Innamorata Quotes

“From the moment I met your eyes above Adele-Blanche’s desecrated body. I knew that I would die a thousand deaths waiting for you.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“I knew that I would die a thousand deaths waiting for you.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“And that was how, at the tender age of fifteen and already gravid with twins, Adele-Blanche, Mistress of Teeth, became the most dreadful and illustrious woman in Drepane, second in her power only to the king himself.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“And if ever you are afraid”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“As if the annals of history would be writ with his success in coaxing one inconsequential lady to speak. He should be seeking other ways to dress his legacy in gilt and armor.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“May you be consumed as a coal upon the hearth. May you dry up as water in a pail. May you become as small as a linseed grain, and much smaller than the hip bone of an itch-mite, and may you become so small that you become nothing.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“Depthless hunger was a privilege reserved for men alone.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“I am your servant and I am your shield. My soul has been fashioned for the purpose of loving you, and I would sooner welcome death than be stripped of this duty, this design. I would endure the blackest torments, such that my mind cannot even conjure - the most appalling agonies.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“He was once a creature who prided itself on its lack of greed, its renunciation of all such low impulses and embodied cravings. Yet now, in his love, he was ruined. His asceticism had be flayed from him; he was an animal skinned, his abject humanness made bare.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“The world has sullied him, as it has sullied his father. No, it is your rearing that has tained him, as black rot consumed a ripe fruit.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“You are no more noble a creature than all the rest [...] You, Liuprand the Just, golden prince of Drepane, heir to the throne of Berengar, are no better than a beast.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“Only his affection for the lady Agnes could drive him to such lengths. A ruinous thing, then, love.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“It was whispered Lady Volumnia had, in her age, grown half as fat as the king, and an ordinary carriage could no longer accommodate her. Secretly, Agnes could not imagine how that was so. No woman, even one of prestige and nobility, would be permitted to feast endlessly. Depthless hunger was a privilege reserved for men alone.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“Yet here was a creature upon which the world had so far left no mark, who held no ill feelings in its heart, whose mind was too unformed for thoughts of malice or vice. A fear clutched at her then, a terror that the world would sully it. That her arms would never be protection enough. What had her arms even done, before she held this child? What had her soul done with this surfeit of love?
-Book II - Chapter VII - Wanting , Which Lies like Sleep”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“You are my first thought upon waking, and my every dream in the dark.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“She was a night-blooming flower that did its growing in the dark, nurtured by the moon and weaned by the stars.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“The secret was that humanity is wretched in its essence, and we loathe to be reminded of our own rote repulsiveness. We hate to remember that we have bones that creak and grind at their points of juncture, blood that pulses wetly and turbidly through our veins, and muscles that distend and undulate when called upon to move. A man hates most of all his own heart, his own lungs, his own eyes and flesh and teeth, and he is grateful when he can displace this hatred onto another, when one is so openly, so garishly odious that it appears exceptional. The most blessed sights in the world are the most vulgar, and the most frightful are the most mundane.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“Absolute reality was too much for any human to bear.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“Pliny realized that he loved her. She was his new mistress. His devotion slid into place like a wheel finding its groove.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“they had poured themselves these gushing goblets of passion and drained them both in a single gulp.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“the secret at the heart of it all—that not even the threat of the kingdom’s ruin would make them regret what had been done.”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata

“The act of disappearing was a mightily visible one. A lady who spoke little could be forgotten. A lady who did not speak at all evoked”
― Ava Reid, Innamorata