All Quotes By Tag: Historical-fiction

“I intend to marry Michael, and squander all his money and run his life, and make sure he never again consorts with wicked women or gambles with licentious men. I promise I will henpeck him until he has no life beyond what I allow him, and when we die, I will lie in his arms through all eternity.”

“She had wanted more than she could have.She had wanted him, and more… she had wanted him to want her.In the name of something bigger than tradition, bolder than reputation, more important than a silly title.”

“Long ago she’d clamped an iron shell around her heart and nothing and no one could pry it lose, but deep inside the tender flesh still beat.”

“I thought I was going to die. I wanted to die. And I thought if I was going to die I would die with you.Someone like you, young as I am, I saw so many dying near me in the last year. I didn’t feel scared. Icertainly wasn’t brave just now. I thought to myself, We have this villa this grass, we should have laindown together, you in my arms, before we died. I wanted to touch that bone at your neck, collarbone,it’s like a small hard wing under your skin. I wanted to place my fingers against it. I’ve always liked fleshthe colour of rivers and rocks or like the brown eye of a Susan, do you know what that flower is? Haveyou seen them? I am so tired, Kip, I want to sleep. I want to sleep under this tree, put my eye againstyour collarbone I just want to close my eyes without thinking of others, want to find the crook of a treeand climb into it and sleep. What a careful mind! To know which wire to cut. How did you know? Youkept saying I don’t know I don’t know, but you did. Right? Don’t shake, you have to be a still bed forme, let me curl up as if you were a good grandfather I could hug, I love the word ‘curl,’ such a slowword, you can’t rush it…”

“I thought the force of my wanting must wake ye, surely. And then ye did come. . .” He stopped, looking at me with eyes gone soft and dark. “Christ, Claire, ye were so beautiful, there on the stair, wi’ your hair down and the shadow of your body with the light behind ye….” He shook his head slowly. “I did think I should die, if I didna have ye,” he said softly. “Just then.”

“Sonetimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.”

“My love for you won’t stop with my leaving. Come an evening over the years, when you step outside your door and hear the wind blowing through the cottonwoods, that’ll be me, thinking of you, whispering your name, and loving you.”

“How did I get here How did I end up in the arms of a boy I barely knew but knew I didn’t want to lose I wondered what I would have thought of Andrius in Lithuania. Would I have liked him Would he have liked me”

“How many times can a heart be shattered and still be pieced back together? How many times before the damage is irreparable?”

“To see the years touch ye gives me joy”, he whispered, “for it means that ye live.”

“Good men are often more practical than pretty ” said Mother. “Andrius just happens to be both.”

“I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower’s stem.”

“Lily held onto the edge of her desk to keep herself from screaming. She breathed in and breathed out.You’re a surgeon. A surgeon never panics during an operation.”

“Humans will never be in charge of this world, as long as dust and weeds do as they please.”

“A little truth seasons a lie like salt.”