Dolly Dagger > Dolly's Quotes

“He’d never fallen so fast for a woman before. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that she uplifted him, drawing him out of cynicism into a happiness he was enjoying wholeheartedly; a happiness that had taken him so off-guard, his usual defenses were useless against it. Then again, maybe he didn’t want to employ them anymore. Beth was welcome in.”
― India Holton, The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love

“Angel was too feeble a word for her. She was heaven entire, embodied in a woman’s body. She was every superlative in every ridiculous emotional dictionary printed in a man’s heart.”
― India Holton, The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.
"After all this time?"
"Always," said Snape.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter

“Mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter

“It’s impossible,” he snapped.

“Why?”

“Because I’m Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent. I can’t be celibate. Everyone knows that.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter

“I’ll take your bet,” he said grimly. “I’m going to win it. And in three months, I’m going to put this back on your finger, and take you to bed, and do things to you that are outlawed in the civilized world.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter

“It’s a mistake, you know. You have no idea of what you’ll be exposed to…the obscenities and lewd comments, the lecherous gazes, the groping and pinching…and that’s just at my house. Imagine what it would be like here.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter

“The situation was extraordinary. How someone like Evangeline Jenner could have wrought such a change in St. Vincent, the most worldly of men, was difficult to understand. However, Westcliff had learned that the mysteries of attraction could not always be explained through logic. Sometimes the fractures in two separate souls became the very hinges that held them together.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter

“He looked like a fallen angel, replete with all the dangerous male beauty that Lucifer could devise.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter

“The word desire suggests that there is something we do not have. If we have everything already, then there can be no desire, for there is nothing left to want. I think that what the Buddha may have been trying to tell us is that we have it all, each of us, all the time; therefore, desire is simply unnecessary.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Very well. He'd lighten up. As a matter of fact, he felt as light as the bubbly froth that flew from the lips of the waves. Whatever else his long, unprecedented life might have been, it had been fun. Fun! If others should find that appraisal shallow, frivolous, so be it. To him, it seemed now to largely have been some form of play. And he vowed that in the future he would strive to keep that sense of play more in mind, for he'd grown convinced that play--more than piety, more than charity or vigilance--was what allowed human beings to transcend evil.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“Because there is no power on earth that could make me abandon our friendship. There is no deed you could confess so dark that it would make me forsake you. You said of us once that we were quicksilver and the rest of the world mud. We are alike, shaped by Nature in the same mold, and whatever that signifies, it means that to spurn each other would be to spit in the face of whatever deity has seen fit to bring us together. We are the same, and to leave you would be to leave myself.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Treacherous Curse

“Stoker’s smile was slow and terrible. ‘You think that is love, brother? That I should kill for her?’ He shook his head, his eyes locked with mine. ‘You are the fool, Tiberius, because you still do not understand. I do not love her enough to kill for her.’ He stepped to the edge of the rock. ‘I love her enough to die for her.’

And without another word, he disappeared over the edge of the rock and into the blackness of the sea.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Dangerous Collaboration

“I would give up everything for you, Giulia"
I smiled at him gently. "But you must understand. I should never want a man to give up anything for me. I should want him to feel in winning me he has won the whole world...”
― Deanna Raybourn, Silent in the Sanctuary

“You are not among the good that has happened to me. You are the best of all that I have known. You are what I searched for when I left that house and wandered this earth, boy and man. You are the part of myself I never thought to find because I did not even dare to dream you existed. You are all that I want and more than I deserve, and I will go to my grave thanking a god in whom I do not believe for bringing me you.”
― Deanna Raybourn, An Unexpected Peril

“I have known enough of women to understand they are as duplicitous and vicious as men. If they are capable of being our equals in malice, why not in our better qualities as well? There are no masculine virtues, Veronica. And none sacred to women either. We are all of us just people, and most badly flawed ones at that.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Curious Beginning

“Stoker to Veronica. I thought it was love but I was so very wrong. I have never known love at least not until.....
I thought at some point I would have a great love like that. A woman fashioned by the gods just for me as I had been made just for her. That we would find each other. That she was waiting for me but I did not wait for her.
I married a base metal when the gods had  promised me gold.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Treacherous Curse

