Once Upon a Tower Quotes

“she fell asleep listening to the call of the river as it rushed to the sea.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“Is he your very first gingerbread man?'
She nodded.
'You eat him.'
'Eat his head?'
'I always start with the feet,' Edie suggested.
'But if I eat him, he'll be dead.'
'No, he'll be in your tummy,' Layla said. 'There's a difference.'
'I think I'd better eat his head first,' Susannah said ... 'That way he won't know what's happening to him.'
'That's a very kind thought,' Layla approved.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“You make it sound as if I hit her. I did nothing to Edie!'
'Oh? You did nothing? The woman I found in your wake, stripped of all self-repsect, convinced that she was a failure as a mother and a lover: that wasn't your work? Because I think it was!”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“She rose with the grace that was inherent to her every move ... Perhaps she did everything to a rhythm only she could hear.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“She shrugged and, with one
gulp, drank half a glass of champagne.
“How long has she been like this?” The look on Edie’s father’s face was edging from half to threequarters
barbarian.
“Oh, about two years,” Edie said, considering. “In the stages of marital harmony, I’d say the two
of you are at about stage eight of ten—ten being the slough of utter despond.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“You are a virgin,” Layla said, sighing. “Think of it as an unavoidable stage of life, like getting
old and toothless and having to drink soup. Unfortunately, men seem to think that women are like new
wine, good only before being uncorked.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“He had thought she was like a drink of clear water. But now, meeting her gaze, she was a river that tumbled with life and danger. She would change his life. She would change everything about him.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“You idiot,' Layla said. 'You sneering, despicable - '
'You're beginning to repeat yourself.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“she was playing something so low and soft that it felt as if she were humming it ... notes built and subsided, as if a giant were softly breathing them, as if each note was a drop of water going down a stream filled with rocks.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“It was blue. All of it: rugs, hangings, curtains ... 'This room looks as if someone vomited the sky,' Layla said.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“A pungent smell of manure blew in the window. “The odor of these Scottish wildflowers is astonishing,” Edie said,”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“Probably lots of people have died in the castle,' Susannah was saying sleepily. 'Cats, too. Lots of cats. The whole courtyard is probably full of graves, and we walk over them all the time.'

'I think,' Layla said, quite seriously, 'that people and cats turn back to the earth after a while. So what you walk over is just earth, Susannah.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“True love cannot be denied,” Layla said. “You know that yourself, Betsy, given your sad
experiences. Life is fleeting and one should gather rosebuds—or is it rainbows? At any rate, one
should get on the stick before it’s too late.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“Whenever possible, Gowan Stoughton of Craigievar, Duke of Kinross, Chief of Clan MacAulay,
avoided rooms crowded with Englishmen. They were all babbling gossips with more earwax than
brains, as his father was wont to say.
Though Shakespeare had got there first.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“I was thinking the other day that his life reminds me of throwing a piece of bread into a stream and watching a whole flock of little minnows come up and start nibbling at it.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“She should have read the damned play. She should have spent hours reading Shakespeare. The duke was making literature sound a lot more interesting than her governess had ever done.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“He woke from a dream in which Edith raised her arms to him, the liquid gold of her hair tumbling almost to her waist. 'Ah, darling,' he had been telling her, 'I am looped in the loops of your hair.' Had he said that aloud? He would never do something so imbecilic. He really had lost his mind.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“Layla, darling, I shall be ready whenever you decide to retire to the country and commence on a life of unending debauchery.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“your present is your future.’ I choose not to tarnish what may come.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower: Number

“1. I mean to husband your bed every night until we’re ninety, or at the very least, eighty-five. 2. For a Scotsman, the bawdy hand of the dial is always upon the prick of noon. In short, I would interrupt the activities of the day for one thing only. 3. I’ll take a mistress when you take a lover and not before. 4. Children come as God wills them. I’ve no mind to wear pig’s gut on my private parts, if that’s what you’re suggesting. 5. Are you deranged? I’m curious. The betrothal papers are signed, so my statement is not a plea for freedom. However, you may take it as an expression of genuine curiosity.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“I’m making you look a little less perfect. Men are terrified by perfection.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“After a hard day in the fields, his men would strip naked and plunge into the bitterly cold loch, he among them. Even at eighteen, he could see his ancestors had bequeathed him more than a castle.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower

“It is not a relationship that should provoke displays of inordinate emotion. I myself greatly dislike conflict in the household. I trust that we can avoid all manner of unpleasant scenes by making ourselves quite clear before we say our vows. In short, she didn’t love him, she didn’t care to ever love him, and she thought love within marriage was rot.”
― Eloisa James, Once Upon a Tower