Quotes from Candace Fleming

We may just be specters in this world, but our stories, if they are remembered and retold, become real and solid and alive... Once you hear a story, it becomes part of you. It can't die.

Once you hear a story, it becomes part of you. It can't die.

Oh, how I prefer the honest violence of men, who will bash in another man's skull and be done, to the thousand shallow cuts of women's malice.

I dreamed that I was loved. I woke and found it true.

Books taught me how to think.

One thing I have noticed, child, is that tyrants are the grandest romantics. They can burn a heretic alive once day, and compose a love sonnet the next.

We wanted - no, we needed - to tell our stories, and more importantly, we needed our stories to be heard.

We may just be specters in this world, but our stories, if they are remembered and retold, become real and solid and alive.

You are filled with anguish For the suffering of others. And no one's grief Has ever passed you by. You are relentless Only to yourself, Forever cold and pitiless. But if only you could look upon Your own sadness from a distance, Just once with a loving soul— Oh, how you would pity yourself. How sadly you would weep. —Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna Romanova, poem dedicated to her mother, April 23, 1917

Words hold such weight and consequence. I have not always been mindful of my tongue, and it has cost me. For if given the choice, people will believe the worst of you, not the best.

Ah, the Dewey decimal system…humankind's single greatest achievement." From Candace Fleming's The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School

I enjoy the sun and the beauty of summer as long as I can. Who knows if one of these days I shall be prevented from doing it. —Alexei Romanov

Neta crawled out of the wreckage, hoping against hope that Amelia wasn't hurt. She wasn't. She was standing next to the plane, grinning and powdering her nose. "We have to look nice [if] reporters arrive," she said.

fond," one catty countess recalled, "with diamonds scattered

The enemy perhaps may challenge my sex for that I am a woman - so may I likewise challenge them, for they are but men.

when the truth is not as dramatic as the rumour, it gets altered.

Children are never too young to begin the study of nature's book, and never too old to quit. ~Laura Hecox

Darling boysy...me loves you, oh so very tenderly...you must always tell me everything, you can fully trust me, look upon me as a bit of yourself...How I love you, darling treasure, my very own one. —Alix, to Nicholas II

Imagine what joy it would bring to see his beauty and brilliance shine out more clearly each day. After all, the important thing is the diamond itself, clear and flawless under its film. —Mary Lincoln

In this troublesome world we are never quite satisfied. When you were here, I thought you hindered me some in attending to business; but now, having nothing but business—no variety—it has grown exceedingly tasteless to me...I hate to stay in this old room by myself. —Abraham Lincoln

I live in fear that the deep waters through which I've passed will overwhelm me. —Mary Lincoln

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations. —Abraham Lincoln

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours —Abraham Lincoln

Time does not soften my grief, nor can I ever be reconciled to my loss until the grave closes over the remembrance and I am again with him. —Mary Lincoln