Literary Romance Quotes

“Silently she stared at the splintered pieces and felt the flame in her soul gutter.  The flame she had nurtured since she was a child. The flame that had in it what little sparks of happiness she had ever known as well as all her hopes and dreams for the future.  She had tended it so carefully and for so long, and in one, horrendous, agonizing second, felt it simply... go out.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing

“The minute the door was opened, she wished she had made some excuse not to see them.  Victor was sitting by the bed, and the tender expression on his face as he looked down at his wife and latest child, made something violent and jealous jump in Penelope's heart.  She could have murdered Ethan for shutting the door loudly behind them, interrupting their intimacy.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing

“Only someone watching him closely like Celena would have noticed his intense preoccupation, and that something in a split second had happened to him.  She wondered where he had gone when he should have been listening to the sermon, where his soul had gone went it had left his body.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing

“I want to propose a toast!" Taking a spoon he noisily tapped it against the crystal glass.  "Everyone!" He thundered, the large amount of whiskey he had consumed making him reckless.  "To Victor,  Ste. Genevieve's own inventor and my best friend, all the happiness in the world!"  The happy crowd shouted their approval.  "And to the ever, ever fair beauty Celena..." His voice cracking under the strain, and he wondered if he should stop now, before he embarrassed himself, before he made some horrible declaration.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing

“The captain saluted and left, and Alix heard him shouting orders to men to form a firing squad and then orders for the prisoners to be brought out and lined up. There seemed to be some kind of altercation going on. Someone was protesting vocally.
‘I am a British airman and I demand to be treated as a prisoner of war!’
The sound of the voice struck her somewhere in the middle of her chest and she jumped to her feet and ran out of the house. A ragged line of prisoners was drawn up on the far side of the clearing with a dozen Partisans carrying rifles facing them. Her eyes went along the line. Every face was heavily bearded, unrecognisable at a distance, but then a difference in the way the men were dressed struck her. All wore tunics that had some suggestion of a uniform but on one man the trousers that protruded below it, though ragged and faded, were unmistakably Air Force blue.
‘Ready!’ shouted the captain. ‘Take aim.’
‘No!’ Alix tore across the clearing and flung herself between the firing line and the prisoners. ‘No! I know this man! He is an American, but with the British RAF. He is not an enemy.’
‘Not an enemy?’ the captain queried. ‘Then what is he doing fighting alongside the Chetniks?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alix said breathlessly. ‘But you can’t shoot him without finding out. If you shoot a British serviceman you could jeopardise any help we might get.’
The captain looked uneasy. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ll let Comrade Tito decide about this.’ He called to one of the men guarding the prisoners. ‘Bring that man over here. The one who’s been causing all the trouble.’
The man in the blue trousers was shoved roughly forward.
‘Alix!’ he gasped hoarsely. ‘Thank god!’
She caught hold of his arm. ‘Steve? It is you, isn’t it?’
‘What’s left of him,’ he responded, with an effort at a smile.
 ”
― Holly Green, A Call to Home

“Tito had set up his headquarters in the Town Hall and Alix found him in a spacious room overlooking the main square. As always, he was dressed in the simple grey tunic and breeches of Partisan uniform, without any badges of rank or other decoration. It was enough that something in his bearing and in his eyes projected a natural authority. Lying under his desk was his Alsatian dog, Luks, his constant companion.
He greeted her with a smile. ‘Ah, my flame of the forest! Come in. Sit, sit.’
Alix felt a warm flush of pleasure. The nickname was one Tito had coined for her in the course of the many battles they had fought and it signified a special relationship that had begun in the early days of the war, before they left Belgrade, when she had been able to bring a contingent of workers from her father’s estate to join the cause and, more importantly, with Drago’s help, reveal the location of arms handed out by the agents of the Special Operations Executive, (known to its members as SOE), to village heads in preparation for possible resistance. Tito had decided then that she was his lucky charm.”
― Holly Green, A Call to Home

“She wanted to be worthy of a literary romance in order to encounter a man more loving than her father, and all her favorite heroines were described as being impossibly, otherworldly attractive.”
― Talulah Riley, Acts of Love

“What is love? The more you try to understand it, the less you will understand.”
― Adil Alzarooni, The Red Island: The Gatekeeper