Prince of Shadows Quotes

“Love well, if not wisely.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“Pardon? Why, sir, I beg your pardon, for if that was pardon, then fists are love and nooses are kisses. You speak of duty? Duty is the rope that strangles me. Piety is a bed of broken glass. And family is the company of hateful demons.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“Married and buried, wed and dead.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“Perhaps one day I’d be made a saint—the patron saint of fools and lovers, if those terms were not exactly the same.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“Now, whom are we here to conspire against?’ ‘Poetry,’ I said. ‘Namely, Romeo’s poetry.’ ‘Is it that bad?”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“Let houses burn, as long as you are together. Nothing else matters but love.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“There is no freedom, Benvolio; you should give up that folly now. This city is made of stone, and the stones will press us down, and down, cutting off all light and hope until dark is the only light you will ever see; do you understand me?' He gripped me by my arms, searching my face intently. 'Dark is the only light.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“And the girl, small and sweet and looking more child than woman in her gown and mask, was staring up into my cousin's face. His unmasked face, for he'd pushed the covering up, and she had likewise displaced her own, and I saw the expressions on them both: rapt. An almost religious ecstasy, something beyond mere attraction. It verged into the profane.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“I dream only of red lips and sweet kisses,' he said. 'If I did not know her destined for holy orders, I would think her a demon, to haunt me so.'
He loved an idea, I thought, and not the girl herself; to him, Rosaline was a perfect, unobtainable jewel, more icon than flesh. I did not, in that moment, hate him; instead, I rather pitied him. My cousin was in love with love, and it would never be requited.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“Pardon? Why, sir, I beg your pardon, for if that was pardon, then fists are love and nooses are kisses. You speak of duty? Duty is the rope that strangles me. Piety is a bed of broken glass. And family is the company of hateful demons.' His voice was half-mad. The bed shifted, as if Mercutio had rolled on his side, away from his father. 'I want none of it.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“A pin would have made the sound of thunder had it dropped; somewhere far down the table, a fork clattered noisily as it fell on a plate, and there was a hiss of disapproval like a pit of snakes disturbed.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“Mercutio had nothing in his heart now but ashes and gall, and that would make a bad marriage, a poisonously cruel one.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“The next date brought fate, and doom, and death with the dawning.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“Dark and lark, love and dove, hawk and handsaw, I am not fit for this, Benvolio; I am not fit - do you not see it?' He was weeping, I realised with a start; he angrily swept tears from his cheeks and glared at me as if I were the cause of all his suffering. 'I will hurt her, this soft bride of mine; I cannot help it - I am all the wrong shape, you see? I may be forced, as she may be forced, but both of us will bleed for it...but blood is all that families require, marriage blood, maiden blood, proof of cruel love...She is too young; she cannot understand what I am, what I feel, what I know of myself. I am to hurt her, and she is to hurt me. And it comes on us fast as plague.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“I put it to you plainly: I am to be swiftly married off,' he said. 'Married and buried, wed and dead. 'Tis no accident the words rhyme so well.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“It will take time, you know. Not even I can work miracles. I'm not the Christ of crime.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“Sweat is better than wine for emptying the soul.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“And as he walked away, lost in the fog of love and madness, I said, 'I'll pay that doctrine, or die in debt.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“You hit me,' he said. 'I won't forget it.'
'Good,' I said. 'Then you'll remember the real pain and not he imaginary pleasure. There are a hundred suitable flowers blooming in the garden of Verona for you. Leave the Capulet alone.'
'A hundred, you say? And yet you seem to be unable to pick such a flower for yourself. Is it the colour of the blossoms that repels you, or the smell?”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“Im to keep Romeo out of trouble,' I said, and forced a casual smile. 'Surely no more difficult than to stop the wind from blowing. Trouble and Romeo are long wedded.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“I wasn't used to women like this - unsentimental, brisk, brilliantly foresighted. I'd thought that a bookish ageing virgin would have hoarded love poems to greedily warm her in the cold, but Rosaline clearly held her own source of heat. She radiated like a bonfire, and beside it I felt very, very cold.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“There was a sense of trembling joy about Mercutio; I climbed walls purely as a matter of necessity, but he seemed to delight in tempting death.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows

“But I warn you, what pulls them together is nothing a mortal man may battle; it is a holy fire, I tell you, a most holy fire that burns in them."
"The devil can stoke a fire as well as ever God could.”
― Rachel Caine, Prince of Shadows