Quotes from Deanna Raybourn

I'm jealous, of course. He's got a rich, pretty debutante and all I've got is a stiffy for the little brunette with the curly hair out there.

I had forgot," I said slowly, "Forgot what?" "That talking to you is like staring into a carnival looking glass. Up is down, down is up, Nothing makes sense." "Of course it does." His voice was gentle and his smile back in evidence. "Veronica, do you think I enjoy playing the villain? I loathe it. I want only to be left alone, but like any creature, I will fight if I am cornered...

If he were champagne, full of fizz threatening to escape the bottle, she was a delicate liqueur, subtle and languid.

The world would be a rather better place if we looked only for God in one another. -- Harry Cavendish

Shepherdess of the Sphinxes by Leonor Fini.

The first mission is finished with no casualties beyond Nat's cracked rib and the blood still caked in Mary Alice's hair.

Death is part of life, child. It is not the end. It is not even the middle. It is merely a doorway. Alice is no further away from me than if she had stepped into the next room.

Having a stepmother as serenely unflappable as Lady Tiverton could not have helped matters, and her father was wholly insensitive.

Mary Hathaway is the worst sort of provincial," I put in. We smiled at one another, bonded - as women frequently are - by our mutual dislike of another.

Oh, yes! Some scholars believe the motif was used as a means of illustrating the Egyptian belief in resurrection. It is an obvious parallel with the butterfly's own metamorphosis, is it not?

For all his love of London and his insistence upon living in the city, he was still half a Gypsy; his blood cried out for open spaces and fresh air in a way that a city-born man's would never do, I sometimes fancied.

Veronica is a very useful plant," I pointed out. "It is also known as bird's eye and gypsyweed and it is the largest member of the family Plantaginaceae. It makes a very fine tea for the relief of catarrh.

I have seen enough of the world to know that women can scratch and claw and fight just as fiercely as men for what they want. Perhaps more.

The soul is a thing apart. When you decide to share that with someone, then you will know what it is to live.

She gave a theatrical sigh. For heaven's sake, Julia, don't be difficult. Climb onto the floating buffalo and let's be off. We are meant to cross this river before nightfall.

The Stihls were doers. They carved out a place and a name for themselves in America when you Brits were cutting the heads off your kings.

Americans and their guns," he muttered.

I think all God really expects is a little common sense and kindness out of us. Surely He's too busy to keep a tally of all our misdeeds. That would make Him nothing more than a sort of junior clerk with a very important sense of Himself, wouldn't it?

You are all that I want and more than I deserve, and I will go to my grave thanking a god in whom I do not believe for bringing me to you.

He has a country house in Surrey, a daughter to educate and launch into Society, a wife to keep. He has kept pace for twenty years with an American millionaire, underwriting his own expeditions. What if he has gone to the well once too often?

have faith that men can be as reasonable and logical as women if they but try.

No, Julia, you need adventure. You need a lover, a holiday abroad. You need to cut your hair and swim naked in a river. You need to eat things you have never even seen before and speak languages you do not know. You need to kiss a man who makes you feel like your knees have turned to water and makes your heart feel as though it would spring from your chest.

Of course, I did not realize it at the time, but it was to be nothing like a year before I came home again. I did not know when I would see Brisbane again, but I knew that I would. Someday. And indeed I did. That is when we found the body in the chapel. But that is a tale for another time.

I am talking about seizing your life and truly living it before it is too late.