Quotes from Deanna Raybourn

He went on. "You are not among the good that has happened to me. You are the best of all that I have known. You are what I searched for when I left that house and wandered this earth, boy and man. You are the part of myself I never thought to find because I did not even dare to dream you existed. 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.

That's the trouble with women," she said. "We know what we oughtn't do, and yet we do it anyway. Nature has given us instincts, but when a man comes along, we hear only his voice, and not our own

I gave her a long, searching look. I would do as she asked; we both knew that. She thought she persuaded me with her talk of family feeling and my father, but that was not why I helped her. Hatred, as it happens, can be as strong an inducement as the gentler emotions

might be more fun to spring it on you in court if

I wondered, late into the darkness, why malevolence in the elderly should be so much more frightening than in the young. Is it because they were supposed to be wiser? Nobler? Or simply because we liked to believe they were past such passions? It was comforting to think that the sharper emotions could simply dull with time, taking the worst of our suffering with them.

And do you know who was supposed to look after it? I was. She would live with us and give him his golden child, and I was to be nothing more than a nursemaid in my own home, reduced to whatever crumbs she saw fit to leave me.

You are maudlin and sentimental, and it is high time you took a rather hard look at yourself and realized you are in danger of becoming ridiculous.

I can only quote Xenocrates, dear lady. 'I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

survivors," Tiberius said with a mocking smile. "Pietro Salviati, now a count, having succeeded to his father's title, resides in New York with his American contessa, Beatrice. James MacIver—Sir James now, fourteenth baronet of that line—is a prominent MP and divides his time between London and his family seat in Glen Lyon in Scotland. His wife, the redoubtable Augusta,

That you were taking contracts on the side." I raised a brow. The cardinal rule of the Museum was that freelancing was strictly forbidden. It's one of the things that separated us from hired guns. We killed to order only, targets that had been scrupulously vetted and chosen because their deaths would benefit humanity as a whole.

A bit of trouble with this? I'm having a goddamned nervous breakdown. The woman I love most in the world has—after five years of marriage—decided to finally tell me the truth about what she does. That's five years of lies. That's a shit-ton of lies.

Unseemly thinks are often the most interesting

He believed, like all good radicals, that everything ought to be examined anew by each generation. What served society should be retained, and what did not should be discarded without sentiment or reserve.

For just these few hours, I was on the tightrope again, balanced precariously between glory and disaster, and the thrill of it coursed through me with far more effect than the glittering wine.

I am quite determined to be mistress of my own fate, Mrs. Clutterthorpe, but I do sympathize with how strange it must sound to you. It is not your fault that you are entirely devoid of imagination. I blame your education.

I am a scientist," I told him ruthlessly. "I do not require perfect knowledge in order to form a working hypothesis, only possibilities.

No justice that imperiled the innocent could ever be true, and Beatrice's recklessness spoke volumes as to her rage.

I tipped my head.

We are educated out of common sense, curiosity, and any real merit. We are made to be decorative and worthy of display, with occasional forays into procreation and good works, but nothing more.

And she patted her sleek black bob and followed the lure of the music inside.

That is the hallmark of a good partnership, you know—when one partner sees the forest and the other studies the trees.

Guilt if we want to be mothers, guilt if we take the Pill instead or choose to abort. Guilt if we stay home with our kids or guilt if we work. Guilt if we sleep with a man, guilt if we say no. Guilt if we're lucky enough to survive for no good reason. I'm so damned sick of it. I've never been so tired of anything in my life. I just . . . I just want to go to sleep forever.

It is madness," Brisbane said, and he laughed until tears gathered in his eyes. "It may be madness, but it is an entirely March Christmas," I told him. "And do not forget, this is only half the family. The rest will be here for Twelfth Night." But that is a tale for another time.

Here, Mary Alice. Drink this and I'll see if I can find you a flashlight." Mary Alice furrowed her brow. "Flashlight?" "To find the stick up your ass. Let me know if you need a hand getting it out," Natalie said sweetly.