Quotes from Anne Perry

She has the world on a string, and she contemplates it with some satisfaction.

I may go alone, Mr. Rathbone, but I am perfectly sure I would not find the ground uninhabited when I got there!

am surprised your mother has not given you the same advice." Christina stared at her. "She has, she has done for years. I pay no attention. One's mother is always giving one good advice.

I have seen my share of cruelty, injustice, and grief. I do not need to be treated like some flower that will bruise if you touch it.

This time it was Daniel who interrupted. "What's always right?" "Kindness," Pitt answered with certainty. "Keeping your promises. Not giving up just because it gets hard. Owning up to your mistakes, and not blaming other people even if you would get away with it.

That it's easy to forgive those you like? That is the test, isn't it…forgiving those you don't like? Especially those who have hurt someone you love. Anyone can do the easy things.

I didn't love him at all. I grieve because he had one life in which to seek truth and find courage to defend it. He had one life in which to explore his soul, find love, compassion, humility - and he wasted it. Nobody is richer for his having been, nobody is poorer because he is gone. Therefore I grieve.

For how many people does fear of the future take away the present as well?

You do not need to believe evil, only to use its methods. You will get accustomed to them, until eventually they are not your last choice, but your first. For awhile, you can justify it to yourself, and then eventually you will not bother. You have forgotten what you are fighting for; now winning is the only objective! And the more you win, the more you justify it, until the whole idea of right and wrong disappears and only winning matters.

When you live in another land, Mr. Pitt, no matter how strange it may seem at first, it is a very short time until its people become your own, and their grief and their laughter touches you as deeply. All the differences on earth are a shadow, compared with the sameness.

one thing about responsibility Ã¢â'¬Â¦ you cannot ever take anyone else's, no matter how you love them, and no one can give you theirs. We each stand alone.

But then to go out to the Crimea to nurse she must be a woman of courage beyond the ordinary imagination, and to remain there, of a strength of purpose that neither danger nor pain could bend. "I

But I have learned something good about myself. I can stand up to people who have more power than I do, and fight for what I believe in.

She is a person of most decided opinions—which is not a criticism. I cannot bear wishy-washy people who agree with whoever spoke to them last

One can wrap the truth in palatable euphemisms for only so long, then it chokes in the throat and the lies suffocate. One ends in hating those who force the deceit by their expectancy, their fear, their cowardice, their sheer lack of understanding of the reality of pain and loss.

rare courage, and a force of character

A miracle," he said dryly. "Not at all," she replied with equally straight-faced aridity. "A woman would suffice.

embroidering the account, and decided it offered

She flushed hot to remember how utterly she had given herself to him in that one consuming kiss. All her heart and mind and will had been in it, all the things she could never ever have said to him.

adventure or decision or freedom of any kind.

There's a terrible temptation to look at only what you want to, and carefully avoid seeing anything else.

And Charlotte, she knew, would be no rival, because Charlotte always spoilt any visual effect she might have made as soon as she opened her mouth! Why did Charlotte always have to say what she thought, instead of what she certainly had enough wit to know people wished?

to care for any person or issue enough to sacrifice greatly for it was the surest sign of being wholly alive. What

to care for any person or issue enough to sacrifice greatly for it was the surest sign of being wholly alive. What a waste of the essence of a man that he should never give enough of himself to any cause, that he should always hear that passive, cowardly voice uppermost which counts the cost and puts caution first. One would grow old and die with the power of one's soul untasted.