The Countess Conspiracy Quotes

“Do you want to know why you don't meet my standards?" he asked.

She shook her head in mortification.

"Too late," he replied. "Here's my most important rule: Never have intercourse when one of the parties is in love with the other. It won't end well."

She gasped. "You arrogant cad! I'm not in love with you."

"I know." He didn't look away from her. "Isn't that what I said? Only one of us is in love, and it isn't you."

Violet stared at him. Her ears appeared to be working; her brain seemed to function. Tentatively, she added two and three and verified that they still made five.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“I keep everything hidden because there's nothing about my true self that anyone likes. I'm not difficult, Sebastian. I'm the easiest person around. I don't belong, and I spend all my time pretending I do. Sometimes I get weary of it, and that makes me angry.

It's not fair to the people around me when I lose my temper. I say awful things when I'm angry. But it's not fair to me, either, that I was made this way.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“I'm not difficult," Violet said. "I'm simple. I like good books and clever conversation and being left alone much of the time. How does that make me difficult? I make sense? I don't talk about my feelings, of course, but then, I don't want to." She shrugged. "So that's reasonable."

Sebastian smiled despite himself, a smile that felt bitter even to him. "God, no. Not feelings. Heaven forbid that you have anything so messy."

"I have feelings." She spoke stiffly. "I just don't talk about them. What's the point? Talking never changes them.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“Ah, the rule that says that women aren’t allowed to be intelligent.” He brushed a kiss against her forehead. “Burn that one to the ground, Violet, and dance on the ashes. And damn anyone who tells you it’s selfish to do so.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“I like good books and clever conversation and being left alone much of the time.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“Sebastian will never fight wars, but it's because of people like him that the rest of us don't have to fight as many of them. He makes everyone around him more than what they are.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“A sign on the door proclaimed: "The countess is NOT to be bothered except in the cases of death, disembowelment, the Apocalypse, or the arrival of her mother.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“A life without risk is one where I tell myself I'm not worthy of taking a chance.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“Burn that one to the ground, Violet, and dance on the ashes. And damn anyone who tells you it’s selfish to do so.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“How many lovers?” He could have given her a straight answer. Dozens. Or, more specifically: Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven, if you counted mutual versions of the conduct he’d just engaged in, and Sebastian did.But what he finally said was, “Too many. And not enough.” Her face was in shadow. He couldn’t tell if she was disgusted by him, or if this was just a matter of idle curiosity for her.

She exhaled. “How many would be enough?”

He smiled sadly. “One more, Violet.” He looked over at her—at her arms folded around herself, at her head, turned from his, as if that would be enough to distract him from the ferocity of his want. “I’ve only ever wanted one more.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“She made everything happen, and still she remained invisible to the people she loved the most.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“I’m not difficult,” Violet said. “I’m simple. I like good books and clever conversation and being left alone much of the time.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“We can’t help being the most interesting people in the room.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“That memory was a knife that kept on cutting.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“...having you as a friend wasn’t second prize. It wasn’t something to chafe against. It was an honor.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“I’d tell you to fetch a match, but you have always had your own spark.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“The only thing worse than an unlovable woman was an unlovable woman who whined about not being loved.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“A lady always avoids the truth, when it happens to be gauche.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“Because even though you’ve been invisible to the entire world,” he said, “I have always seen you.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“My heart isn't breaking because I can't have you."

"Don't say that. I saw the way you were looking at me just now. We can quibble over the precise words to use. But don't tell me I haven't hurt you."

"My heart's not breaking because I can't have you," he insisted. "It's breaking because you think you're a hard thing, because you imagine that what I see in you is an illusion. It isn't.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“I'm not a fair woman," she choked out. "I want impossible, contradictory things. I'm all hard edges, Sebastian. Hard edges and crumpled pieces and broken pieces of glass. There is no way for you to win this.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“I’m going to explode,” she muttered. “Into a cloud of dust and despair.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“Truths designed to mislead are just as bad as lies.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“There was no point in feeling hurt simply because a man she refused to want didn't want her back.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“Three quarters of respectable England hates you."

"Half," Sebastian replied with a smile. "It's really only half. Judging by my correspondence, it may be as little as forty-eight percent. And of those, only a small number want to cause me bodily harm. The rest just wish to have me gagged or thrown in prison.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“Violet,” he said. “How could I say I loved you and expect you to do something you didn’t want?”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“But to call it looking was like calling an eighteen-course feast a snack.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“You see so many surprising things and you think they’re obvious.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“You braved the wasteland of Violet Waterfield, the dangerous shark-invested waters of her most treacherous coats. And you lived to tell the tale."

The was a hard light in her eyes as she spoke.

You're not a wasteland, he wanted to say. She'd do anything for the people she loved- anything, except tale compliments from them.

So he just shrugged. "I brought tea for the wasteland.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy

“She made her shoulder blades into steel, willing them to stay rigid against his onslaught. She was a thing of gears and metal, strong like clockwork, and she wouldn’t melt down into tears.”
― Courtney Milan, The Countess Conspiracy