Quotes from Julie Anne Long

the sympathy calls had been shot through with a subtle, yet unmistakably morbid glee. The queen had at last been nudged from her throne. It had taken disaster to do it, but still.

Love, real love, the kind that you fall in, isn't like Corinthians. The "suffereth long" and "is kind" nonsense. It's like the Song of Solomon. It's jealousy and fire and floods. It's everything that consumes.

She thought that heartbreak might just give his character the shadows and corners and angles it needed to make it truly interesting. To deepen and shape it. She was sorry she would be the one to help make him truly interesting. But she'd never apologize for falling in love with a man who already was.

Of course you're sorry. The first words out of the mouths of men who are caught doing something they're only too happy to continue until they're caught.

You shouldn't ask questions when you know at heart you'd prefer not to hear the answers.

He was still thoughtful. 'Do you think any of us ever really knows anyone?' 'Philosophy, Lord Dryden? And yet it's daylight and everyone is still sober.

He would ask nothing else from life if he would be allowed to protect and cherish her for the rest of his.

She was backing away from him now. Don't go, was his first panicked thought. Followed by: Hurry up.

I love you so much i can hardly tell my own heart from yours anymore, and I've never said it to another woman in my life as it's never until now been true.

There are things the artist intends, and things the viewer sees, and what the viewer sees isn't always what the artist intends. Isn't always apparent upon first viewing.

Magnanimous of you.' His mouth twitched. 'Mmm. Use more words like that, please. Schoolmistress words. Long, impressive ones.' He'd made the last three words sound like an innuendo.

I don't know,' he said irritably. 'Is it meant to improve you?' She swiveled toward him, eyes wide with shock. 'Because nothing could,' he added. Her mouth dropped in astonishment. Blotchy scarlet rushed her complexion. One would have thought he'd shot her. Oh dear God! He realized belatedly how wrong it had sounded. 'No! God... that is to say.. nothing is necessary to improve you. Nothing could possibly make you better... than you already are.

Everyone needed a reminder to simply look at things and enjoy them, without labeling them.

I love you," she murmured. The words ... it was as though an entire sun had exploded in his chest. He'd been ridiculous. His thrashing thoughts, his grand confusion and torment and helplessness -- it was only love, had always been love, he supposed. It was no precipice he stood at, or rather precipices have little meaning when one finally acknowledges that one has wings. Connor stepped off. "I love you, too." Such grave, inadequate words for what it was he felt.

Your imagination has an impressive reach." "Or my boredom an impressive scope.

And this is the potency a first kiss should have: it should be earned. The moments leading up to it should be as tense as a crossbow drawn back. The reader should want it as badly as the hero and heroine, and feel as satisfied and transported and transformed as the hero and heroine in the wake of it. There are different ways to use kisses in a romance, but that first kiss is so meaningful, a pinnacle, and can be more intimate than sex.

He'd meant to take her apart with a kiss. How, then, did he wind up in pieces?

He leaned in for a sniff. 'Smells like a horse's arse! I've got Ian!' -'No sniffing allowed! We never discussed sniffing! I cry foul!' Ian was outraged. 'I'm not giving you a shilling!' -'Give him a shilling! It's not his fault you smell like a horse's arse!

Directness often disguised as much as it revealed, and was a marvelous defense.

It knew things, that smile.

Oh, my goodness, Lord Dryden. You should have seen your face when you said the word work. It's not counted among the deadly sins, you know.

We all have foibles, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And the beholder oftentimes gets it wrong.

So she was to be savagely heartbroken and then poisoned by one of their cook's noxious herbal brews in the space of a few hours? Dante would find inspiration in this day.

Her voice was a thread, but still she managed to sound acerbic. "I believe it's the devil's job to tempt me. Not yours." "And the difference between the devil and I would be . . . ?" "None that I can detect.