Julie Anne Long Quotes

She would be incapable of not broaching. It took

She didn't want to need anything, particularly something - or someone - she quite simply couldn't have. Too much had been taken from her already, and she'd had enough of accommodating pain, of straightening her spine, of soldiering on

Magnanimous of you.'
His mouth twitched. 'Mmm. Use more words like that, please. Schoolmistress words. Long, impressive ones.' He'd made the last three words sound like an innuendo.

It hurt. And just as there seemed to be no end in the kinds of pleasure he could give or to the ways in which she loved him, and because of this, no end to the way he could hurt her, again and again and again.

You ought to choose fewer words that contain S for the time being. You are spitting all over me.

Time took on a peculiarly viscous quality.

Fear did rather play havoc with one's self of time.

He was a relentlessly cheerful presence, talked only of himself but so good-naturedly that she indulged him. He certainly laughed a good deal. Something about his laugh made her feel more alone than if she were standing on a high cliff at the end of the world, shouting her name into the void to hear it echo back at her.

Nonchalance, she could have told Argosy, does not pay.

Irony, when delivered cold and shaved very, very fine, could sound like amusement.

Because "Platitude" was a language everyone spoke

Even cliffs are vulnerable, Captain Eversea, she thought. The sea gets at them, eventually, reshaping them inexorably, giving them no choice at all in the matter.

This man offered her forever.
And if Prescott had asked a month ago ... If he'd asked the day before she'd encountered Jonathan Redmond at midnight outside the Duke of Greyfolk's house ...
Ah, but she was a different woman now. One kiss had changed that.
And a ballroom orgasm.

The ... the one about Colin Eversea! I learned a new verse from a young lady at school. It's very funny and ... and ... bawdy. That last word was a reckless inspiration. She presented it almost defiantly. Lisbeth blinked as though she'd flicked water into her eyes. Lisbeth and Waterburn eyed her for a silent nonplussed instant. A finch peeped somewhere in the hedgerows. Apparently it wasn't a word anyone associated with her, or particularly wanted to associate with her, judging from the carefully bland expression on Waterburn's face. Next I'll try the word whore in a sentence, she thought wildly.

Oh, my goodness, Lord Dryden. You should have seen your face when you said the word work. It's not counted among the deadly sins, you know.

There are things the artist intends, and things the viewer sees, and what the viewer sees isn't always what the artist intends. Isn't always apparent upon first viewing.

Let's refer to it as Saturday, rather than the day of my hanging, shall we?

He would ask nothing else from life if he would be allowed to protect and cherish her for the rest of his.

For if light had a sound, it was that laugh.

Beautiful. Jules once thought he'd understood what the word meant. He now believed it overused. Some word needed to be kept in reserve for the rare, the arresting, the surprising ... the magical. Or a new one invented.

Use it all you want. Marry him. He'll never really be yours, and you'll never know it.
Or maybe you will.

And much like a catapult, my dear, the lower you begin in life, the higher you can eventually fly. All it requires is the right person to, shall we say, effect the launch.
-Miss Endicott.

Good God. She was Wellington with eyelashes.

But there really was no point in asking. She read things, she knew things, and out they came, little surprises. It was strangely like unwrapping little gifts, not all of which he appreciated. She clung to facts and information, like flotsam in a shipwreck. They'd saved her.

He began to stand, and saw Lyon stiffen, poised to do whatever he needed to do. He, like Lyon, could throw himself on a pyre, too. Because fire cleansed. She'd won, and he'd lost.

It had stopped mattering. Her happiness was indistinguishable from his own. No matter what became of him, he wanted her to know he loved her.

"You'd best get out of here, Redmond. Your secret is safe with me."

Lyon's eyes flared in wary surprise. He froze. And his smile, when it came, was slow, and crooked, and he looked very like Lavay when Lavay was being insufferably knowing.

"Ah. You do love her more than life. Splendid. And that, my dear Lord Flint, is what I came here today to discover."

Whatever he felt was between him and Violet. "Go before I change my mind, Redmond.

Kinkade sketched the occasional nude woman, and was generous about passing the sketches around to the men and cheerful about accepting criticisms and suggestions, which he seldom incorporated, as he had his own vision. He signed them O.McCaucus-Bigg
A new soldier was always puzzled by this, given that this wasn't Kinkade's name.
"O.McCaucus-Bigg?"
"Braggart, are you?" Kinkade would roar. "Not as big as mine,laddie!"
A good joke, suitable for thirteen-year-old boys and bored sergeants and subalterns.

Very well," she said after a moment. "Here is how I see that loyalty and love are the same: You would lay down your life for someone for reasons of both love and loyalty. But loyalty implies dependence, doesn't it? For instance, dogs are loyal. It also implies indebtedness. For instance, servants are loyal."
"It also implies integrity. And honor. And - "
"Steadfastness," she completed, with only a hint of irony.
"So you see them as absolutes then, Miss Redmond? Love means to be willing to die for someone, and loyalty perhaps the same?"
"How can they be otherwise?

Perhaps men like the Everseas were commonplace here in England. Perhaps finding a beautiful titled husband would be as simple as shaking an apple from a tree.

I am going to take you every imaginable way,' he promised on a whisper, tugging her bodice lower.
'Excellent,' she murmured. She tugged his shirt from his trousers.
'Right side up, upside down, sideways, sitting, standing. You on top. Then me on top.'
'A brilliant plan.' His shirt fell from his shoulders. Oh, his shoulders. The vast glorious curve of them. She couldn't wait to lick one.
'Backward, forward. On the bed, on the table, on the settee.'
He paused, and lifted her dress off over her head with all the ceremony of an unveiling. It fell to the floor.
'And then?' she whispered.
'And then we'll do it all over again.'
It was the never-ending story!

"I've ... " he began.
He could have completed that any number of ways: " ... botched everything." " ... loved you since I laid eyes on you." " ... been a complete idiot for you." " ... never deserved you." " ... been so wrong about everything that matters in life."
"I love you." He hadn't planned to say it.
She went still.
She kissed her fingers, and laid them on his lips, stopping him from saying anything more.
"Thank you," she said. "Don't follow me.

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He wished for access to all the world's languages at once, for then he would have a better word for how he felt and what she was.

Such a fragile way to sustain a whole life: on a web one weaves for oneself.

Plain girls who were also clever were a ha'pence a dozen.

We did everything we could to save him, to defend him and still we knew he was going to die. One never feels more like speck upon the breast of the universe in those moments.

Oh, God. She'd now have to invent a bawdy verse on the spot. She'd never had to improvise so much in her entire life as she had in the last five minutes. Improvise being another word for lie, of course.

Yes, Miss Masters, but walking is also a way to announce who you are." Gideon waved one arm impassionedly. "How you view yourself in the world. The way you hold yourself, the way you move, how you occupy a space, tells other people a good deal about you," ~from To Love a Thief

But now he understood why someone would write things like 'she walked in beauty like the night' and so forth. Because poetry was a barrier against raw emotions. It distilled them into bearable music, allowed one to accommodate them a little at a time.

It's what this night would feel like if I could seize hold of it

It's only that... well, if Olivia cannot be with the man she loves, as he has vanished like a bloody 'cowardly'..."
She stopped talking abruptly. Yanking herself back like a dog on a leash.
Which was a pity, as the words had acquired a fascinating whiff of venom and had begun to escalate in volume. She would have done some squeaking of her own.
Genevieve Eversea was beginning to interest him.
"If she cannot be with the man she loves..." he prompted.
"I do believe she can only to be with someone... impressive."
"Impressive..." He pretended to ponder this. "I hope you do not think I presume, but I cannot help but wonder if you're referring to me. Given my rank and fortune, some might describe me as such. And I'm flattered indeed, given that there really are so many other words you could have chosen to describe me."
A pause followed. The girl was most definitely a 'thinker.'
"We have only just become acquainted, Lord Moncrieffe. I might elect to use other words to describe you should I come to know you better."
Exquisite and refined as convent lace, her manners, her delivery.
And still he could have sworn she was having one over on him.
She seemed to be watching her feet now. The scenery didn't interest her, or it caused her discomfort.
And as he watched her, something unfamiliar stirred.
He was... 'genuinely' interested in what she might say next.

Everyone needed a reminder to simply look at things and enjoy them, without labeling them.

So she was to be savagely heartbroken and then poisoned by one of their cook's noxious herbal brews in the space of a few hours? Dante would find inspiration in this day.

Why?" He sounded bemused. He'd whispered the word.
She supposed he meant: why are you here? Because her mind answered with: Because I love you, and damn you for it. You have both made my life worth living and utterly ruined it, and I'm grateful that you did.
She smiled faintly. She would never say it.

All his reckless, whimsical, sensual testing of the world throughout the years had been a search for what he knew with her. Passion and peace. Laughter and combat and friendship. God, but he loved her. It was an immensely humbling, enormous, radiant thing.

And before he knew what he was doing, he reached out and with a thumb brushed away one teardrop glistening in that mauve crescent beneath her eyes.
And then he looked down at his thumb, and rubbed the tear out of existence, right into his skin.

Gentleness was sometimes perilously close to pity.

The wrong man could have brought it all crashing down," she told him. "A different man might have collapsed under the weight of the responsibility.

But the pain was old to him, and somehow it had become a part of him. He could bear it and speak of it. It had shaped him; he had accomodated it. He had loved abd he had lost and it had made him who he was.

I know what you think of me, Miles. I know what you
have thought of me. But I have a heart. I do have a heart. I just cannot afford to use it. Don't you see? Why can't you see this? Whereas you
may play at all of this as much as you like. There will always be someone for you. And that is the difference. I cannot afford to use my heart. And you
you choose not to use yours.' - Cynthia Brightley to Miles Redmond

How, she had no idea. She seldom considered the "how" of things.

Not every man will make you want to do anything he wishes because the moment he touches you your body is his to command. Not every man is capable of making you scream with bliss in every imaginable position, or knows where to touch you or listens to your breath and your sighs to know precisely how to touch you, so that the pleasure you experience is the most intense. Not every man will make you see stars every ... single ... time.

How had she ever thought his blue eyes placid as a lake? But there was untold power in any water: to buoy, to drown, to toss, to carry one to the safety of shore.

Cynthia wondered how anyone could withstand this sort of happiness.
But no doubt no one had ever before been as happy as she was at this moment, so there couldn't possibly be any precedent. She would have to show them all how to do it by surviving it and marrying Miles Redmond and living to a ripe old age.

Men who are fatally struck usually take a moment to drop. He felt rather suspended in that moment.

For you see, Captain Flint, I, too, never settle for less than what I want. Or never thought I possibly could. I'm a Redmond. If only you truly understood what this means. So I set out to reorder the world in a way I thought would make me worthy of her love. But my quest has changed me in ways I never anticipated, and I'm not the man who once loved that girl. There's much more to my journey yet. And here's a bitter irony: I've found in becoming heroic, in becoming worthy of her, I've painted myself into an untenable corner. I've more work to do to prove someone's innocence or guilt.

MEEEEE!" it bellowed.
She jumped back again, dropping the basket lid. What the devil?
She opened it again, and looked down at the wee thing.
"MEEEEEE!"
"Good heavens, you are loud," she told it. "I thought cats were supposed to say 'meow.' There are two syllables in meow."
"MEEEEEE!" It corrected vehemently and with great singularity.

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Picture, if you will, Tommy, the fuse of a cannon. Now, when one touches a flame to a fuse, what happens? It's consumed bit ... '
He stepped toward her, so close that his boot toes nearly touched the toes of her slippers.
She sucked in a breath. But she stood her ground when his knees brushed hers.
' ... by bit ... '
His voice had gone perilously soft. ' ... by bit. Until ... '
His breath fluttered her hair.
His mouth was next to her ear now. 'Boom.

The words had somehow managed to bypass reason on the way out of his mouth

Imagine the ton would leap from London Bridge if the marquess did it first. Mind you, he'd land on a cart carrying a feather mattress when he did it, whilst the rest of London would splatter.

Sometimes, the only way out of the fire is through the fire, m'boy.

He composed himself inwardly. Sparing the world his awkwardness, hiding vulnerability. Preserving his pride.

He had one of those chins what…" One of the innkeeper's hands went up to squeeze his chin into two little folds. "…a chin what looks like an arse."
"A chin dimple? A cleft?"
"Not cleft so much as dented, Mr. Eversea. And blue eyes. Went nicely with his costume."
Dumbstruck silence followed this observation.
The innkeeper sighed. "It's me wife. If ye gets yerself a wife one day, Mr. Eversea, ye'll come ou' wi' things like that, too, mark my words, mark my words. 'This matches wi' that or with this,' and so on. They talk like that, women do. She makes me look a' things and give opinions. She'll turn me into a girl yet."
This seemed unlikely, but all Colin said was, "Blue eyes and an arse chin. Thank you, that's very helpful, Mr. Croker.

A girl could forget her precise location in the universe when a man looked at her with eyes like those.

Does she make you laugh?" He thought about this. "She laughs a good deal when I'm about," he allowed. Did Colin Eversea really want to be laughed at rather than with his entire life? He was the most maddening person she'd ever met, but his humor contained angles; he used it both to deflect and persuade. And if one could see around it, one would see into vulnerability.

He was older, bolder. He knew of whores and wars, violence and vendettas. He knew precisely what he wanted, always. He wanted her.

No proper life could be made from the pursuit of blinding pleasure followed by limp exhaustion.

Because he spoke to her the way no one else had ever spoken to her, which meant he saw her in a way no one else saw her.

But its understood Olivia in particular is so vivid and vivacious, and she has such strong passions. I believe the flowers are meant to convey admiration for this," she explained.
"And while those are indeed admirable qualities in a woman. I also appreciate subtleties of character," he parried.
"And yet so very little is subtle about Lady Abigail Beasley," Miss Eversea pointed out peevishly, quickly.
'God.'
He nearly grunted with the force of her thrust home. And she'd demonstrated a willingness to play dirty.

When Phoebe glanced back at the marquess he swiftly lifted that rogue lock of hair, pointed at his forehead and mouthed: Good aim. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Dear God, he was sporting a bruise! So that's where she'd clocked him with his hat! And this explained the forelock.

Life is short, Tommy. Short and dangerous. A bit like you.

They immediately spent a moment in bemused silence in honor of the perilous little paradox that was the English female

You wouldn't consider riding me, would you?' he asked politely.
'You've lovely manners, she purred. 'But of course.

Furthermore - "

"There's a 'furthermore'?" His voice was utterly inflectionless.

" - I'm not a child. I'm a lady born of one of England's finest and oldest families, and I daresay even you know how to behave in the presence of a lady. Regardless of the inconvenience I've caused you, I'll thank you to remember whatever manners you've managed to feign to date, because the ones you're exhibiting do you no credit and merely reinforce the prevailing opinion, Captain Flint, that you are a savage." She delighted in giving the S a serpent-like sibilance. "The measure of a gentleman is how he behaves when he hasn't an audience to witness the beauty of his manners. And I wouldn't expect you to understand this, my lord, but centuries of fine breeding have ensured that I need not, as you say, exert myself if I choose not to. Only the likes of you equate the actual need to work with virtue. It is in fact due to the work of my ancestors that I no longer need to, and my family considers this a mark of honor.

"There's" title="Julie Anne Long Quotes: Furthermore - "

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The question remains ... who takes care of you, Miss Vale?"
"I might ask the same question of you, Lord Dryden.

She didn't usually mind being just a bit in over her head. She generally flailed like a becalmed ship, irritable and purposeless and panicked, when things were simple.

Directness often disguised as much as it revealed, and was a marvelous defense.

The sympathy calls had been shot through with a subtle, yet unmistakably morbid glee. The queen had at last been nudged from her throne. It had taken disaster to do it, but still.

Her voice was a thread, but still she managed to sound acerbic. "I believe it's the devil's job to tempt me. Not yours."
"And the difference between the devil and I would be . . . ?"
"None that I can detect.

The stars are particularly spectacular tonight, don't you think? Dazzling. As if they've all had a good rinsing from the storm.

The message was sealed with a blob of wax but no press of a signet. She slid a finger beneath to crack the seal, and read: I apologize if I've ever behaved like an ass.
It was the most romantic message she'd ever received. All other messages would strive to live up to it for the rest of her days. She was convinced of that in the moment.

He'd meant to take her apart with a kiss. How, then, did he wind up in pieces?

Of course you're sorry. The first words out of the mouths of men who are caught doing something they're only too happy to continue until they're caught.

She slid her arms

Rebecca stared back at him, still dazed. She'd forgotten how to speak; it seemed an unimportant skill, anyhow, when such kisses were to be had, when a whole world could be made from a kiss.

Jules was frozen with incredulity. In truth, he could not speak. He was touched by the display of honor in two country squires, and by the humbling - in truth hilarious - definitive evidence that some things were beyond his control. And life knew what was best for him better than he did, and had brought it to him, not with graceful precision, but with magnificent, ridiculous poetry.

A nondescript place, but it had inevitably changed over the years; one of the old oaks had been split by lightning and now lay on its side, and the others had grown into behemoths around their fallen comrade.

No one understood what his legend had cost him.

Don't be tedious, Lavay. If it's so necessary for you to know," he said ungraciously. "She won a contest."
There was a short stunned silence.
"You ... played a game?" Lavay said this slow, flat incredulity, hilarity suppressed, clearly trying to picture it. "And you lost to a ... girl. What manner of contest was this? Ribbon-tying?"
Flint felt ridiculous now, in retrospect, which was doing nothing to settle his temper. "I challenged her to aim a dart ... let's just say it landed rather serendipitously in the right spot,"
he finished curtly. "She was lucky."
"You speak metaphorically, Captain? She aimed a dart as in the vein of Cupid?

I love you," she murmured.
The words ... it was as though an entire sun had exploded in his chest.
He'd been ridiculous. His thrashing thoughts, his grand confusion and torment and helplessness
it was only love, had always been love, he supposed. It was no precipice he stood at, or rather precipices have little meaning when one finally acknowledges that one has wings. Connor stepped off.
"I love you, too."
Such grave, inadequate words for what it was he felt.

A few deep breaths would take care of that. She studied the horse and took deep breaths.

It's ... " She couldn't finish.
"Don't try, Miss Redmond," he agreed, shading his eyes. "There are honestly no suitable words, so we shall not fault you for failing to find them. Nothing makes a man feel more like God than sailing a ship over the sea with no land in sight. And nothing makes a man feel less like a God than clinging to a shred of ship exploded by lightning in a storm.

And this is the potency a first kiss should have: it should be earned. The moments leading up to it should be as tense as a crossbow drawn back. The reader should want it as badly as the hero and heroine, and feel as satisfied and transported and transformed as the hero and heroine in the wake of it. There are different ways to use kisses in a romance, but that first kiss is so meaningful, a pinnacle, and can be more intimate than sex.

What happens next?" she whispered.
Connor turned to her and smiled faintly. Always a question, that was Rebecca.
There's more?" he said in mock wonderment
Rebecca dimpled.
You know very well there is more."
Tell me all about it," he encouraged.
In Papa's book - "
Tell me all about it without mentioning your papa.

Connor" title="Julie Anne Long Quotes: What happens next?" she whispered.
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He leaned in for a sniff. 'Smells like a horse's arse! I've got Ian!' -'No sniffing allowed! We never discussed sniffing! I cry foul!' Ian was outraged. 'I'm not giving you a shilling!' -'Give him a shilling! It's not his fault you smell like a horse's arse!

But is not one a result of the other?" she asked. "Love and loyalty? I cannot see how could you prefer one to the other.

Her predicament (the word she had come to prefer in her mind, rather than "circumstances") had turned her into quite a philosopher, when by nature she'd always been a pragmatist. For instance, one allegedly wasn't rewarded for all of the good one did until on departed the Earthly Plane. But if you committed one (albeit epic) transgression, a lifetime of damnation seemed required.

She thought that heartbreak might just give his character the shadows and corners and angles it needed to make it truly interesting. To deepen and shape it. She was sorry she would be the one to help make him truly interesting. But she'd never apologize for falling in love with a man who already was.

The butterflies did a slow orbit in her stomach.

I have learned that everyone else in the world is boring except you.

Go ahead, then. He likes his back rubbed. And his head scratched."

"The creature inflicts grievous wounds upon my person and expects me to forgive it?"

"I expect a lot of creatures inflict grievous wounds and expect forgiveness.

Their faces were inches apart now, and he traced her lips with one finger, lightly, lightly, then placed his lips there as if he'd drawn them into being.