The Heiress Effect Quotes

“I worry about you,” he finally said to Free. “I’m afraid that you’re going to break your heart, going up against the world.”

“No.” The wind caught her hair and sent it swirling behind her. “I’m going to break the world.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Why did you do it? Give up everything to raise another man's son?'

His father did look up at that. 'I didn't raise another man's son,' he said sharply. 'I raised my own.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Oh, yes. In my future, a man will control all my possessions if I marry him, I shan’t be allowed to vote, and I won’t be given the opportunity to earn a living by any means except on my back—but by all means, the most dire threat I face is freckles.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“If people want you to stop talking, or to stop dressing the way you do, or to change who you are, it's because you hurt their eyes. We've all been trained not to stare into the sun.' - Oliver”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Anjan was Batty because Bhattacharya had too many syllables. He’d told one man his first name; the fellow had blinked, and then had immediately dubbed him John. That’s who they thought he was: John Batty. These well-meaning English boys had taken his name as easily, and with as much jovial friendship, as their fathers had taken his country.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Anything is bearable if you can fight it, but if you must sit back and take it… That breaks you in a way I can’t explain.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Jane was the most fearless woman Oliver had ever met. Sometimes, Oliver thought that society was like an infant trying to shove a square, colored block through a round hole. When it didn’t go, the child pounded harder. Oliver had been shoved through round holes so often that he’d scarcely even noticed that his edges had become rounded. But Jane…Jane persisted in being angular and square. The harder she was pushed, the more square—and the more colorful—she became.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“When you keep quiet, people fill in their own most intelligent thoughts on your behalf.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“A ninnyhammer,” Jane said, “sounds like a magic hammer. One that I can use to smite ninnies. I have a great need for one of those.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Are you… uh… Mr… uh…” “Yes,” he replied, because he answered to Mr. Uh almost as often as he did to his own name.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“I've seen Emily's scars, and that's more than you can say.
Fairfield shrunk back from the anger in Anjan's voice. "I meant well," he whispered.
Anjan leaned forward across the desk until he was an inch from the other man. "Mean better.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Anjan was Batty because Bhattacharya had too many syllables. He’d told one man his first name; the fellow had blinked, and then had immediately dubbed him John. That’s who they thought he was: John Batty. These well-meaning English boys had taken his name as easily, and with as much jovial friendship, as their fathers had taken his country. And Emily had called him Bhattacharya. He’d fallen a little bit in love with her the moment she’d said his name as if it had value. His fist clenched, but he kept on smiling.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“He’d fallen a little bit in love with her the moment she’d said his name as if it had value.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Don’t feel embarrassed,” she said. “It’s acceptable to lose the flow of conversation. Not everyone is clever enough to think of something to say immediately.” Bradenton’s lips thinned. “And you’re a marquess,” she added. “Maybe there are deficiencies in your understanding, but nobody will ever notice them so long as you make absolutely certain to introduce yourself as a marquess first.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“I hate your future wife," she said simply.
"At the moment, I'm not much in charity with her myself.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“He’d started caring more about becoming the kind of person who could make a change than he cared about the change itself.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“This wasn’t the way he was supposed to fall in love. He was supposed to meet someone, to discover that her wants and wishes coincided with his, that their dreams overlapped. He didn’t want to meet a woman, to discover that the breath he drew seemed to come from her lungs, and then to realize that they couldn’t both breathe at the same time.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Is it a thorny question of ethics? Or is it the sort of ethical question where the right choice is easy, but the unethical answer is too tempting?”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“It’s simple,” Jane insisted. “I know just how to do it. Instead of just locking up the women who are suspected of being ill, we should lock up all the women. That way, the ones who are well can never get sick.” At the foot of the table, Whitting scratched his head. “But…how would men use their services?” “What do men have to do with it?” Jane asked. “Um.” Lord James looked down. “I take your point, Bradenton. This is…perhaps not the best conversation to be having at the moment.” “After all,” Jane continued, “if men were capable of infecting women, our government in its infinite wisdom would never choose to lock up only the women. That would be pointless, since without any constraint on men, the spread of contagion would never stop. It would also be unjust to confine women for the sin of being infected by men.” She smiled triumphantly. “And since our very good Marquess of Bradenton supports the Act, that could never be the case. He would never sign on to such manifest injustice.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Miss Fairfield had a gift for taking a beautiful concept and then marring it beyond all recognition.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“If a rock never moves,” her sister finally said, “the water wears it away all the same. I am being hurt, Jane, and if I stay still, Titus will wear me away. Sometimes I wonder that there’s anything left of me at all.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“You’re annoying. You always act as if everything is so easy. ‘Well, Oliver, it seems to me that your choice is either to quit or continue,’” he mimicked, remembering his father’s advice when he’d been on the verge of leaving school. The other man only smiled. “I’m your father. It’s my job to annoy you.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Marshall was watching her again, and Jane’s skin prickled under his perusal. That was when Jane realized she’d made a mistake. Those freckles, his background—they’d all misled her into thinking that he was a quiet little rabbit. He wasn’t. He was the wolf that looked as if he were lounging about on the outskirts of the pack, a lone hanger-on, when in truth he had adopted that position simply so that he could see everything that transpired in the fields below. He wasn’t solitary; he was waiting for someone to make a mistake. He looked willing to wait a very long time.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“Then I’ll have to succeed three times as hard as they want me to fail. You, of all people, should understand that.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“But aside from those curling green tendrils, the gown was the bright pink of…of…of… All comparisons failed Oliver. It wasn’t the bright pink of anything. It was a furious shade of pink, one that nature had never intended. It was a pink that did violence to the notion of demure pastels. It didn’t just shout for attention; it walked up and clubbed one over the head. It hurt his head, that pink, and yet he couldn’t look away. The room was small enough that he could hear the first words of greeting. “Miss Fairfield,” a woman said. “Your gown is…very pink. And pink is…such a lovely color, isn’t it?” That last was said with a wistful quality in the speaker’s voice, as if she were mourning the memory of true pink.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“I’ve escaped from the dreadful clutches of a nap,” she announced to the road.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“You were as much my salvation as your mother was," his father interrupted brusquely. "You were never a burden that I had to grow accustomed to carrying. It was quite simple. If I could make you mine, in defiance of blood and biology, it would mean that I wasn't his."
"Whose?" Oliver asked in confusion.
"My own father. If you were mine, I wasn't his.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“He'd been worrying about something happening to her for years, with the result that nothing happened at all.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“He’d hurt her, but she’d make it like all the other hurts she’d received: nothing more than an act of propagation.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

“If people want you to stop talking, or to stop dressing the way you do, or to change who you are, it’s because you hurt their eyes. We’ve all been trained not to stare into the sun.”
― Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect