The Touch Quotes

“He owe his wife a debt he couldn't hope to pay with any coin save one: open the cage and let the bird fly.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch

“father could hope for in a son.To have”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch: A Novel

“We are not here together just to make children, Elizabeth. What we're going to do is sanctified by marriage. It's an act of love - of love. Not merely of the flesh, but of the mind and even the soul. There's nothing about it you shouldn't welcome.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch

“Dr. Murray made it clear to me before I left that a woman who enhoys the Act is as loose as a harlot. God gives pleasure in it only to husbands. Women are the source of evil and temptation, therefore women are to blame when men fall into fleshly error. It was Eve who seduced Adam, Eve who entered into league with the serpent, who was the Devil in disguise. So the only pleasure women are allowed is in their children.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch

“He was, he admitted, a man who liked to have his cake and eat it too.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch

“Do you realize that you've been married to me for just about half of your entire life?"
Her head came down, her eyes opened wide to stare at him. "Is that all?" she asked. "It seems an eternity".
"Did I say a quiet lion?" Alexander pulled a face. "An eternity with me has turned you into a bitch, my dear".”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch

“He hadn't wooed her, but had simply claimed her. A gold mine ready to dig. There should have been a period of quiet dinners together, of flowers rather than diamonds, of kisses given after permission to kiss, of a slow awakening that predisposed her to greater intimacies. But no, not the great Alexander Kinross! He had met her, he had married her the next day, and climbed into her bed after one kiss in the church. There to prove himself an animal in her eyes. One mistake after another, that was the story of his relationship with Elizabeth. And Ruby had always meant more.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch

“That was what happened when youthful confessions were punished without mercy, when the confessions were not seen as a wish to tell the truth, and therefore were not deemed praiseworthy. So she had learned not to confess; instead, she had learned to keep secrets so well that she hardly knew even her own motives.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch

“To love your children is far more important than liking them.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch

“But when the bigotry and intolerance stemmed from persons as exalted as state premiers, it simply indicated just how widespread these retarding sentiments were, and how indifferent public men were to uniting rather than dividing people.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch

“… if you substitute arbitrary violence, hatred and jealousy for justice, legality and right, it may be that you will succeed in carrying your point; it may be that a great wrong will be accomplished by the exercise of sheer force, and the weight of superior numbers: but your reputation among the nations of the earth will be irretrievably injured and debased, and the flag of which you are so justly proud will no longer be the standard of freedom and the hope of the oppressed, but will be associated with deeds of falsehood and treachery.”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch

“went to the cross eight months before His”
― Colleen McCullough, The Touch: A Novel