The Diamond Eye Quotes

“Snipers must make themselves calm in order to succeed, and that is why women are good at sharpshooting. Because there is not a woman alive who has not learned how to eat rage in order to appear calm.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“When you’re young and you’ve known nothing but peace, you assume there will always be time for everything.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“Knowledge, to light the path for humankind,” I said at last. “And this”—patting my rifle—“to protect humankind when we lose that path.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“My memoir, the unofficial version: Snipers must make themselves calm in order to succeed, and that is why women are good at sharpshooting. Because there is not a woman alive who has not learned how to eat rage in order to appear calm.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“reminded myself that you must do the thing you think you cannot do,” she said simply. “Always. And generally you find out you can do it, after all.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“No one better to teach you to be a good man than a good woman, I promise.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“The little men are still out here taking the bullets while the big men sit safe and dry. That doesn’t change no matter who’s in charge.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“I couldn’t push my fear away, but I could push it into my weapon.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“It isn’t enough to believe in equality and peace and human rights—one must work at it.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“It was about as organized and efficient as a monkey shit fight in a zoo.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“I didn´t necessarily want the other side dead, I only wanted them gone. But they weren't going, so help me, I would settle for dead”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“Nothing makes a party sing like the knowledge that death awaits you tomorrow, but you've dodged it today.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“We Americans are used to viewing war from a distance—the privilege of living, as Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said, with less powerful neighbors to the north and south, and nothing to the east and west but fish. Even the terrible attack on our own Pearl Harbor came thousands of miles away.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“Fate and fortune grant us health,” I quoted my mother. “For everything else, we wait in line.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“I used to think that no one could beat Soviet men for endless speeches, but when I came to America, I realized men of all nationalities like the sound of their own voices, especially the kind of man who spends long hours behind a podium. Whether in a Washington park or a Sevastopol battle zone, it’s all the same: after the first speech you’re afraid the boredom will kill you; after the fifth speech, you’re praying it will.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“We don’t bury them, Maria. We let their dust vanish into the earth, so no one will remember their faces and names. That’s the way invaders ought to die.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“We're getting married," I whispered. "Remember?" He didn't move, didn't smile, didn't speak. Death kept breathing at my shoulder. "I got the divorce. I can marry you now." Anything I could say to keep him here, keep him with me. "We can marry now. I'll marry you tomorrow." I kept saying it long after he was gone.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“I reminded myself that you must do the thing you think you cannot do,” she said simply. “Always. And generally you find out you can do it, after all.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“America fights prejudice abroad but tolerates it at home. Segregation warps and twists the lives of our Negro population; that is beyond doubt. Things must change.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“But life isn’t always going to be war, Lyudmila,” she said gently. “And you’ll do yourself a grave disservice if you live your every moment—not just your wartime moments, but your gentler ones—by a standard as harsh as never miss.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“That’s all.” Kostia blew out a long breath. “I’m just—I’m not waving you off to war without telling you I love you.” I was shivering with cold and something else. My mouth burned. I reached out, tangling my hand in his shirt again, but unable—for the first time in our partnership—to look my shadow in the eye. “I feel it, too,” I heard myself say, so quietly. “Maybe I’ve felt it for a long time. But I’m still . . . mourning my dead.” All my dead, not just Lyonya. Still fighting my way free. Kostia’s fingers folded over mine. “So am I.” He released my hand, took the canoe by its prow, and began towing it back toward shore.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“Kostia kept reading as the nurse faded away and my tears began to slide. You aren’t wanted here, I told death, breathing faint and inexorable over my shoulder. You were supposed to take me. Not him. Death didn’t care. He stood at my shoulder, implacable, immovable, as the hours of day slipped into night, as Kostia read and read and read, as Lyonya sometimes stirred in delirium and opened blind, blank eyes, and sometimes lay still as a headstone.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“He stood with a pocketful of diamonds and a heart full of death,”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“Hollywood has colored our view of sharpshooters. We imagine them as militarized serial killers; at best they’re the odd man out on a squad of regular guys, the one described as having ice water in his veins—see Barry Pepper’s Scripture-quoting sniper in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. And the idea persists that killing from a distance, from hidden nests, is somehow dishonorable or unfair . . . but skilled marksmen have been used by every army since the invention of firearms (and before that the bow and arrow: think of the English archers bringing down French knights at Agincourt, or Robin Hood’s Merry Men downing royal soldiers from hidden forest hideouts!). The use of snipers isn’t a violation of the Geneva Convention, but the stereotype persists: snipers are cold-blooded, remote, pitiless. As Eleanor Roosevelt said when meeting Lyudmila Pavlichenko: If you have a good view of the faces of your enemies through your sights and still fire to kill, how can ordinary people approve of you?”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“A sniper puts her life in the hands of her partner, night after night after night. He had better be someone she trusts more than a husband.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“The cautious wordsmithing of a woman stepping lightly around a man who has the upper hand, and might use it to lash out—no poet ever agonized over the crafting of a sentence more carefully.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“Because there is not a woman alive who has not learned how to eat rage in order to appear calm.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“I wasn’t even jealous, him winning you. You picked the best man I knew. I wasn’t going to break with my friend over that, or my partner.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“It’s just surprising to meet a woman with two hundred lives to her name and find a history student with the world’s most boring dissertation in her pack and the softest brown eyes ever to paint crosshairs on a man’s heart.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“Come on, Lady Death—marry me for the money.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye