The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch Quotes

“Goodbye, Lizzy. I will see you again, of course—but you will not see me. Not really. You never have. It is too bad. This the part, I suppose, where the novel would wrap up with a tidy boring moral, so I will say this: Love your best friends. Forgive your worst friends. Remember, always, not to judge people too hastily, for everyone is living out a story of their own, and you only get to read the pages you appear on.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“Isn’t it strange to see that, even as one’s own story unfolds, others are traveling through their own, which may be just as interesting?”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“This smug nation of yours certainly enjoys grinding its daughters down to a powder.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“Becoming a young lady is a bit like being a topiary bush. You start out wild and unformed, and highly paid experts snip away at you until you’re beautiful and thoroughly tamed. Only then are you considered proper company. A witch is more like a young willow tree. You may start as a scrawny weed, but every root you send questing through the ground, every shoot you send toward the sun, strengthens you. If you’re not checked, your roots can crack walls.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“Lord, travel is a curse. So are friends, and love, and mornings.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“At the public ball in Meryton in May, I stood in a corner complaining to a few friends. They had heard it all before, but what are friends for, if not to listen to the same complaints over and over?”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“Love your best friends. Forgive your worst friends. Remember, always, not to judge people too hastily, for everyone is living out a story of their own, and you only get to read the pages you appear on. And no matter what your physician may say, do not drink seawater. It is bad for you.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“Isn’t it strange to see that, even as one’s own story unfolds, others are traveling through their own, which may be just as interesting? (Except for Mary. Nothing interesting will ever happen to Mary.)”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“I’d had quite enough of being a human woman. Every paltry moment of joy it brought was followed by misery times a hundredfold.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“There is no better balm for shame than hearing that others have debased themselves far worse.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“You see why I turned out so bad? It’s really not my fault. When someone has warned you that there will be dire consequences if you do a thing—and you do it—and the consequences do not appear, it leaves you inclined to take a dim view of consequences more generally. Everything, I decided, would generally work itself out, so I could do as I pleased.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“Jane says that the rules of etiquette exist to make everyone comfortable. The most important part of politeness, she says, is putting everyone at their ease, whether or not they deserve it. Sweet Jane! She would think that.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“When someone has warned you that there will be dire consequences if you do a thing—and you do it—and the consequences do not appear, it leaves you inclined to take a dim view of consequences more generally.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“That feeling that rushed through me as we danced—was that magic? Were we binding our powers together, we ladies and chambermaids, heiresses and beggars, naked and hand-clasped?”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“I had never seen so many naked women before, and certainly never had leisure to study them. Such variety astounded me. Old, young, thick, thin, firm, wrinkled—all so different, and all so unashamed.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“There was one fly in the ointment of my Brighton delight.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“The look he gave me was that mixture of exasperation and pity that I seem to so often bring out in respectable people.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“She pulled back and looked into his eyes fiercely. “Don’t forget me, Denny,” she said. She didn’t look like my sister anymore, or my pet, or my familiar. She was a woman rendered ageless and unrecognizable by agony.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“This is the part, I suppose, where the novel would wrap up with a tidy boring moral, so I will say this: Love your best friends. Forgive your worst friends. Remember, always, not to judge people too hastily, for everyone is living out a story of their own, and you only get to read the pages you appear on. And no matter what your physician may say, do not drink seawater. It is bad for you.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“This is the part, I suppose, where the novel would wrap up with a tidy boring moral, so I will say this: Love your best friends. Forgive your worst friends. Remember, always, not to judge too hastily, for everyone is living out a story of their own, and you only get to read the pages you appear on.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“Isn't it strange to see that, even as one's own story unfolds, others are traveling through their own, which may be just as interesting?”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“This kiss was different from those we had shared before, There was no frenzied seawater powering it, nor was it a payoff of a complicated transaction. It was just sweet comfort, the sweetest thing I thought I had ever felt. The gentle, tender touch of his lips, the soothing strokes of his hands, the press of his body on mine, all of it rushed into the parts of me that had been filled with queasy despair.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“When I was done, I turned to the crowd, holding the little basin of my friends' blood. Funny, I thought, looking into the bowl -once it was mixed up, you could no longer tell dragon's blood from human, or noble from common. It was all just a mass of red.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“A scientific-minded young witch once told me it was the reverse of entropy- witchcraft is the only force in the world that can unbreak a teacup.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“You said that every time the spell activated, the creature came straight for you. This spell was intended to make Miss Darcy kill you.”
