Sherry Thomas Quotes

My beloved,
I write to you from Rawalpindi, with the help of a Turkic-speaking imam, a kind man with a twinkle in his eyes and a soft spot for lovers. Now two years after I left Chinese Turkestan, I am about to embark on a solo journey there to find you, and my heart shakes with both hope and dread.
If I do not find you, then I will leave this letter in our cave, and pray that God willing, someday, as you ride by, you will be moved by an inexplicable urge to see the place where we had been so happy.
I was a fool to leave. If you can forgive me, please come and find me in Rawalpindi. Ask for Arvand the gem dealer at the British garrison, and they will know where to direct you.
I enclose a bar of chocolate, a packet of tea from Darjeeling, and all my fervent wishes for your well-being and happiness.
The one who loves you, always

I often question your actions, but rarely your reasoning. And this isn't one of those rare instances.

You know what I think about when I'm alone and you are far away?" he murmured. "I think about you, naked, under the sun."
He licked her nipple. She whimpered.
"Not the English sun, mind you, because it is never adequate. But the sun over the Arabian sea. Or the sun of the south of France. Light brilliant enough to shatter mirrors. And you, naked, in that light, your thighs open this wide -

I am not "just" a girl - no woman is. And if Heaven has deposited me at this time and place, then I am meant to deal with these problems, no matter their scale or consequence.

I won't bite, you know," he said. "I might lick, but I won't bite."
"I don't want you to lick either."
"I will lick only where you like, how is that?

This is the story of a girl who fooled a thousand boys, a boy who fooled an entire country, a partnership that would change the fate of realms, and a power to challenge the greatest tyrant the world had ever known. Expect magic.

What do you do when you despair, and there isn't an August Rain to drown your sorrow?

...when an old man dies, no matter how well loved he is, it is easier to accept: death has been in the wings for a while. But when a young man perishes unexpectedly, his devoted wife, who has had every expectation of many more happy years together, suddenly finds herself profoundly alone-- and descends into a powerful grief that lasts for years upon years.

A woman who has nothing left to lose can prove dangerous.

Then she spied the cauldeon, sitting upright at the very bottom of the crater, filled with the most beautiful exiler she'd ever seen, like distilled starlight.

The Inquisitor stared at him. "Your Highness, where is Iolanthe Seabourne?"
Right here in this room.
He was on guard, very, very much on guard. Yet he still felt his lips part and form the shape necessary to pronounce the first syllable of the truth. "I thought we had already established that I have neither interest in nor knowledge of your elemental mage."
"Why are you protecting her, Your Highness?"
Because she is mine. You will have her over my dead body.

We are all going to die soon. Do you really wish to waste time being angry at me?"
"Yes. I remain an unrepentant optimist. If i see that I am about to die, or you, I will forgive you. But not until then, you bastard.

So far I have restrained myself. For how much longer, I do not know.
I have never known such happiness, shot through with such misery. Only four days have passed, they tell me. But that is not true. It has been decades since I saw
you last.
You will find me a stooped old man when we meet again. Perhaps I might even need a pair of spectacles to recognize your veil.
But I remain always,
Your servant,
C.
One of Christian's onesided letters to the Baroness

He kissed the shell of her ear. "Then let me tell you this: I live for you and you alone.

Because being in love does not give you any excuse to be less than honorable, Lady
Tremaine.

You might be the scariest girl I've ever met," he told her.
"Let's not be dramatic," she said drily. "I'm the only girl you can remember ever meeting.

Dreams are not real; but when you are inside a dream, it is real to you.

I always think I cannot love you more if I tried, but I always do.

What is it?" she mumbled.
"Something that will make my kisses taste like chocolate.

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A reflection of
their story: imperfect, but to him the most beautiful of stories.

What cricket? Grasshopper?

a drunk did not expect the bottle to love him back,and she only wished to drink him in whenever she could.

Trust ran both ways. How could he ask her to trust him when he hardly trusted her?
He would trust her, in her love, in her strength, in her decency and fortitude.
And when the time came, he would find the strength in himself.

Still scared witless?"

Of course she was. He'd had to remind her there was a citron tart on the premises.

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His voice, however, was utterly velvety - if an upholstered wrecking ball
could be called velvety. "I won't need to try, my dear. My touch will burn away his."
She couldn't breathe.
"You were always quiet in his bed," he went on, "but you won't be in mine. You will scream with pleasure - and you will do it again and again.

