Anne Perry > Quotes

“Please don’t think so lightly of liking someone. It’s terribly important. It is a kind of loving, you know, and one that frequently lasts a lot longer than romance. You can fall out of love, as well in. Most of us do, especially if you don’t actually like the person as well. It doesn’t always grow into love by any means, but sometimes it does.”
― Anne Perry, Pentecost Alley

“We all try to forget what hurts us, it is sometimes the only way we can continue.”
― Anne Perry

“The mountains are so beautiful they make me ache inside because the moment I look away I know I shall need to see them again. And I cannot spend the rest of my life standing on the spot starting at shifting sunlight and mist and shadows across the sea.”
― Anne Perry, A Breach of Promise

“The men who cannot laugh at themselves frighten me even more than those who laugh at everything.”
― Anne Perry, The Whitechapel Conspiracy

“Can one be both barbarian of the soul and sophisticated of the mind?”
― Anne Perry, The Sheen on the Silk: A Novel

“Sometimes we bring to a struggle or cause the gifts we see most clearly, a courage, a strength, or a charm others have told us we have. But often we find more is asked of us than that, more than we intended or thought we possessed. We are asked to offer that which we thought dearest, to forgive what seemed unpardonable, to face what we feared the most and endure it. Sometimes we have to travel to the last step a path that was not of our own choosing. But I promise you this ... it will lead to a greater joy in the end. The difficulty is that the end is beyond our sight, it is a matter of faith, not of knowledge.”
― Anne Perry, A Christmas Visitor

“He was perfectly capable of looking after himself, although after his marriage he had lost the knack for it. He missed the comfort of all the small things Charlotte did for him,but these were nothing compared to the loneliness. There was no one to talk to, with whom to share his feelings, to laugh, or to simply speak of the day.

And he missed the sound of the children's voices, giggling, their running footsteps, their incessant questions and demands for his attention or approval. No one interrupted to say "Look at me, Papa" or "What is this for?" or "What does this mean?" or the favorite "Why?" Peace was not peace anymore, it was simply silence.”
― Anne Perry, Half Moon Street

“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.”
― Anne Perry, Shoulder the Sky: A Novel

“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.”
― Anne Perry, Belgrave Square

“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.”
― Anne Perry, A Sudden, Fearful Death

“It was not something you could call friendship; it was at once less and more. The sharing of such experiences created a bond and set them apart from all others. It was not something that could be told to another person. There were no words with a meaning both could understand which would impart the physical horror or the heights and depths of emotion.”
― Anne Perry, A Sudden, Fearful Death

“Monk had a brief vision of what it must be like to be a women on her own, obliged to work at pleasing people because your acceptance, perhaps even your financial survival, depended upon it. There must be hundreds - thousands - of petty accommodations, suppressions of your own beliefs and opinions because they would not be what someone else wished to hear. What a constant humiliation, like a burning blister on the heel which hurt with every step.

And on the other hand, what a desperate loneliness for a man if he ever realized he was alway being told not what she really thought or felt but what she believed he wanted to hear. Would he then ever trust anything as real, or of value?”
― Anne Perry, A Dangerous Mourning

“Love is brave and generous and above all it springs from honor. In order to love someone else, you must first be true to yourself.

Love is not two people wanting or needing what the other can give.
--Hester Latterly”
― Anne Perry, Weighed in the Balance

“In working with the wounded at Gallipoli, the lead character comments, “Perhaps life was the nightmare and death the awakening.”
― Anne Perry, Shoulder the Sky: A Novel