“Because we are the same,” I burst out. “You are not the only one of us with bloodied hands and a death on your conscience,” I reminded him, not bothering to disguise my anger. “Why must you do this? Why must you test me?” The tight muscle in his jaw relaxed into slackness. “I did not think to test you.” “Yes, you did. You do it every time you find yourself in danger of relying too much upon me, or hadn’t you noticed? You are so afraid of depending upon another soul that you will burn down your own house rather than risk someone else doing it. You are so determined to believe that your wounds make you less than human that you think yourself a monster when others are merely men. And whatever this bond that is between us, whatever this thing is that makes us akin to one another, you do not trust it. Because you do not trust yourself. But I am tired of the games, Stoker. And I am tired of your little monstrosities when I have atrocities of my own to account for.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Treacherous Curse

“The hardest lesson I had learnt upon my travels was patience. There are times when every muscle, every nerve, screams for movement, when every instinct urges escape. But the instinct to fly is not always a sound one. There are occasions when only stillness can save you.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Perilous Undertaking

“His lips twisted. ‘Met. So tame a word for it. It was not a meeting, Veronica. I was introduced to her and it was like finding a part of myself that had been somehow walking the earth without me. She was my other half when I had not realized I was incomplete.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Dangerous Collaboration

“I ran a finger over the seal, tracing the letters of the motto. ALIS VOLAT PROPRIIS. She flies with her own wings.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Treacherous Curse

“You fight harder for me than you would ever do for yourself. Why?” “Because there is no power on earth that could make me abandon our friendship. There is no deed you could confess so dark that it would make me forsake you. You said of us once that we were quicksilver and the rest of the world mud. We are alike, shaped by Nature in the same mold, and whatever that signifies, it means that to spurn each other would be to spit in the face of whatever deity has seen fit to bring us together. We are the same, and to leave you would be to leave myself.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Treacherous Curse

“I have, at last, come to understand my role. It is not to discourage your exuberance or your audacity. How could I want to when those are the very qualities I admire most? If I have lectured or harangued in the past, it is because I am afraid. Every moment of every day I am afraid.

Afraid of losing that which I have come to realize I cannot live without. But I do not want a small and stifled version of you. I want you- in all your intrepid and audacious glory. I want you just as you are, the entirety of your chaos and your wildness. Your are the whirlwind I did not know I needed, but now that you are here, I will not be the one to ask you to be anything different than exactly as you are. More than anyone, I ought to understand that nature cannot be denied. And your nature is tumult.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Grave Robbery

“Hunting butterflies requires an oblique approach. If one charges them directly, they flit away, mapping a mazy, elusive path until they disappear from sight with a final flap of jeweled, defiant wings. But if one is cunning and careful, it is possible to approach them so subtly they do not realize you are upon them until the net descends. The trick is move with them, parallel but not intersecting, guiding them gently to a suitable landing spot where they can be captured without injury. The timing is all. Hurry them and they will bolt. Dawdle and they will dart away after some tasty sip of nectar. It requires patience, skill, and resolve - qualities I had in abundance and which Stoker would give me ample opportunity to exercise.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Treacherous Curse

“Self-pity is a gutter from which you will never arise. Do you know how hard I have worked to keep your head above the mud? But I was not the one who rescued you, you impossible fool. You were half-alive when I met you, a ruin of the man you could be. I have watched you claw your way back to life in the past months, taking an interest in your work, in your future. You have been the agent of your own resurrection, and you do not even see it. Have you no sense of your own gifts, of your own strengths? You are more blessed with natural abilities and native intelligence than any man I have ever met.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Treacherous Curse

“Veronica Speedwell, I meant it then and I mean it now and I shall mean it with every breath until my last. I love you.”
― Deanna Raybourn, A Dangerous Collaboration

“You have health and beauty and wit so sharp a man might cut himself and think the bleeding a privilege.”
― Deanna Raybourn, An Impossible Impostor

“Fecklessness! We are never feckless,” I told her coldly. “We are full to the brim with feck.”
― Deanna Raybourn, An Unexpected Peril