Best 47 quotes of Lauren Willig on MyQuotes

Amazing what the application of a knitting needle could do for one's manners.

Gentlemen do so appreciate a nicely trimmed décolletage.

Hard to believe that so nearby, just across the Channel, such atrocities could still occur in their supposedly civilized world, that one could wake up one morning and find oneself bereft of brothers, parents, friends, all with the slice of an ax.

I know historians aren't supposed to fall in love with their own theories, but I was head over heels about the notion of an entire band of female French agents, like a nineteenth-century Charlie's Angels. Only better. It made the Pink Carnation's organization look positively humdrum.

I love the sound of words, the feel of them, the flow of them. I love the challenge of finding just that perfect combination of words to describe a curl of the lip, a tilt of the chin, a change in the atmosphere. Done well, novel-writing can combine lyricism with practicality in a way that makes one think of grand tapestries, both functional and beautiful. Fifty years from now, I imagine I’ll still be questing after just that right combination of words.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that one only comes up with clever, cutting remarks long after the other party is happily slumbering away.

It was lovely to see cynicism in one so young. It positively restored his faith in human nature.

It was the usual sort of academic battle: footnotes at ten paces, bolstered by snide articles in academic journals and lots of sniping about methodology, a thrust and parry of source and countersource. My sources had to be better.

LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women.

Miles was still mourning the loss of his Romantic Plan. 'There was going to be champagne, and oysters, and you' - he held out both hands as though shifting a piece of furniture - 'were going to be sitting there, and I was going to get down on one knee, and...and...

Old books exert a strange fascination for me -- their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt.

Patience is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for.

Tell them I have the headache--no, the plague! I need something nice and contagious.

The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.

There's nothing so attractive as a blank slate. Take one attractive man, slap on a thick coat of daydream, and voila, the perfect man. With absolutely no resemblance to reality.

They were a strange and mercantile people, these Americans. One never knew what they might come up with next.

They were close enough that he could feel the hurried beat of her heart. He could feel Charlotte's indecision in every word she didn't say and every move she didn't make. She was tense with uncertainty, quivering with irresolution. She might not be leaning into him, but she wasn't pulling away, either.

Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M. Kaye, and a host of other authors, in their crackly plastic library bindings. Whether historians acknowledge it or not, scholarly history’s illegitimate cousin, the historical novel, plays a profound role in shaping widely held conceptions of historical realities.

Why was it that cheering expressions were invariably so infuriating?

Amy read Ovid and Virgil and Aristophanes and Homer. She read dry histories and scandalous love poetry (her governesses, who had little Latin and less Greek, naïvely assumed that anything in a classical tongue must be respectable), but mostly she returned again and again to The Odyssey. Odysseus had fought to go home, and so would Amy.

Colin rubbed his neck with his hand, regarding me like a hopeful puppy dog. "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer just to fling something at me and get it over with?" I leaned back against the cushioned back of the banquette, folded my arms across my chest, and waited. "Dempster?" I prompted. Colin considered for a moment, contemplated the olive plate, considered some more, and came out with, "We don't get on." "That much I figured out on my own." Colin shifted restlessly in his seat. "It's a long story." I patted the side of the glass carafe. "We have a large carafe of wine." Colin let himself relax into a rueful grin. "I really am sorry. I didn't mean to drag you into it." "Since I've already been dragged," I suggested, grasping the carafe with two hands and tipping it forwards over his glass, "it would be nice to know what's going on." "Thanks." Colin took the glass I held out to him. He raised it an ironic salute. "Cheers.

Do you have something to say?" I prompted. "Or do you just enjoy propping up the wall?" Colin considered me for a moment longer. Aunt Arabella likes you." He sounded unflatteringly perplexed. "There is a small but vocal minority of people who do." Colin had the good grace to look abashed. "Look, I didn’t mean to—" "Treat me like I have a loathsome social disease?" His lips quirked with something that might have been amusement. "Do you?" "None that I’d admit to in mixed company." After all, an unhealthy obsession with Cadbury Fruit & Nut bars isn’t the sort of weakness a girl confides in just anybody.

He admired her for throwing off her aristocratic shackles -- his terms, that -- and making her own way in the world. He didn't realize that the truth was so much more complex, so much less impressive. She had less thrown than been thrown.

[He] had insisted that inanimate objects couldn't have malignant motivations, but Emma had extensive proof to the contrary.

He smiled – a real smile. Damn. It was easier to deal with him when he was being thoroughly vile. "Look, I’m sorry for being so rude earlier today. Your presence came as something of a shock and I reacted badly." "Oh." Geared for battle, his apology took me utterly by surprise. I gaped. "Aunt Arabella spoke very highly of you," he added, heaping coals of fire on my head. "She was impressed by your work on the Purple Gentian." "Why all this sudden amiability?" I asked suspiciously, crossing my arms across my chest. "Are you always this blunt?" "I’m too tired to be tactful," I said honestly. "Fair enough." Stretching, Colin detached himself from the wall. "Can I make you some hot chocolate as a token of peace? I was just about to have some myself," he added. Suiting action to words, he loped over to the counter beside the sink and checked the level of water in a battered brown plastic electric kettle. Satisfied, he plugged it into the wall, flipping the red switch on the side. I followed him over to the counter, the linen folds of the nightgown trailing after me across the linoleum. "As long as you promise not to slip any arsenic in it." Colin rooted around in a cupboard above the sink for the cocoa tin and held it out to me to sniff. "See? Arsenic free." I leant back against the counter, my elbows behind me on the marble work surface. "I don’t think arsenic is supposed to have a smell, is it?" "Damn, foiled again." Colin spooned Cadbury’s instant hot chocolate into two mugs, one decorated with large purple flowers, and the other with a quotation that I thought might be Jane Austen, but the author’s name was hidden around the other side of the mug. "Look, if it makes you feel better, I promise to do a very bad job hiding your body." "In that case, carry on," I yawned.

I don't believe anything's really inevitable until it happens. We just call it inevitable to make ourselves feel better about it, to excuse ourselves for not having done anything.

If a man took a lover it would be accounted commonplace. Why shouldn't you? Your virtue lies in your mind, not in what lies between your legs.

If not hatred," put in her brother-in-law as the path broadened so that they could walk all abreast, "what of love?" Out of the corner of her eye, Mary saw her sister and brother-in-law exchange a sickeningly speaking glance. "Hmph," was Mrs. Fustian's eloquent opinion on that subject. For the first time that evening, Mary found herself in perfect agreement with her. "Good enough for shepherdesses, but not at all the thing for civilized folks. Love is a severely destabilizing emotion. Look at Paris," she finished, as though that said it all. "The city, or the Greek?" inquired Letty in a tone of suppressed laughter, her arm twined possessively through her husband's. "Either!" declared Mrs. Fustian.

Inside, the festivities would continue, probably well into the night, with flirtation and merriment and gratuitous use of mistletoe. It was an inexpressibly wearying thought.

It hurt to kill a dream, like tearing petals off a rose in full bloom.

It's the exile's dilemma. The home they yearn for is never the home to which they return. If they return.

It wasn't the big decisions that set the course of one's life; it was the slow accretion of all the little ones.

It was very hard to rant while accepting a cup of tea.

It would be, like all of Pammy's parties, hot and crowded and filled with impossibly glamorous people with hip bones so sharp they could qualify as concealed weapons.

Quite definitely a Bingley

Right now, I couldn't have cared less if someone had waltzed across the room in a large flower costume with a sign saying GET YOUR BLACK TULIPS HERE. Every nerve in my body was on man-alert, screaming, "incoming!

Sensing another maternal oration coming on, one of those I-bore-you-and-thus-know-what’s-best-for-you lectures, Richard made a pointed move towards the door. ‘If that’s all for the moment, Mother, I really must be off. The War Office…’ The marchioness gave another of her infamous harrumphs. ‘Have a good time at White’s, darling,’ she said pointedly. Richard paused halfway out the door and flashed her an incredulous look. ‘How do you always know?’ Lady Uppington looked smug. ‘Because I’m your mother. Now, shoo! Get along with you!

She could only hold on to her husband with both hands and promise herself that the best way to keep someone was to let him go.

Such kindness wasn't a gift but a goad, scraping against one's skin like a yoke of thorns. She would have preferred him stiff, defensive, even offensive.

The use of charm as a tool made her hackles rise. She respected a more direct approach. A battering ram approach. At least one knew where one stood with the battering ram, none of this butter-wouldn't-melt nonsense that could mean yes, no, or maybe.

The words looped in my head. Download it for free. Cheerful, triumphant. Download it for free! What a freaking bargain. “I’m sorry,” I said. “She found what?” "That website. Meems, what was the name again? Bongo or something?” Mimi looked up from her iPad. “What are you talking about?” “That website where you found Sarah’s book.” "Oh,” she said. “Bingo. Haven’t you heard of it? It’s like an online library. You can download almost anything for free. It’s amazing.” My hands were shaking. I set down Jen’s phone, and then I set down the wineglass next to it. Without a coaster. "You mean a pirate site,” I said. “Oh God, no! I would never. It’s an online library.” "That’s what they call it. But they’re just stealing. They’re fencing stolen goods. Easy to do with electronic copies.” "No. That’s not true.” Mimi’s voice rose a little. Sharpened a little. “Libraries lend out e-books.” “Real libraries do. They buy them from the publisher. Sites like Bingo just upload unauthorized copies to sell advertising or put cookies on your phone or whatever else. They’re pirates.” There was a small, shrill silence. I lifted my wineglass and took a long drink, even though my fingers were trembling so badly, I knew everyone could see the vibration. "Well,” said Mimi. “It’s not like it matters. I mean, the book’s been out for years and everything, it’s like public domain.” I put down the wineglass and picked up my tote bag. “So I don’t have time to lecture you about copyright law or anything. Basically, if publishers don’t get paid, authors don’t get paid. That’s kind of how it works.” "Oh, come on,” said Mimi. “You got paid for this book.” "Not as much as you think. Definitely not as much as your husband gets paid to short derivatives or whatever he does that buys all this stuff.” I waved my hand at the walls. “And you know, fine, maybe it’s not the big sellers who suffer. It’s the midlist authors, the great names you never hear of, where every sale counts … What am I saying? You don’t care. None of you actually cares. Sitting here in your palaces in the sky. You never had to earn a penny of your own. Why the hell should you care about royalties?” I climbed out of my silver chair and hoisted my tote bag over my shoulder. “It’s about a dollar a book, by the way. Paid out every six months. So I walked all the way over here, gave up an evening of my life, and even if every single one of you had actually bought a legitimate copy, I would have earned about a dozen bucks for my trouble. Twelve dollars and a glass of cheap wine. I’ll see myself out.

This was what the poets couldn't put in their poetry, she thought dumbly, the rush of desire so fierce and pure it made one shake, all on the force of a word.

What a very odd thing,' said Janie, 'to live and leave no mark.

When Richard created the Purple Gentian, the talent for ancient languages that had stunned his schoolmasters at Eton had come to his aid once again. While Sir Percy had pretended to be a fop, Richard bored the French into complacency with long lectures about antiquity. When Frenchmen demanded to know what he was doing in France, and Englishmen reproached him for fraternising with the enemy, Richard opened his eyes wide and proclaimed, ‘But a scholar is a citizen of the world!’ Then he quoted Greek at them. They usually didn’t ask again. Even Gaston Delaroche, the Assistant Minister of Police, who had sworn in blood to be avenged on the Purple Gentian and had the tenacity of…well, of Richard’s mother, had stopped snooping around Richard after being subjected to two particularly knotty passages from the Odyssey.

Word of advice, sister mine. If you want to keep your papers private, don't write 'Private' on the cover. It set the mater right off. It was all I could do to stop her sniffing around like some great sniffing thing.

You don’t have any apples to offer while you’re at it, do you?" she asked sourly. "Satan tempting Eve in the garden? Not a terribly flattering role for me, is it? And you’re overdressed for the part." Amy’s blush rivalled the hue of the dangerous fruit they had been discussing. Somehow, Lord Richard’s frankly admiring gaze made the yellow muslin of her gown feel as insubstantial as a string of fig leaves. Amy covered her confusion by saying quickly, "Might I ask a favour, my lord?" "A phoenix feather from the farthest deserts of Arabia? The head of a dragon on a bejewelled platter?" "Nothing quite that complicated," replied Amy, marvelling once again at the chameleon quality of the man beside her. How could anyone be so utterly infuriating at one moment and equally charming the next? Untrustworthy, she reminded herself. Mercurial. Changeable. "A dragon’s head wouldn’t be much use to me just now, unless it could offer me directions." Richard crooked an arm. "Tell me where you need to be, and I’ll escort you." Amy tentatively rested her hand on the soft blue fabric of his coat. "That’s quite a generous offer when you don’t know where I’m going." "Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end?" suggested Richard with a lazy grin. "Methinks it is no journey?" Amy matched the quotation triumphantly, and was rewarded by the admiring light that flamed in Lord Richard’s eyes.

You were wrong," he murmured ruefully, resting his cheek on top of Amy’s head. "You weren’t safe with me." "I feel like Psyche kissing Cupid in the dark," Amy said dreamily. Richard drew Amy’s arms around his back under his cloak. "Feel. No wings." Amy could hear the smile in the Gentian’s voice. "Does that mean if I unmask you, you won’t fly away?" Richard tightened his grip on Amy’s arms. "Don’t even consider it." "You could give me three trials, like Psyche." "With what as the prize at the end? Me, or membership in the League?" Amy managed the difficult feat of looking at him askance with her nose only inches from his. "It would be much easier for me to answer that question if I knew who you were." "What’s in a name? A Gentian by any other name would—" "Be an entirely different flower," interjected Amy, swatting him on the arm. "I refuse to be fobbed off with poor imitations of Shakespeare." "If you don’t like Romeo and Juliet, how about a sonnet?" Richard suggested. "Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art—" "Not that easily deterred." Amy extricated herself from Richard’s arms – and his cloak, which had tangled around her knees – and hopped off the window seat. "Damnation," muttered Richard. "I’ll ignore that,"offered Amy generously. "And we can go straight to the crucial question of how I’m going to help you restore the monarchy