Believe me, I've thought long and hard about leaving things alone. But then there will always be this wall between us." "It's all ugly things behind the wall," I said, not looking at him. "I'm not afraid of what's behind the wall, only the wall itself." But the wall was my exoskeleton. It was what held me up. Sometimes it was the only thing that held me up.

There existed something in this world that bound a mage tighter than a blood oath: love. Love was the ultimate chain, the ultimate whip, and the ultimate slave driver.

She touched him, placing her hand over his curled fingers, straightening them so that they were palm to palm, then she interlaced her fingers with his. Her fingertips were icy. A silent, dangerous thrill coursed through him. He wanted to pull her atop him and show her what awaited a foolish young woman who slipped into a man's bedroom in the dead of the night after having devoured him all evening with those dark, intense eyes of hers, setting his blood to simmer over three long hours.

She wanted to run her hands over him as he whispered the impassioned corollaries of non-Euclidean geometry.

He climbed into bed himself and kissed his way up her legs. Instincts she didn't even know she possessed made her clench her thighs together. Without any hesitation, he pushed them apart, exposing her to his gaze.
The doors of the temple, darling, never close to the devout acolyte.

He had wanted marriage, children, and an upstanding life. He still had the children, thank God, but a man who had salvaged his greatest treasures from the smoldering ruins of his home remained in the middle of smoldering ruins.

What is withdrawal?"
"Let's see, since you know your scripture so well, was that Onan? Yes, that bugger. What he did."
"Spilling his seed on the floor?"
"Yes," continued her husband, "it would be lovely if I could take you and spill my seed somewhere else. Not on the floor, mind you. But perhaps on your very soft belly. Perhaps even on your splendid breasts. and perhaps, if I'm in a really terrible mood, I'll make you swallow it.
- Vere to Elissande

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Her aunt would be appalled at her forwardness. But Penelope had long ago decided that while the meek might inherit the earth, the non-meek enjoys far more interesting conversations - to say the least.

I beg you to exercise wisdom and restraint and remember that not all opportunities are created equal. Some are nothing but steps leading down toward catastrophe.

That's what Papa counting on, no doubt. But romantic love is . . .I don't wish to say that romantic love itself is a fraud - I'm sure the feelings it inspires are genuine enough, however temporary. But the way it's held up as this pristine, everlasting joy every woman ought to strive for - when in fact love is more like beef brought over from Argentina on refrigerated ships: It might stay fresh for a while under carefully controlled conditions, but sooner or later it's qualities will begin to degrade. Love is by and large a perishable good and it is lamentable that young people are asked to make irrevocable, till-death-do-we-part decisions in the midst of a short-lived euphoria.

We will never accomplish anything worthwhile in life if we require the guarantee of success at the onset.

The next minute he realized what had happened to him, but not before she'd caught him staring.
For a decade, I was fixated by her beauty. I wrote an entire article on the evolutionary significance of beauty as a rebuke to myself, that I, who understood the concepts so well, nevertheless could not escape the magnetic pull of one particular woman's beauty.
She knew. With surgical precision, she had peeled back his layers of defenses, until his heart lay bare before her, all its shame and yearning exposed.
He could have lived with this if only he'd kept his secret whole and buried. But she knew. She knew.

You, sir, are a scoundrel. As if he'd heard her thought, he glanced her way. Their gazes held, a pair of miscreants recognizing each other in a roomful of upstanding people.

That was how he would go on tormenting her, after his physical departure from her life. A baroque plan, byzantine even, a plan that both pleased and shamed him.
He awaited only the night, this one grotesque, terrible night.

She had grown so accustomed to this exterior that she didn't always remember what truly lay underneath. Nor did she particularly want to. Why fester in disillusion, bewilderment, and anger when she could float above and pretend to be this sunny, charming girl instead?

Here's to going into the fire." - Kashkari

I had this daft idea to come and bury the past. Except the past is not quite dead.

It won't be disagreeable," he said. "It can be made quite enjoyable."
"Oh, it had better be," she said tartly. "I've heard plenty over the years on your amatory prowess. If I'm not on the roof crowing, I will consider myself disappointed.

He did not look like an archangel - if archangels looked as he did, there would be no women of virtue left in Paradise.

She wasn't sure that she wanted to understand the full spectrum of human emotions―everything that remained seemed dire to one degree or another. But this warm, silly mutual delight, this she wouldn't mind experiencing until she comprehended its place in the world.

He glanced at her. "You were the moon of my existence; your moods dictated the tides of my heart."
The tides of her own heart surged at his words, even though his words were nothing but lies.

It was the beginning of the end.
Or perhaps, it was only the end of something that was never meant to begin.

How do you find the grace to face
the shadows?

As long as I live and breathe, I will be with you.

Love will make you weak and indecisive, remember?" she murmured.
What a fool he had been. For a journey like theirs, love was the only thing that would make him strong enough.
"Don't ever listen to an idiot like me," he answered.

So . . . you want me to fall in love with you, while you play kissing games with another girl?

Now what I want to know is what happened when you found Bryony, Leo," said Will.
"Did you just say your sister sent me, pack up everything and come with me this moment?"
"More or less."
"And she came away with you?"
"More or less." Leo tossed Bryony a mischievous look. "Although there might have been
laudanum, drugging, and a midnight abduction involved."
"Now that's a much better story," said Matthew. "I would pay to read that one."
"And for his knavery, Leo lost one of his - more important parts," said Bryony.
"No!" Matthew and Will shouted in unison.
"Bryony!" Callista squeaked.
"Kidney," Leo cried. "It was just a kidney. A man can live a perfectly vigorous life with
one kidney."
"You can call it a kidney if you want," said Bryony.

He put his hand over hers. "Am I a coward?"
"Because you are afraid? No. Only fools are never afraid.

For the next three seconds, he still dared to let himself hope.
Perhaps she was making a grand entrance. Perhaps she would be carried in like Cleopatra, hidden in a roll of fine carpet.
Perhaps
Three porters, grunting, pulled in a handcart.
A crevasse opened before him and in fell his heart. No need to remove the tarpaulin wrapping. He recognized the stone slab
by its size and weight.
She had returned his present. She would have nothing more to do with him.

I see you are fixated on the least of my doings," he said. "Very well, my abrupt departure from the Domain is easily enough explained: I am not at your beck and call, Madam Inquisitor. You cannot simply say to me, 'May I call on you this evening, Your Highness, to discuss what you have seen?'"

The Inquisitor thinned her lips.

"Besides, if you had taken the time to inquire from my attendants, you would have learned that I had decided to go back to school at an earlier time, before the lightning came down.

"Now, the hotel suite. I am a young man and have needs that must be met. Since that slum of a school Atlantis so strenuously recommended does not allow for such activities, I keep a place outside of school. As for why I left, I cannot imagine why I should remain once the deed is done."

"And where was your accomplice in . . . the deed?"

"Left before I did. No need for her presence once she had served her purpose."

"There was no report of anyone coming or going."

Of course not, since she left with me.

This time he had to swallow the words as they rose on his tongue.

"Were you watching all the service doors? A large hotel has many."

"Where did you find her?"

In a certain house in Little-Grind-on-Woe. Very well suited to wielding lightning, that girl.

"In a certain - "

What was the matter with him? He was an accomplished liar. Truth should

She'd never thought of herself quite that way. She was more an idiosyncratic ignorer of established boundaries than a glutton for the new and the uncharted. But perhaps they were one and the same, each one implying the other.

Nothing," he said. "Just that I have loved you, even when I was nothing and no one to you, when you didn't know my name and barely knew my face.

I will keep you safe, he murmured. He meant it. As long as he was safe, she was safe. But how long would he remain safe?

Two characters and sexy banter do not a book make, damn it.

He gazed at her until he could no longer stand the asphyxiation in his chest. He didn't know what he'd been thinking. Somehow he had thought - had hoped, in the baser chambers of his heart - that she might appear wan and wretched beneath an impassive facade. That she yet pined for him. That she was still in love with him, despite all evidence to the contrary. This woman did not need him.
... He tried to forget that he'd gawked at her like a hungry mutt with its front paws upon the windowsill of a delicatessen.

Titus's jaw dropped. 'Those caravanists, they were mages?'
'They most certainly were.'
'But one fainted and two reached for their rifles when they saw the sand wyvern.'
'It's a good policy for at least one member of the group to pretend to fall unconscious at a mage sighting. And I always think the rifles are a touch of genius - any time you see someone holding a firearm, your instinct is to dismiss that person as a nonmage.

