Best 58 quotes in «gothic romance quotes» category

Alone with the dead! I dare not go out, for I can hear the low howl of the wolf through the broken window.

A good enemy can be better than the best of friend.

Even I don’t know myself... In fact, I don’t know if I really have a self at all, as I’m constantly playing different roles and pretending – not so much on stage as in real life...

Amelia envisaged that between York and the royal-infested Scottish Highlands there was a grimy wasteland of derelict cranes and abandoned mills and betrayed, yet still staunch, people. Oh and moorland, of course, vast tracts of brooding landscape under lowering skies, and across this heath strode brooding, lowering men intent on reaching their ancestral houses, where they were going to fling open doors and castigate orphaned yet resolute governesses. Or — preferably — the brooding, lowering men were on horseback, black horses with huge muscled haunches, glistening with sweat —

And I wasn’t playing a role – I was trying to be myself. But the harder I was striving, the more I was realizing that I had probably lost that ‘myself’ somewhere between two perfectly performed roles...

Another tug and a yank at my chestnut curls and she snarls at me, “You are so much like her.” This is something my mother often says and never explains. Though it is a great mystery to me it is also a blessing, for she always hurries from the room after saying it.

But there is nothing, no trace that she’s ever existed. She is not here. She will never be here again. Because of me.

Do not fear the ghosts in this house; they are the least of your worries. Personally I find the noises they make reassuring. The creaks and footsteps in the night, their little tricks of hiding things, or moving them, I find endearing, not upsettling. It makes the place feel so much more like a home. Inhabited. Apart from ghosts nothing lives here for long. No cats no mice, no flies, no dreams, no bats. Two days ago I saw a butterfly, a monarch I believe, which danced from room to room and perched on walls and waited near to me. There are no flowers in this empty place, and, scared the butterfly would starve, I forced a window wide, cupped my two hands around her fluttering self, feeling her wings kiss my palms so gentle, and put her out, and watched her fly away. I've little patience with the seasons here, but your arrival eased this winter's chill. Please, wander round. Explore it all you wish. I've broken with tradition on some points. If there is one locked room here, you'll never know. You'll not find in the cellar's fireplace old bones or hair. You'll find no blood. Regard: just tools, a washing-machine, a drier, a water-heater, and a chain of keys. Nothing that can alarm you. Nothing dark. I may be grim, perhaps, but only just as grim as any man who suffered such affairs. Misfortune, carelessness or pain, what matters is the loss. You'll see the heartbreak linger in my eyes, and dream of making me forget what came before you walked into the hallway of this house. Bringing a little summer in your glance, and with your smile. While you are here, of course, you will hear the ghosts, always a room away, and you may wake beside me in the night, knowing that there's a space without a door, knowing that there's a place that's locked but isn't there. Hearing them scuffle, echo, thump and pound. If you are wise you'll run into the night, fluttering away into the cold, wearing perhaps the laciest of shifts. The lane's hard flints will cut your feet all bloody as you run, so, if I wished, I could just follow you, tasting the blood and oceans of your tears. I'll wait instead, here in my private place, and soon I'll put a candle in the window, love, to light your way back home. The world flutters like insects. I think this is how I shall remember you, my head between the white swell of your breasts, listening to the chambers of your heart.

Emotions don’t interfere in my acting, nor in my life.

Dying would be normal for me, and one day, I'd be buried beneath a stone, and nothing would matter anymore. It'd be ordinary, like life. And that terrified me, endlessly.

Good evening, you poor little Orphans of a Loveless God. Good evening to you blood sucking fools.

His love with Lucy bled from his heart as he slipped into a dark despair— a melancholy that only she could sever with her chaste voice and tender kisses. Now in an unreachable darkness, a blindness took hold. A blood lust that would drive him mad for five years hence.

Have a look around, my pretty, we are surrounded by Death in all forms – just the two of us are still alive –

He smirked. “Decision time, pretty lady... back to reality?” She touched his cheek. “Or down the rabbit hole?

He stood at the foot of the grave, gloved hands clasped behind him, his dark clothes and hair blending into one black silhouette, as if he were not a presence but an absence, a hole cut out of the landscape.

He would stare down at us in our new world from a long-distant past--a past where men walked cloaked at night, and stood in the shadow of old doorways, a past of narrow stairways and dim dungeons, a past of whispers in the dark, of shimmering rapier blades, of silent, exquisite courtesy.

His nose was almost too long, but not quite. It was almost bent, but not quite. The jaw was almost crooked, but just missed. This was the face that love wore.

I can see how your mother would have a point. Having a debate with a politically minded woman can be intriguing and even entertaining but to share a house with her and have her always campaigning and protesting at the dinner table,” he slanted his gaze down toward me. “That could be very tiring indeed.

I always am in a role, lovely – for you, for them – even for myself. Yeah... Even when I’m alone, I am still in a role – and I myself am the most exacting audience I have ever had.

I cannot ever imagine a time or place in which I will not love you. I am willing to do whatever it takes.

Is it possible for one to enter sleep and wander while never waking? And if so, for how long can one survive this way?

