Karen Essex Quotes

The point of my books is to give voice to otherwise voiceless females from history and myth, to unlock what has been secreted away in women's hearts and minds for millennia. Historically, women have either been reduced to nothing but their sexuality or stripped of it entirely: the Madonna or the whore.

Guinevere loved Arthur until she met Lancelot. Do you not agree that it is possible to love one person but encounter another whose very soul speaks to you?

He did not smile. 'We are the keepers of the world's greatest treasures. Does that mean nothing to you?'
My children are my greatest treasures,' she said. 'Stone no matter how old, means nothing to me when compared to their welfare.

You must never deprive the people of their belief in
the power of the gods, and you must never deprive yourself of it either.

I remembered a truism that I had always known: no woman need let a man know the contents of her mind.

The merciful man is rarely victorious. One's enemies are like snakes; though one may learn to handle them, they are always poisonous.

I knew that his confession would be a tremendous relief to him but a burden to me. Such information, once shared, can never be retracted.

I am now satisfied of what I always though
which is how much more women can do if they set about it then men. I will lay any bet that had you been here, you would not have got half as much on board as I have.

No rational person would intentionally commit an act of evil, for everyone knows that it would bring the wrath of the community upon him. (Socrates)

Mother Astarte who creates and destroys. Kybele, goddess of all that is, was, and ever shall be, he invoked.

Perfection does not take into account the viewer.' Pheidias had once said to me. 'It exists on it own, independent of and unconcerned with opinions or utility.

One hundred copies? Of these poems you do not even like?" asked the Roman. "They're nasty bits about famous people; everyone will want them.

In the beginning, there was the voice.
That was how it began on that first evening, with a masculine voice calling out to me in my sleep; a disembodied voice slithering into my dream, a voice of deep timbre and tones, of sensuous growls, and of low hollow moans- a voice laden with promise and with love. It was as familiar to me as my own, and yet I knew not whether it came from inside my head, from outside me, or from somewhere not of this earth. Hushed like wind through a valley and smooth like velvet, it beckoned me, and I neither had, nor wanted, power against it. The voice was my master.

There are no accidents in this world, that no living being is seduced into an entanglement that he did not invite with his innermost desires. Would you agree with my estimation?

It appears to me that our sex is only discussed publicly in a derogatory manner. The respectable woman is doomed to anonymity.

She knew that it was not smart to address her concerns about money directly, for men despised women who confronted them in this way. She knew that the smart wife, especially one no longer willing to parlay sexual favors, would find a way to bring up matters sweetly, pouring honey all over the problem before showing it to the husband. But she was out of patience.

Everyone has a secret life. Perhaps yours is merely a gossamer web of thoughts and fantasies woven in the hidden furrows of your mind. Or furtive deeds performed on the sly or betrayals large and small that, if revealed, would change how you are perceived.
-Dracula in Love by Karen Essex

I am more human than rational.

I'm afraid that the gift of visiting the past is all that we have. We can revisit it, but only as it happened.

I was a married woman! she said. Why does every generation believe it is the discoverer of pleasure? Your father was a spectacular lover. Even through the wall, I could hear the triumph in her voice.