Crooked Heart Quotes

“Hobbies are for people who don’t read books,”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“All things are difficult before they are easy,”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“That was what happened when you tried to do something straight: the world simply laughed at you.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“The day after that, all the children disappeared, as if London had shrugged and the small people had fallen off the edge.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“Vengeance is mine, sayeth Noel Bostock. I will repay.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“The recipes were wonderfully satisfying; it was like doing an equation, in which the correct answer was edible.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“She had been gaoled five times as a suffragette; she still had the scars of handcuffs on her wrists.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“it was the end of something – the quest completed, the curtain drawn – and he didn’t know, couldn’t imagine, what would come afterwards.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“Vee stood and looked at him, this large man in her kitchen who had never learned – never been taught – the meaning of obligation, and with a slow surge of despair that was almost like nausea she realized that the calamities of the day, every last one of them, had simply been lying in wait for her; not the actions of cruel fate but a series of tripwires lovingly laid by herself. She’d asked for nothing from her mother and her son and she’d expected nothing from them, either, and now she’d received nothing, not even thanks. She was face down in the mud, and on her own.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“It revealed a world of calm and quiet activity, whereas the truth was that you never knew, when you lifted the flap, who you’d find hitting whom, who’d be crying in the corner, who’d be steeling themselves to jump from a window. There were bombs outside, but inside was worse.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“and ever since then Vee had been breathing guilt, drinking it, wearing it next to her skin like a suit of long underwear.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“She didn’t know how she could ever have thought him simple; he was the opposite – he was like one of those fancy knots, all loops, no ends.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“Isn’t it strange,’ she said, ‘that there’s always enough money in the coffers for war?”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“Teachers and unfunny jokes, she thought - they were inextricably linked, like damp and bronchitis.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“Were have you been did you run of to give your spy riport to the Germans. Noel corrected the grammar and spelling, wrote None of your business, you utter ignoramus at the bottom and handed it back.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“He was starting on one of his explanations, and she wasn’t in the mood for polysyllables.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“Noel didn’t have any friends and in any case she’d never seen him do anything as childish as play. In detention, she thought, for correcting the teacher too many times.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“She was used to his conversation now, the long words, the oddity and arrogance; half the time she didn’t know whether to clout him or applaud. It wasn’t nice, getting the silent pudding back again.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“it was as if the inside of his head was a room, plastered with her photograph.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“There was something peculiarly memorable about Vee; she seemed to move like the actors in silent films, all jerks and freezes.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“She couldn’t grasp the half of what he was saying. He had a long face with a mouth like a letter box, and leaflets kept shooting out of it. Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact. Imperialism on Both Sides. The Worker Betrayed. Words rattled past her ears.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“The first time he’d ever seen her he’d thought of a magpie, but now she seemed more like a pigeon, drab and directionless, pecking at anything that looked as if it might be edible.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“she kept moving her head around, keeping a watch on everything, like a magpie hanging around a picnic.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“Hearts starve as well as bodies;  Give us bread, but give us roses!”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“She was losing words.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“You mean that collective safety’s more important than collective morality?’ ‘Go downstairs.’ ‘Which makes us actually no better than the enemy that we purport to despise”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“What is the one thing that is more important than money, Noel?’ ‘Taste.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“His stories had no shape to them, no climax, no way of distinguishing whether the end was nigh, or whether there was still another twenty-fie minutes to sit through - it was like eating your way through slice after slice of a plain loaf, without even a dab of jam to relieve the tedium.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“She had the familiar sensation of the ground crumbling beneath her, as if she were standing on a sandcastle. It always happened like this: a fresh idea, a few seconds - or even hours - of happy triumph, and then, whoosh , in would come the tide. Next thing she knew, she'd be neck-deep in consequences and drawback.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart

“What are “whinwans”?’ ‘Have you never heard that word before?’ ‘No.’ ‘That’s a first. I suppose it means the creeps.’ ‘What’s its origin?’ ‘I’ve no idea, it’s just what people say round here. Tell you what, that can be your next bit of homework.’ ‘The etymology of “whinwan”?’ She nodded. ‘Discuss.’ She gave him a sidelong glance. ‘You’re smiling.”
― Lissa Evans, Crooked Heart