The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Quotes

“So long as Percy and I were together. The world could have been a blank canvas and I still would have been exactly this livid with happiness, just to be with him.”
― 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”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I would rather have my eyes gouged out with sucket forks and fed back to me, but it seems best not to tell him so.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“One of my maids found a pair of your breeches in the harpsichord this morning. I believe they were the same ones you left the house in last night.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“You’re hopeless,” he says, and it is so strange and horrible and utterly lovely how the way that he’s looking at me makes me want to both back away and throw myself upon him. It hurts like a sudden light striking your eyes in the dead of night.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“You’re still daft.”
“Are you complaining?”
“No,” he says, giving a quick tug on my sleeve that turns into his fingers pressed into my palm in a way that makes me weak in the knees. “I sort of love it.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“You’re my best mate, Monty,” he says suddenly. “And I don’t want to ruin that. Especially not now. I didn’t tell you I was ill because I didn’t want to scare you away, and if I didn’t have you—if I hadn’t had you for these past few years, I think I’d have lost my mind. So if things can’t be the same between us, can they at least not be terrible? You’re not permitted to be strange and uncomfortable around me now.”
“So long as you don’t go falling in love with me.” I don’t know why I say it. Call it battlements around my helpless heart.
Percy looks away from me fast, shoulders curling up. It almost looks like a flinch. But then he says, “I’ll try my best.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Is it contagious?
Does it hurt?
When will you be well again?
Are you going to die?
Are you going to die?
Are you going to die?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“For a delirious moment, I am possessed by the insanity the poets hath called love, and it makes me want to reach forward and take both those hands in mine.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“suddenly feel like I’m tempting fate with this question.”
― 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

“Ah por cierto ¿Podrías quizás no tocarme del modo que siempre lo has hecho porque cada vez que me rozas clavas astillas nuevas en mi corazón?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Men are such babies.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Love is not a thing you survive upon.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“This is a silence we've shared.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“You might be the only person left on earth who thinks me decent.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“All boys are their fathers.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“If you weren't here, everything would be the worst.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“And I wish in that moment that I were brave.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“we might never have met, and then what would have been the point of my life.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I'd fall in love with me, if I met me.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“From here on out, I intend to have a damn good life. It will not be easy, but it will be good.
And now Percy has his arms around me and Santorini and the sea are spread like a feast before us and there is sky all the way to the horizon.
And what a sky it is.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“His face goes shy, eyes flitting down, then back up to mine. "Yes, Monty," he says, and he smiles on my name. "I love you. And I want to be with you."
"And you, Percy," I return, touching my nose to his, "are the great love of my life. Whatever happens from here, I hope that's the one thing that never changes."
My hands are upon his face, mirror to the spot where I'll carry red, puckered scars for the rest of my life. In his gaze, they seem to matter less. We are not broken things, neither of us. We are cracked pottery mended with lacquer and flakes of gold, whole as we are, complete unto each other. Complete and worthy and so very loved.
"May I kiss you?" I ask.
"Abso-bloody-lutely you may," he says.
And so I do.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I make a snatch for Percy's hand, and he laces his fingers with mine and gives them a squeeze. Fetch me a couch, for I nearly swoon.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“if you weren't here, everything would be the worst. Abso-bloody-lutely awful. It'd be dull and lonely and just... don't, all right? Don't be dead. I'm sorry you were expelled and I'm sorry about your father but I'm so glad you're home and I ... really need you right now. So don't wish you were dead because I'm so glad that you're not.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“It’s an acquired taste.” “Why acquire a taste for something so horrid?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Nos estamos mirando, simplemente mirándonos, y juro que hay vidas enteras contenidas en aquellos diminutos segundos compartidos.”
― 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

“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

“I thought we told each other everything."
"This isn't about us."
"It's always going to be about us"
"No, you want this to be about you. You care about what happens to me because of what would mean for you. You are the only thing that matters to you.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue