Rules for Ruin Quotes

“She was no stranger to the game of flirtation. During her time in Paris, many men had attempted to woo her with sweet words and kisses. But this was different. Mr. Royce was no courtly French gentleman. His touch wasn’t sweet. It was incendiary.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“Just because a lady shared a deep, smoldering kiss with a gentleman didn’t mean that gentleman need be privy to all that lady’s business.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“It's all right," he murmured gruffly. "You're all right." His thumbs moved over her cheeks in an achingly gentle caress. "I've found you.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“Knowledge is your greatest weapon,” she’d told them. “And books are knowledge made manifest.” Effie had found it to be true. Books enlarged one’s mind. They encouraged one to think. To feel. To understand. They could be more than that, too, when the occasion called for it. In the absence of community, books could be companions. They could be friends.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“For all Miss Corvus's progressive views, for all her insistence on looking to the future, this was a chamber firmly enshrouded in the past. A veiled room, all stale darkness and decay.
Miss Corvus had been similarly veiled the first time Effie had seen her that fateful day eighteen years ago in the London slum of St. Giles.
But Miss Corvus wasn't veiled now.
She sat in a green damask-upholstered armchair by the window, her uncovered face as white as wax. She was clad in stark black, just as Effie was-a plain, but impeccably tailored, silk dress worn over an abundance of petticoats and a formidable wire crinoline. A jet brooch gleamed at her throat, and an embroidered lace handkerchief was clutched in her pale hand.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“Effie's brow lifted. Miss Corvus never received any of the girls in her private rooms. Not even the teachers. At least, she hadn't during Effie's tenure. Miss Corvus's rooms had always been sealed off, as impenetrable as a tomb, behind an impassable set of tall, iron-banded wooden doors. Not even the canniest members of the Academy had dared attempt entry.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“Strong, intelligent women had always been his weakness. He blamed it on the example set by Miles’s mother, Rose. She’d been something of a bluestocking, too, with her forward-thinking ways, and her determination to better herself and her son despite all the odds against her. The granite wall of Gabriel’s already weakened defenses began to crumble.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“All the wrongness in her world had been extinguished by the rightness of whatever this was between them. It was a hazardous alchemy.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“He was no good at comforting people. But this was important. She was important. "It's all right," he said. "It's over. I have you now.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“You and I make our own luck”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“This persistent unwillingness to see or hear anything unpleasant. As though if we don’t know about a problem, the problem doesn’t exist. I find that very small-minded. It’s far better to face a thing head-on.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“The raven is unique. An intelligent and prophetic bird. Ravens don't abandon their young. They remain with them into early adulthood, flying beside them.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“All he knew was that she'd been a bright, dazzling light in his dark world”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“All he knew was that she'd been a bright, dazzling light in his dark world. Not a remote, beautiful creature to put on a pedestal, but an equal. A second self. If he wanted her, he was going to have to win her.

And he wanted her like mad.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“Effie felt no great urgency to fill it. There was power in saying nothing. It generally prompted one's opponent to stumble into the conversational breach, saying too much. Revealing too much.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin

“She might have known he’d be trouble. The interesting men always were. Indeed, that was precisely what made them so interesting.”
― Mimi Matthews, Rules for Ruin