Quotes from Anne Perry

Life is frightening, Claudine corrected her. And beautiful and full of strange and unexpected opportunities. This is one of them.

You deliberately don't ask the questions to which you would rather not know the answers. You call it trust. You know too late that it is cowardice.

Was a great enemy as much a part of a man's life as a great friend? Surely it must be. It must be the cross thread in the fabric of emotions.

In that moment there was no pretense between them, no lingering vestige of reserve or attempt to escape, no denial. It was final and complete.

How little one guessed of people when one saw them only in the single dimension of a few days or weeks; how they lacked all the substance of the past. They seemed almost flat, like cardboard, with all the depth gone.

I'm so sorry, my dear," she said quietly. "It's a shock, even though he was old. Pieces of our lives being chipped away reminds us of our own fragility, and how precious life is.

Without the discipline of work, they had invented the discipline of etiquette, and it had become just as ruthless a master.

Her happiness swept the house in a whirlwind; her misery wrapped it in a purple gloom.

Perhaps it is because my conviction is anyone may believe whatever they wish. Intolerance is a greater offense against God than holding a strange or even inconsistent belief. You have the right to worship what you wish - a pile of stones in your garden - as long as you do not injure others.

Isn't it a lovely ball?" She looked around at the sea of lace and tulle and silk, the blaze of lights, the laughter and the music and the sway and swirl of movement. "I wish everyone could be as happy as I am.

I believe in an individual soul which travels through eternity. This life is far from all there is--in fact, it is a minute part, simply an antechamber, a deciding place where we choose the light from the dark, where we come to know what we truly value.

It isn't always the value of what is taken that makes us hate. Sometimes it's just the fact that we've been robbed.

How quickly a moment sinks into the past.

Fear does different things to people. Some run away. Some go forward to meet it before it's there.

The success of the lie depends a great deal upon how much the hearer wishes to believe it," she replied.

Trouble is, he wasn't clever enough to pretend to be a little less clever.

Success without envy was like snails without sauce—and, as any cultivated woman knew, the sauce is everything!

You cannot tell people to take into account what they do not wish to know.

That is the magical thing about books. You can listen to all the greatest people who have ever lived, anywhere in the world, in any civilization. You can see what is completely different about them, things you never imagined.

Be aware that you can truly help people only by aiding them to become what they are, not what you are.

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.

Remember, my dear, you are dealing with the world as it is, not as you believe, maybe rightly, that it ought to be.

Be aware that you can truly help people only by aiding them to become what they are, not what you are. I have heard you say 'If I were you, I would do this—or that.' 'I' am never 'you'—and my solutions may not be yours.

It is the spirit which heals the transgressor, and that is in essence what matters.