Don't worry, darling. I'll look out for myself. And I've reached an age when I have no problem telling someone to fuck off.

That the loss of a man, even if he had been the love of her life, was not the end of a woman's existence.

He'd never encountered beauty of such magnitude and intensity. It was not allure, but grace, like the sight of land to a shipwrecked man. And he, who hadn't been on a capsized vessel since he was six - and that had only been an overturned canoe - suddenly felt as if he'd been adrift in the open ocean his entire life.
Someone spoke to him. He couldn't make out a single word.
There was something elemental to her beauty, like a mile-high thunderhead, a gathering avalanche, or a Bengal tiger prowling the darkness of the jungle. A phenomenon of inherent danger and overwhelming perfection.
He felt a sharp, sweet ache in his chest: His life would never again be complete without her. But he felt no fear, only excitement, wonder, and desire.
Christian's thoughts upon seeing Venetia for the first time (Beguiling the Beauty, Fitzhugh Trilogy 1, by Sherry Thomas)

She should laugh at such ambitions on his part: nothing about him held any romance for her, not his crown, not his black heart, not his beautiful liar's face.

Mr. Robbins let slip that he had not been
sleeping well. He'd given up his room at the lodging house to a lady traveling by herself,
who'd come into Nowshera too tired to stand, when Nowshera was overrun and beds
impossible to find. When the lady left, the landlord had given the room to someone else,
leaving Mr. Robbins to sleep in rather atrocious places."
"Dear me," said Lady Vera.
"He didn't know it, but that lady was Mrs. Marsden. And I, for one, will always be grateful
that he helped her when there was absolutely nothing in it for him."
Lady Vera set down her tea. She reached forward and took Leo's hands. "Thank you, Mr.
Marsden. Sometimes I forget that beneath Michael's ambition, there is not a void, but much
kindness. Thank you for reminding me.

Did the
two of you marry again? Please tell me yes. If he is my brother-in-law again, he is less likely
to kill me for what I did."
Bryony looked at her a moment, then leaned in and whispered in her ear. "He won't kill
you. He just wants you committed to an asylum.

To be thought of as the perfect woman for a man isn't a compliment to a woman, it's more about how a man sees himself. Should we marry, either I will be exhausted trying to keep his illusion intact - or Lord Bancroft will be severely disappointed in his choice. Likely both.

He should not, but he cupped her face and kissed her. Because they were past the point when words were any use. Because he was once again afraid to die. Because he loved her as much as he loved life itself.

Tenderness, that most alien and disconcerting of emotions, swelled and billowed in her. She picked up a cherry and stared down at the soft, bright-red fruit. "I love you."
The last time she'd declared her love he'd thrown it right back in her face. She waited uncertainly for his response. She didn't even have to wait a second. He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. "I love you more."
- Gigi and Camden

When will you ask for your post back?" he whispered in her ear. "I miss the smell of
industrial-strength solvents."
She laughed softly. "Soon. And when will you have papers read at the mathematical society
again? I rather like having my husband called a genius for reasons that are not clear to me."
My husband. The words rolled off her tongue, easy and beautiful. He kissed her fervently.
"Soon. My brilliance quite overflowed on the way home. I have four notebooks to show for
it."
"Good. We don't want people to think I love you for your looks alone."
"In that case we should also put you in some rather revealing gowns once in a while, so that
people don't think I married you for your accomplishments alone.

I despaired for a while during the rail journey-how did one deal with such ingrained
cowardice? Then I realized that there is no such thing as courage in the absence of cowardice.
Courage is also a choice: It's what happens when one refuses to give in to fear."
She rested her head against the bedpost and gazed at him. "Your trust gives me courage."
He understood her perfectly. "And your courage gives me faith."
She smiled a little. "Do you trust me?"
"Yes," he answered without any hesitation.
"Then trust me when I say that we will be all right."
He trusted her. And he knew then that they would be all right, the two of them. Together.

You are the beginning of Eternity now, she said silently to Master Haywood. You have arrived at the end of Fear. And I will love you always, for as long as the world endures.

The prince set her down and dismissed his valet. The latter left with a bow and closed the door. Leaning against the wall, the prince pulled off his stockings. As he walked toward the amethyst tub, he yanked his shirt over his head.
He was lean and tightly sinewed. Her little bird heart thudded.
He glanced at her, his lips curved in not quite a smile. The next thing she knew, his shirt had flown through the air and landed on the cage, blocking her view toward the bathtub.
"Sorry, sweetheart. I am shy."
She chirped indignantly. It was not as if she would have continued to watch him disrobe beyond a certain point.

The entire point of life was the ability to make one's own choices. Foreknowledge of anything - especially the circular kind, such as Kashkari's presence at Eton because he'd dreamed of it - was terribly limiting and ran counter to the concept of free will.

Some hopes were weeds, easy to eradicate with a yank and a pull. Some, however, were vines, fast growing, tenacious, and impossible to clear.

What is courage but strength in the face of fear?

One could say lightning is the marriage of fire and air." "One could say mud is the marriage of water and earth," he said dismissively.

Humans, herself included, held no
interest for her except as living machines, mind-bogglingly intricate, beautiful systems that
somehow housed individuals not quite worthy of the miracle of their physical bodies.

It doesn't matter where I am; I'm yours.

Now he could work her likeness into any story of his choosing. Now he could fight dragons for her. And now he could kiss her again.

The explanation for her absence had been staring him in the face all the while, but he hadn't wanted to acknowledge it: The affair meant nothing to her. He'd been the only one bewitched body and soul. For her, he'd been but a temporary source of entertainment, a way to pass the otherwise tedious hours in the middle of an ocean.
He'd been the one to press for a continuation of their affair beyond the voyage. He'd been the one to offer his heart, his hand, his every last secret. She never even gave her real name.
And, of course, never showed her face.

But sometimes the males of the species brought home shiny, beautiful things,
with hope burning in their hearts.

Sometimes limbs must be re-broken to set properly, her heart too needed to shatter anew before it could truly heal.

There was no such thing as a marriage with one happy spouse. Both must be or neither.

Even they would think you a monster were you to
orchestrate a divorce right after my confinement."
"How long do you recommend I wait, then?"
"A long time. I know what happens when a divorce is granted:
The woman never gets anything. And I will not be parted from my child."
"So you will contest the divorce?"
"To my last penny. And then I'll borrow from Fitz and Millie."
"So we'll be married 'til the end of time?"
"The sooner you accept it, the sooner we are all better off."
His ancestors would have appreciated her hauteur: a fit wife for a de Montfort. "Now if you'll excuse me, I must have enough rest."
He gazed at her retreating back. Foolish woman, did she not realize that he'd already accepted it from the moment he'd said "I do"?

I love everything about her, including her talent for breaking my heart.

Do not undervalue what you are ultimately worth because you are at a momentary disadvantage.

Alas, would that it were as easy to appease the heart as it is to satisfy the stomach.

Charlotte Holmes. I thought I might see you here."

The voice belonged to Lord Ingram, but slightly raspy, as if he were under the weather―or recovering from a night of hard drinking.

She turned around slowly. "Hullo, Ash."

A complicated pleasure, this man.

What stupid children they had been, to cause each other such pain and then to hold on to their wounds so fiercely. She

At her incendiary words, he drove deeper - far deeper - into her, unable to help himself.

"So," she said, her fingers on his cheek, "now I've made you mine."

He took her fingers in hand and kissed them one by one. "You made me yours long ago, but now you finally claimed me.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that you used to shatter easily. But
now you've become less brittle.

Someone loved this girl, this utterly useless girl, loved her enough to go on wooing her, even though she was being paraded before all of Europe for takers. A moment of stark despair descended upon her that she would never know such love, that she would go through life sustained only by her facade of invincibility. Then she came to her senses. Love was for fools. Gigi Rowland was many things, but she was never a fool.

Friendship is untenable for people in our position.

He felt like a pilgrim standing on the shores of Lake Sahara, having walked barefoot over hundreds of miles, yet all the hardships forgotten, filled with only wonder and reverence at the marvel of it all.

You have been all my moments of grace.

Fortune favors the brave."
Another moment of silence. And then, Iolanthe found herself shouting at the top of her lungs, her voice nearly drowned by the bellow of all the rebels present, "And the brave make their own fortune!

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And that is why You do not trifle with the Master of the Domain.

And in the depth of her eyes were all these years - seasons they'd known, paths they'd trod.
Slowly he entered her again. Everything reflected in her gaze: shyness, yearning, ripples of pleasure.
The pleasure turned fierce, then ferocious. He labored to draw breath. In the wash of her climax, she closed her eyes. He closed his own eyes and yielded to the moment.