The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Quotes

“Do you know how horrid it feels to watch my brother get tossed out of the best boarding school in England, then get to travel the Continent as a reward, while I’m stuck behind, not permitted to study the same things or read the same books or even visit the same places while we’re abroad, just because I had the bad luck to be born a girl?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

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

“clean up, sober up, stop letting lads climb in through your bedroom window at night or else—”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“What's the use of temptations if we don't yield to them?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“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 up to find that importance has been magnified into a sudden and intense desire to put his tongue into the other’s mouth.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I'm trying to tell you I love you, you sod.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“When our eyes meet, his mouth rises into a smile, almost as though he can't help himself, and then I'm smiling too, and then his goes wider, and it seems we might be caught in an infinite loop of beaming at each other like fools. And I wouldn't mind it a bit.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“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

“Or rather, my idea. Both Felicity and Percy are giving me a look that clearly conveys it is I alone taking a machete to this jungle.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Say something, Monty. Be a friend, be a gentleman, be a human being. It’s Percy, your best friend, Percy who you’ve gotten foxed with, who plays you his violin, who used to spit apple seeds at you from high up in the orchard treetops. Percy who you kissed in Paris, who looks so damn beautiful, even now. Say something kind. Something that will make him stop looking so alone and afraid.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Poor Monty, with a father who beats you until you bleed.
Poor Monty, with a fortune to inherit and an estate to run.
Poor Monty, who’s useless and embarrassing.
“Good night,” Percy says, then rolls over, away from me.
Poor Monty, in love with your best friend.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I ruined everything. I always ruin everything.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“It's a strange feeling, realizing 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

“We feel like changeling versions of ourselves lying here, brittle likenesses doing a mimic of the way they have seen us behave before.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“He seems like he wants to touch me, but we’ve both lost any sense of how men who haven’t kissed each other do that. He finally taps my knee, open-palmed and short, the way we used to try and hold our hands to candle flames without being burned when we were boys, and I wonder if there will ever again be a day when it doesn’t feel as though he might fly to pieces between my hands.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“The first step will be unlearning all the things you've taught me for my entire life. It took several thousand miles for me to begin believing that I am better than the worst things I've done.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“What we once were, that you are now. What we are now, soon you shall be.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Pain and ecstasy live close-knit in my heart.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

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

“El amor puede ser algo grandioso, pero, maldita sea, ocupa más espacio dentro de un hombre del que debería”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“El amor puede ser algo grandioso, pero, maldita sea, ocupa más espacio dentro de un hombre del de que debería.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“A gentleman doesn’t tell.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“It is impossible to explain how you can love someone so much that it's difficult to be around him.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Music is not an art I claim to understand or enjoy, but Percy looks so happy in that moment that I feel happy too”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“He reaches out, almost as though he can't help himself, and puts his thumb to my jawline. The tips of his fingers brush the hollow of my throat, and I feel the touch so deep I half expect that when he moves, I'll be left with an imprint there, as though I am a thing fashioned from clay in a potter's hands.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Percy turns to me quickly, his eyes catching the light and reflecting a mischievous glint. I'm suddenly aware of my body in a way I wasn't a moment before, every twitch and blink, the way my shoulders sit inside this too-big coat, the bob of my throat as I swallow hard, every point of my silhouette that his gaze touches. Love may be a grand thing, but goddamn if it doesn't take up more than its fair share of space inside a man.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I am thinking that my father lies, and maybe the foul things he’s fed me about myself for my whole bleeding life were just as untrue. That my father cheats. That my father has no pedestal from which to hand down judgment on me for my sins.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Cuando nuestros ojos se encuentran, una sonrisa se dibuja en su boca, casi como si no pudiera evitarlo, y entonces, yo también estoy sonriendo; luego, la suya se amplía y parece que estamos atrapados en un círculo infinito de sonreírnos mutuamente como tontos. Y no me importa en lo más mínimo.”
― Mackenzi Lee, La guía del caballero para el vicio y la virtud

“Shout at me, I want to tell him. Fight back, because I deserve it. I deserve to be fed all the ways I've made him feel unwanted, slapped, with my own selfishness, But he's Percy, so he doesn't say another cruel word. Even at his worst, he's so much better than me.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“And Percy is right there beside me on that beautiful, glowing street and he is just as beautiful and glowing as it is. 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.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue