Best 13 quotes of Alexandra Ripley on MyQuotes

And if things always stayed the same, Scarlett, what would be the reason for bothering to draw breath?

Books have become products, like cereal or perfume or deodorant.

But you know who you are when you're on your own out there in all that emptiness. There's no past, no holding on to the scraps that are all you've got left. Everything is that minute, or maybe tomorrow, not yesterday.

If only' repeated again and again in her head like a battering ram...'if only' could break your heart.

It's the centuries, Scarlett darling. All the life lived there, all the joy and all the sorrow, all the feasts and battles, they're in the air around and the land beneath you. It's time, years beyond our counting weighing without weight on the earth. You cannot see it or smell it or hear it or touch it, but you feel it brushing your skin and speaking without sound. Time. And mystery.

One of the injustices of the world was that it was so easy to make the innocent and caring ones happy with so little.

You belong with me, Scarlett, haven't you figured that out? And the world is where we belong, all of it. We're not home-and-hearth people. We're the adventurers, the buccaneers, the blockade runners. Without challenge, we're only half alive. We can go anywhere, and as long as we're together, it will belong to us. But, my pet, we'll never belong to it. That's for other people, not for us.

But listen well. In Tir na nOg, because there is no sorrow, there is no joy. Do you hear the meaning of the seachain's song?

Charlestonians had a particularly vicious and cunning game, developed after the War. They treated outsiders with so much graciousness and consideration that their politeness became a weapon. 'Visitors end up feeling as if they're wearing shoes for the first time in their lives. It's said that only the strongest ever recover from the experience. The Chinese never developed a torture to match it, although they're a very subtle people.

How could a man know the truth of his own soul?

Something happens to people when they're masked. They become too free, uncivilized. They may do anything.

They have a saying, the French, that no woman, can be truly beautiful who is not also sometimes truly ugly.

To anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the land they live on is like their mother. It's the only thing that lasts, that's worth working for, for fighting for...