Quotes from Julie Anne Long

vapidity was an excellent disguise for many qualities.

Her laugh was wonderful. It was mischief made musical.

He was close enough now to see that her profile was designed to do dramatic things to hearts: stop them, steal them, break them.

For if light had a sound, it was that laugh.

I will die, however," he said quite seriously, "if you leave me again. Just watch me.

And much like a catapult, my dear, the lower you begin in life, the higher you can eventually fly. All it requires is the right person to, shall we say, effect the launch." -Miss Endicott.

Did he mean for her to look at something she loved and think of him? How dare he. He had no right to give her gifts. No right to remind her she was alone by ensuring that she was not. No right to test whether she had a heart. No right to court her, to please her, or to do whatever he bloody well might be doing by giving her a kitten.

Be kind to the spider. It's simply working hard to be itself. And don't tell the maids

Go ahead, then. He likes his back rubbed. And his head scratched. The creature inflicts grievous wounds upon my person and expects me to forgive it? I expect a lot of creatures inflict grievous wounds and expect forgiveness.

How, she had no idea. She seldom considered the "how" of things.

And good luck to you, Miss Vale, wherever you may go.

You are my dream, Cynthia.

Oh, God. She'd now have to invent a bawdy verse on the spot. She'd never had to improvise so much in her entire life as she had in the last five minutes. Improvise being another word for lie, of course.

I should not, if I were you, wish to be, because 'sterner stuff' is usually forged by hardship.

He stared in something like disbelief. He'd seen a man convulse after being struck by a bolt of lighting once. Watching the marionettes was just that pleasant.

For what it's worth . . . I don't think anyone you love is ever truly gone. I do very much feel their absence . . . but I also feel their presence all the time, in a new way. In some ways they're with me now more than ever. I don't know if that makes sense.

Perhaps that's its strength. The flexibility. The fragility. Appearances…" He paused. "…are often deceiving.

Two is my number as well, Lady Balmain.

but the pain was old to him, and somehow it had become a part of him. He could bear it and speak of it. It had shaped him; he had accomodated it. He had loved abd he had lost and it had made him who he was.

Their faces were inches apart now, and he traced her lips with one finger, lightly, lightly, then placed his lips there as if he'd drawn them into being.

The one thing she'd been able to count on her entire life was her cleverness. She was so often right. It was humbling and disorienting to realize that she in truth knew nothing at all. One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one's own prejudices.

She mulled how very Jonathan of him to effortlessly find his way to her when she needed him, labyrinth or no. Just as he'd effortlessly uncovered her secrets. But that was simply because he'd been born knowing the secret to her. He was hers and she was his. Just as there was one key for every lock

Do the girls emerge quite ruined for marriage after you stuff them full of knowledge? I should imagine most of our girls emerge less tolerant of fools, if that's what you mean. - Dryden and Phoebe

Rhys told himself that everything came with a price. He'd made a difficult choice years ago to regain all he had, and some days he could convince himself that life was like war: bitter, desperate choices were often made in the name of survival, and some inevitably survived at the expense of others.