Quotes from Lauren Willig

Right now, I couldn't have cared less if someone had waltzed across the room in a large flower costume with a sign saying GET YOUR BLACK TULIPS HERE. Every nerve in my body was on man-alert, screaming, incoming!

Inside, the festivities would continue, probably well into the night, with flirtation and merriment and gratuitous use of mistletoe. It was an inexpressibly wearying thought.

The use of charm as a tool made her hackles rise. She respected a more direct approach. A battering ram approach. At least one knew where one stood with the battering ram, none of this butter-wouldn't-melt nonsense that could mean yes, no, or maybe.

If a man took a lover it would be accounted commonplace. Why shouldn't you? Your virtue lies in your mind, not in what lies between your legs.

That was the problem with snide comments; they invariably lost all their punch on repetition. Besides, when facing impending death, what did the odd witticism matter?

That is fairly tame, I must say. If one is to have a blood sacrifice, I would hope there would at least be a bit more drama about it. Otherwise, it strikes me as a waste of a perfectly good human.

About, not to. Prepositions had been invented for a reason.

The leaves do fad and fall away, / Berries rot and sheaves decay; / The deer is fled back to the field. / That is all your promises yield. / All wind and words, your vows, I see, / Are barren as the fruitless tree.

The green-painted shutters had been closed over the windows, giving the house the look of a comfortable matron who had knotted off over her knitting.

Imagination was all very well in the daylight, but it was an uncomfortable thing late at night.

When they arrived at Parva Magna, everyone agreed that it was quite a good thing that the newly married couple had managed to find shelter in the storm, although there was some confusion as to why it had taken them a full three days to make their way fifteen miles.

His mother made a noise that in anyone of lower rank than a countess would have been given the unmannerly name of snort. As a cowed member of the ton had once commented, 'Nobody harrumphs quite like the Marchioness of Uppington.

Sometimes Richard had the sinking suspicion that he had a far better chance of preventing Bonaparte from conquering Europe than he had of thwarting his mother's plans to see him married off within the next Season.

If Amy had been around for the creation of the world, Jane had no doubt that she would have chivvied the Lord into creating the earth in two days rather than seven.

From far across the sea I come, Through fire, frost,and blazing sun, That you might, with your own fair hand, Enjoy the bounties of my land - Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby Americanus, A masque in three parts

No sin is original, no matter what the bright young things may hope. We're all merely playing to a theme.

It was the usual sort of academic battle: footnotes at ten paces, bolstered by snide articles in academic journals and lots of sniping about methodology, a thrust and parry of source and countersource. My sources had to be better.

Such kindness wasn't a gift but a goad, scraping against one's skin like a yoke of thorns. She would have preferred him stiff, defensive, even offensive.

Her eyes were as hard and bright as stars. Not the pretty sort that poets mooned about, but the kind that made men's destinies. The Orchid Affair

Her eyes were as hard and bright as stars. Not the pretty sort that poets mooned about, but the kind that made men's destinies.

He admired her for throwing off her aristocratic shackles -- his terms, that -- and making her own way in the world. He didn't realize that the truth was so much more complex, so much less impressive. She had less thrown than been thrown.

I don't believe anything's really inevitable until it happens. We just call it inevitable to make ourselves feel better about it, to excuse ourselves for not having done anything.

Her mother would be appalled, but she wouldn't say anything. She would just telegraph her distress with tightened lips and raised brows. She was good at that. Clemmie's mother's brows were better than sign language, complicated concepts conveyed with the minimum of movement.

For I shall bring you crimson leaves And rippling wheat in golden sheaves; A cache of berries, red and sweet, And dappled deer on silent feet. - Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby, Americanus: A Masque in Three Parts