Quotes from Anne Perry

People lie to cover their mistakes, and then make even worse ones to cover their lies.

Your own gown is most delicately suitable, both to the occasion and to yourself,' to be translated: Your gown is insipid and entirely forgettable. If you wear it on every other occasion this entire season, no one will notice or care.

When we are happy to turn from evil because it is ugly, and causes us distress, then we condone it and become party to its continuance. Little by little, we become as guilty of it as those who commit the act—because we have told them by our silence that it is acceptable.

Before you pity yourself, take a great deal closer look at others, and then decide with who you would or could change places and what sacrifice of your nature you would be prepared to make in order to do so.

God! I hate clever women!" She froze for an instant before the reply was on her lips. "I love clever men!" Her eyes raked him up and down. "It seems we are both to be disappointed.

But the things that Christ taught are still true, of that I am absolutely certain. Meet me at the end of the world when we stand at the abyss...Honor is still worth living or dying for; no matter how tired or hurt or frightened you are, face forward and seek the light.

I am not. I am certain of the things that matter. Kindness and honor are always good. Do not build God in your own image, with your doubts and fears, your need to judge and condemn, your need for safety, and to be right whatever the cost to others, and ultimately to yourself. Let your soul be still, and know that God is never capricious, never cruel and never wrong. It is our understanding that stumbles. Even the cleverest of us are yet children, and the wisest of us know that.

It all comes down to fear and greed. The easiest way to make that respectable is to call it nationalism, as you can't fault a man for loving his country.

I think it's a terrible thing to write and not enjoy it. It's a sad thing. But of course a lot of people do work because they need to eat. And we all need to eat, but that's not the only reason to work. You couldn't have paid me not to write.

What was humility unless one possessed the courage to admit error, ignorance and futility, the strength to go back and begin again?

You can like people and still betray them, if it was for a cause you believed in passionately enough. You have to betray other people rather than betray yourself--if that's what it comes to.

Who cares whether the heroine wins if there wasn't any battle?

Here in England there's a glass wall between you and the taste of reality. I don't want to see the last true passion tamed by railways, and men with Bibles telling everyone to cover their bodies." He spread his powerful, elegant hands. "Play your string quintets, by all means, Mr. Narraway, but don't silence the drums simply because you don't understand them. The men who play violins have steel and gunpowder, and the men who play drums don't.

She understood very clearly why people go mad. Sometimes it is the only way to survive the unbearable when all other flight has been cut off. When the body cannot remove itself and emotions cannot be deadened, then the mind simply refuses to accept reality.

She taught me,' said Ta-thea, 'that if you do not have couragem all other virtues may be lost, because you cannot keep even love if you are not prepared to fight for it, to endure the hurt it brings, and hold on, no matter the cost.

Maybe right and wrong did not move, but understanding of them did. The wrenching pain of walking the same path, even for a short space, tore away the willingness to judge.

But easy victories pall after a while. If one always wins, perhaps one is attempting only what is well within one's capabilities—and there lies a kind of death, don't you think? That which does not grow may well be showing the first signs of atrophy.

A man should be proud of his heritage—not arrogant, as if it made him superior, but happy to own it and live up to the best in its promise. Monk

There were parts of Monk she admired greatly: his courage; his strength of will; his intelligence; his loyalty to his beliefs; his passion for justice; his ability to face almost any kind of truth, no matter how dreadful; and the fact that he was never, ever, a hypocrite.

The trees in the small copses of wood were just beginning to turn color. The chestnuts like liquid amber deepening here and there; willows still trailed streamers of green. The wild roses in the hedges were long finished, and they showed bunches of orange hips where flowers had been.

Death from hunger happened a hundred yards from death from obesity.

The truth can be very sharp. But it makes a cleaner wound than lies. It will not fester

Page 134 Florence Nightengale is speaking to William Monk Of course. If you know the truth, it takes a gentler and perhaps a wiser woman than Purdence Barrymore not to speak it aloud. She did not understand the arts of diplomacy. I fear that perhaps I do not either. The sick cannot wait for flattery and coercion to do their work.

If we can still surmount what is natural and believe what we wish to believe, in spite of the force of evidence, then for a while at least we are masters of our fate, and we can paint the world we want.