"No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it."
— Elizabeth Peters

"'I'm standing in a slaughterhouse where the cattle are begging to become hamburgers. I have a right to be jumpy.'"
— Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (Shattered Mirror)

"Most men are reasonably useful in a crisis. The difficulty lies in convincing them that the situation has reached a critical point"
— Elizabeth Peters

""I have a big hole in my heart," I said. "But it'll close over."
"I don't want to sound all Dr. Phil," she said. "But don't let the scab seal the pain in, okay?"
"That's good advice," I said. "I hope I can manage it.""
— Charlaine Harris

"I, too, have felt that the war goes on and on. When my son, Ian, died at El Alamein-- side by side with... visitors offering their condolences, thinking to comfort me, said, "Life goes on." What nonsense, I thought, of course it doesn't. It's death that goes on; Ian is dead now and will be dead tomorrow and nexe year and forever. There's no end to that. But perhaps there will be an end to the sorrow of it. "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)

"I don't think she realized how much she cared for him, or he for her, until the end. Hasn't someone said a woman may be known by the men who love her enough to die for her? (If they haven't, I claim the credit myself.)"
— Elizabeth Peters (The Ape Who Guards the Balance)

"I would never have supposed that inexperienced girl was capable of such cold-blooded, calculating manipulation! "
— Elizabeth Peters (The Ape Who Guards the Balance)

"As Ramses did the same for his mother, he saw that her eyes were fixed on him. She had been unusually silent. She had not needed his father's tactless comment to understand the full implications of Farouk's death. As he met her unblinking gaze he was reminded of one of Nefret's more vivid descriptions. 'When she's angry, her eyes look like polished steel balls.' That's done it, he thought. She's made up her mind to get David and me out of this if she has to take on every German and Turkish agent in the Middle East."
— Elizabeth Peters (He Shall Thunder in the Sky)