I’d love to try to tame you... And I would simply adore it if you turn out untamable –

I marched along the familiar paths, hoping a fast stride would keep me warm. Part of me was enjoying the peaceful scenery while the other part pondered my newly altered circumstances. I never wallow in self-pity, for there is nothing to be gained by such indulgences, but I confess to feeling just a bit irritated. “If only I’d had the good fortune to be a widow!” I muttered to myself crossly, kicking at a pebble in my path. Instead of a divorcée, that is to say. Quelle différence! My present circumstances would be much improved by my having lost my husband in some war, rather than by the shocking action of booting him from my life. It isn’t fair, but there we are.

Insane love. Loving insanity. Insanity and love...

I was never able to accept anyone else’s support but my own –

It seemed to me that Mr. Forrester would approve of a woman who could follow him in conversation and not be baffled by ledgers and currency conversions. I had grossly overestimated him.

It was a privileged existence, but also a cage, beautifully decorated, but locked tight always.

Moonseed Manor did not look like a place to live. Moonseed Manor looked like a place to die.

Matthew shook his head. “Whoever said anything of women in the Victorian era being prim and proper apparently hadn’t met Maxine Fleming.” Tahatan chuckled. “I’m sure a publisher somewhere would make a nice fortune with putting this into print. The fact is, people tend to look back on bygone times through rose-colored glasses. All eras have encouraged values that are pushed on the surface, but in the end, people are still people.

Paranoia. The more you think of an imaginary problem, the more you feel as though it’s real –

The time groaned by as John made a fool of himself. Eventually, he grew numb to the death and sin around him. He even came to enjoy gallivanting cross-country like a true crusader. His name brought tears of joy or pain of anger to those he left in his wake. The result of his own unresolved pain.

She says it is a school for bluestockings which, according to her, is really only a fashionable way of saying it is a school for ugly girls who cannot find suitable husbands. To tease her, for I believe it is one of his greatest pleasures in this life, my father bought a pair of blue silk stockings for me the day we received my letter of acceptance. That evening and the next, father and I dined alone.

She wanted me to love her... and stranger still, i wanted to love and be loved by her. Death had become romantic again.

She would've made an excellent pirate.

So, apart from casting runes, what other hobbies do you have? Forbidden rituals, human sacrifices, torturing? –

The fly that should be dead and the dog that should be dead in the house that should be dead, and the bride, who would be dead soon. It watched approvingly, appreciating the complexities—and fragilities—of life.

The trees seemed to have eyes that were watching us and reaching out for me. They began to take on the shape of the dead.

The unknown grayish mystifying forest was benumbed into frost-covered cold, and the tremendous pines towering above the dark marshy soil resembled a gathering of severe mute brothers from a forbidden ancient order worshiping forgotten gods no one had ever heard of outside of the world of secret occult visions.

The wavelets flung themselves up as if trying to pat my feet and I darted back, laughing, and picked up my skirts to chase them back as they receded, in a game of tag more ancient than I then knew.

...perhaps we only notice things when the time comes for us to pay attention to them. When they need us to see them…

She slips into the seat at our table, refusing to look up at me. I reach for her hand, sending a shiver through me when our finger tips touch. She glances at me, her eyes filled with a feral fear that reaches into my depths, pulling on emotions I refuse to acknowledge. Things I can’t feel now. Won’t feel ever again.

Silver bullets and a stake in the heart But the cross still awakens my heart I'm the freak of nature that's all Darling it's not the way that you are

Some rumors said she was a demon from another world. Other rumors said she was death incarnate, someone to remind us of our misdeeds. But no one had said how beautiful she was. No one had mentioned her eyes. The ones that showed color only for a second. A hint of beauty in absolute blackness.

Strength and victory... What he would never praise himself for, but whose loss was his most obsessive fear.

Surely it was the shock of all I’d learned, the danger his conclusions indicated, but as I returned his smile, a bit of warmth filled my cheeks. There was something awfully pleasant about his dark features and wild hair, which begged to be touched.

The desperate piercing scream of horror echoed far above the sharpened tops of the trees wrapped in thin obsidian-transparent mist, and I startled jerkily, tripping again, and almost collapsed onto the cold moist ground.

The marine underworld stretched below the ship and embodied many secrets. The disappearance of Olga had become one of the mysteries that would remain with Stefania and her family. The disappearance of her baby sister and sudden departure from her home had taught the ten-year-old that life was filled with uncertainties. But she was willing to forget that for a little while. She jumped down from the barrel and headed toward Liam, Felix, and the other shipmates. They would sing shanties and talk of the constellations, the sea, its creatures, and the legends. It would get her through another night. La Suerte was the only stability for her passengers with the infinite unknown all around them. The waters of the sea, the world below the surface, and the sky that stretched beyond the horizon was a representation of the limitless possibilites and dangers awaiting those aboard.

The questions push me further into the space in between, the place where my madness lays waiting for me. I struggle with each question, determined to extract some sort of answer, an explanation for everything that has happened so far. But no answers come and I’m forced to acknowledge the feeling lodged between my two worlds Terror.

The utter unbroken silence was more appalling than any ominous noise, than the loudest yells of anguish, than the most piercing screaming... Dead silence. Literally dead.

This daemon loves men whose marriage beds have grown cold, so she can set them ablaze.