Her eyes widened. “Someday you’ll have to teach me how you do that.”
“Do what? Observe things and think them through?”
“Yes, that thing.” She frowned. “Well. Let us go ahead with it then.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“You said that every time the spell activated, the creature came straight for you. This spell was intended to make Miss Darcy kill you.
Her eyes widened. “Someday you’ll have to teach me how you do that.”
“Do what? Observe things and think them through?”
“Yes, that thing.” She frowned. “Well. Let us go ahead with it then.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“ Do not apologize. When we cats make a mistake, we merely show the world that it was what we meant to do all along.
I gave a watery laugh. “You don’t fool us, you know.”
Yes we do. Shut up.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“I’m made of fire, you know,” he said. “Fire and stone. If he regained his full strength, my father could kill everyone in the ballroom before they could choke out a scream. But I’d rather have the tinder-flare of a human lifetime than go back to him. It’s not just the waltz. The taste of a glass punch, the curve of a barmaid’s breast, the frost of a winter morning—it all pierces me to the heart. God, why am I telling you all this?”
I tried to fall back on teasing. The waltz was slowly picking up tempo, and my heart seemed to be matching it pulse for pulse. “No need for tears for a simple waltz,” I mock-scolded in a whisper. “And you a great boy of eight-and-twenty.”
He opened his eyes at that and surged away from the wall. “I am not eight-and-twenty. I am ten months old, or nine thousand years. Nothing in between.” Before I could squeak, he’d seized me in a waltz hold, far closer than propriety allowed. “Yes,” he said. “In answer to your question.”
“What question,” I said.
“Am I going to waltz you.” He began, slowly, to move. “The answer is yes, at every opportunity.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“I’m made of fire, you know,” he said. “Fire and stone. If he regained his full strength, my father could kill everyone in the ballroom before they could choke out a scream. But I’d rather have the tinder-flare of a glass punch, the curve of a barmaid’s breast, the frost of a winter morning—it all pierces me to the heart. God, why am I telling you all this?”
I tried to fall back on teasing. The waltz was slowly picking up tempo, and my heart seemed to be matching it pulse for pulse. “No need for tears for a simple waltz,” I mock-scolded in a whisper. “And you a great boy of eight-and-twenty.”
He opened his eyes at that and surged away from the wall. “I am not eight-and-twenty. I am ten months old, or nine thousand years. Nothing in between.” Before I could squeak, he’d seized me in a waltz hold, far closer than propriety allowed. “Yes,” he said. “In answer to your question.”
“What question,” I said.
“Am I going to waltz you.” He began, slowly, to move. “The answer is yes, at every opportunity.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch

“There you are,” I said, striving to paddle back to shore from the deep waters I felt I’d somehow wandered into. “Aren’t you going to waltz me? Listen, they’re starting.”
He opened his eyes at that. “I know,” he said. “I can hear. God, I can hear it. How do you humans bear it?”
The waltz had started slowly, and he thumped his hand against his chest in time. One-two-three, one-two-three.
“Bear what?” I said softly.
“The music,” he said. “A man in Austria wrote this—just a man, just a stinking, selfish, distractible human—scratched it out on tree pulp, and then it traveled across countries and through wars and arrived here, and though none of us speak his language and most don’t know his name, he speaks to us exactly as he intended to. He tells our bodies how to move to it almost without learning the steps. One-two-three, one-two-three.” A smile flitted across his lips. I was astonished to see that he had tears in his eyes. “God! How beautiful it is! And you all talk over it about what Lady-So-and-So said to the Honorable Whosit yesterday on the Steyne.”
― Melinda Taub, The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch