Portrait of a Scotsman Quotes

“Now she knew why girls were not allowed to feel anger—there was a reckless hope in it, and power.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Much that I despise," he said hoarsely. "and all that I desire, meets in you. And it frustrates me beyond reason.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“At first sight, they were still an unlikely match—opposites in looks, upbringing, and temperament. But on the artist's color wheel, two opposite colors were considered complementary. Their high contrast caused high impact, and they looked their brightest when placed next to each other.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“[...] she couldn't help but think that this was how Persephone would be dragged to the underworld in 1880s London: not screaming, not twisting wildly, but painfully composed while Hades wore a velvet jacket.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“shall now forever live with the knowledge that without you in it, the world would be a strange place, and I should never be at home in it again.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“it had occurred to her that she smiled more often to preempt someone else’s displeasure than to express her joy.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“She was shiny and preoccupied with colors; he had breathed and ingested darkness, had stared at it for so long it had begun to stare back into him. Darkness was a part of him now, encrusted in his soul like coal dust in a miner's skin.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Oh, how frustrating,” she said, “to keep a woman’s wages low to soothe a man’s vanity.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“I was a captor to you, but you have given me my only hours of true happiness." His hands clenched by his sides then, as if to hold on to the stolen bliss, but his fingers curled over emptiness. "To me," he said, "you were the light in the dark place to which I'd bound myself.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“redheaded women are from hell. Lovely was dead. Enter the witch.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“thirty percent of central public spending for infernal imperial wars. On the other hand, nothing for health or education, not a shilling. Which very nicely maintains the oversupply of poor, uneducated lads to the front lines and mining pits. There’s more dignity in bullets and rocks than in begging for alms in a rotten London ally.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Charity? No. I want lasting change. Remember the trouble of raising wages to a living wage as a single entrepreneur? I want a restructuring of government expenditure. A systemic redistribution of wealth—that is what I want.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“In the controlled, patient way a confident man could afford to wait, Lucian was waiting for her.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“market forces alone are never fair. Which is why we need regulation and systemic wealth redistribution.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“We’ll never see money diverted from the imperialists,” he said. “They’d rather devour the world than feed the people of Britain. I’m looking at the revenue side and currently the most effective lever is to increase the income tax.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“But perhaps every woman had known a moment when she felt as though she were drowning, and the only comfort was that there could be some beauty, some dignity, in that, too.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Her words, they came from a place desiring to please or appease, to appear normal or silly, which were usually considered the same in a girl. It was a malaise afflicting most women in Britain, this compulsion to say one thing while thinking another, to agree to things one disliked, to laugh about jokes that were dull”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“It seems that labor, once it crosses the door into a home, is magically transformed into a priceless act of love or female duty—meanwhile, women’s hands are raw from very real chores.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Unless you are a woman,” she said bitterly. “Then you are taught that spending your every breath on others is working for your own glory. A rather sly appropriation of surplus labor if you ask me.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Some hearts strove for the mellow pleasures of kind and steady things, and some beat for the heat of passion even when they knew they'd burn. I'd choose the blaze, she thought.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“There is something quite . . . monstrous about the education of upper-class women. . . . All the world is agreed that they are to be brought up as ignorant as possible of erotic matters, and that one has to imbue their souls with a profound sense of shame in such matters. . . . They are supposed to have neither eyes nor ears, nor words, nor thoughts for this. . . . And then to be hurled as by a gruesome lightning bolt, into reality and knowledge, by marriage—precisely by the man they love and esteem most! To catch love and shame in a contradiction and to be forced to experience at the same time delight, surrender, duty, pity, terror. . . . Thus a psychic knot has been tied that may have no equal!”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“seems that labor, once it crosses the door into a home, is magically transformed into a priceless act of love or female duty—meanwhile, women’s hands are raw from very real chores.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“the reality is, a woman’s martyrdom will not change a man who doesn’t wish to change.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Sometimes, the almost things and phrases only drew attention to the fact that the ultimate gestures and declarations had been avoided.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“I don't know how to do this right," he murmured. He took off his hat and tossed it aside. "I don't know what to make of you. I know I'd rather my skin burned than yours.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Much that I despise," he said hoarsely, "and all that I desire, meet in you. And it frustrates me beyond reason.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Worse, the things one had learned early often felt instinctual, as unquestionable as the act of breathing, and the familiarity of them mattered rather than whether they were good or harmful.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“Why do you think he's a Highlander?"
"They have a certain look about them when they enter a room full of Englishmen. A sharp glance in their eyes, like a broadsword at the ready to be drawn--You beat us at Culloden, it says, but our spirit remains unbroken.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“I don’t need to know what he has done,” she said, “for no man’s character should determine your character.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman

“an urge,” she said. “Colors and patterns have an effect on me; it’s as though they stimulate my appetite, for lack of a better word. If I don’t engage, it begins to feel like a living thing beneath my skin. Well, I suppose that sounds hysterical—I assure you I’m not. Unfortunately, I’m not nearly as consumed by my art as I should be.”
― Evie Dunmore, Portrait of a Scotsman