loneliness, which shriveled and withered away. Until that moment, I hadn't realized how much of me it had been.

Flossie's moments of clear-mindedness are few and far between, with or without the laudanum. Your aunt is a hysteric, unfortunately.

we despise most those who know us at our worst.

Remember who you are, May." The balm of my mother's oft-repeated words and the softness of memory banished my unease. I flew down the stairs to the party.

Heat and wind and poisonous smoke.

I cannot explain how it begins, or why it happens, what strange alchemy puts such things in motion.

How I trusted her from the start. How wholly I gave myself over to my cousin. The lure of beautiful things, of a friend . . . I was vulnerable without knowing it, having never had either.

And yet . . . after all my longing for this life, it felt strangely empty, beautiful but hollow. I did not want to admit that I found it boring, or that I was floundering in its shallows. How little they thought about anything but their own amusement. Their lives were so easy, so full of beauty and money. How much they could do with it, and how disappointing to find them so vacant.

Omnia Mundi Fumus et Umbra