The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Quotes

“The stars dust gold leafing on his skin. And we are looking at each other, just looking, and I swear there are whole lifetimes lived in those small, shared seconds. It”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“but God bless the book people for their boundless knowledge absorbed from having words instead of friends.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“The great tragic love story of Percy and me is neither great nor truly a love story, and is tragic only for its single-sidedness. It is also not an epic monolith that has plagued me since boyhood, as might be expected. Rather, it is simply the tale of how two people can be important to each other their whole lives, and then, one morning, quite without meaning to, one of them wakes to find that importance has been magnified into a sudden and intense desire to put his tongue in the other’s mouth.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“The important bit was that if you go behind my back, I swear to God, I’ll skin you alive—” “I won’t—” “—murder you, then alchemically raise you from the dead so I can murder you again—”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Perhaps fashion is just a reinforcement of a lady’s chastity, in hopes that the interested party may lose interest and abandon any deflowering attempts simply for all the clothing in the way.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Between the near-kiss with Percy and now goddamned pirates, my heart is certainly being put through its paces today.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“have lost years of my life loving him from afar and I’ll be damned if I’m robbed of him as soon as we realize we’ve both been admiring each other from a distance all this while.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Dear. Lord. Fortune has well and truly vomited down my front in the form of Mr. Lockwood. As”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Monty's the thief,' Felicity says.
'No, I am the second thief. Which I think cancels out my thievery.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“A small shift in the gravity between us and suddenly all my stars are out of alignment, planets knocked from their orbits, and I’m left stumbling, without map or heading, through the bewildering territory of being in love with your best friend.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“It took several thousand miles for me to begin believing that I am better than the worst things I’ve done. But I’m starting.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“You can’t, I am thinking. You can’t be ill because I need you and you can’t go away to die in some asylum because what am I supposed to do without you?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Be a little less honest and a little more tactful.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“It is remarkable how much courage it takes to kiss someone, even when you are almost certain that person would very mush like to be kissed by you. Doubt will knock you from the sky every time.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“It’s hard for me to think of anything other than what he might be thinking, and what this night means to him, and if it’s the same as for me.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I understand less than half the words in that sentence, but God bless the book people for their boundless knowledge absorbed from having words instead of friends.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Lucky for me as well, or else we might never have met, and then what would have been the point of my life? My”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“The truth is that Percy has always been important to me, long before I fell so hard for him there was an audible crash. It's only lately that his knee bumping mine under a narrow pub table leaves me fumbling for words. A small shift in the gravity between us and suddenly all my stars are out of alignment, planets knocked from their orbits, and I’m left stumbling, without map or heading, through the bewildering territory of being in love with your best friend.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Which is how I come to be running through the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, dressed only as Nature intended.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Blackmail is aggravating in normal circumstances, but far worse when it's coming from a younger sister.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Though I would hang on because I’d likely wash up in France, and from what I remember from the summer my family spent there when Felicity and I were young, there are some lovely women in France. Some handsome boys as well, many of whom wear their breeches very tight, though I wasn’t clear where I stood on that when I was eleven.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Perspective is a goddamn son of a bitch.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Somehow nothing's changed, and everything has.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Percy leans in suddenly, and I think he’s going to tell me something in confidence, but instead he touches his lips to my cheek, so light and fast I doubt it happened as soon as he steps back.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He clenches his hands into fists around the blankets, face set, then says, “Fine, you want to know why? Because at the end of this year, I’m not going to law school, I’m going into an asylum.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“It's a strange feeling, realising that other people you don't know have their own, full lives that don't touch yours.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“You’ve had a rough go.'
'Everyone has a rough go. I’ve had it far easier than most people.'
'Maybe. But that doesn’t mean your feelings matter less.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Fortune favors the flirtatious.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Let's get one thing straight," I interrupt, jerking my arm out of his grip with such force that I nearly knock out the woman standing behind me. "You are not my father, I am not your responsibility, and I did not come here to have a list of my faults related from him or be condemned for who I associate with-not by you or that damned duke. So while it's been a jolly good time, being treated like a child all evening, I think I've just about had enough and I can make my own way from here.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“There´s nothing good about watching another man claim your ship because your skin is to dark to do it yourself.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue