Rakish Quotes

Arrr, shiver me timbers," he said in an exaggerated pirate twang. He winked his uncovered eye and hooked his thumbs in his pants. "This is the nicest your mom's been to a poor old bloke like me-self in days."
Sandra poked a finger in his chest, but grinned. "Don't make me regret it, or you'll walk the plank."
He grinned back and, with that eye patch, turned knee-meltingly rakish in under ten seconds flat. "Aye, I won't be asking you to make me Roger jolly, if that's what has you worrying. ~ Jennifer Shirk

I don't know if you have ever seem a map of a person's mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads in the island; for the Neverland is always more or less and island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. ~ J.M. Barrie

Every day, the prince returned with honeyed words. He brought gifts, hired musicians. Every day, the fairie was gracious and kind, but composed. Still, he wore down her defenses with his charm. And the prince was sincere in his courtship - he somehow forgot how rakish his intentions were. He was a man who lived for the present moment. ~ Jessica Cluess

With most women he would use flattery and flirtation, appealing to both their vanity and their pleasure. But Grace was no ordinary woman. With her, he knew he would have to take a more subtle approach. Less than half a minute into their acquaintance, he'd sensed her reserve, as well as her insecurity. He surmised she wasn't used to being boldly pursued by men, so any sudden, overt interest on his part would only provoke her suspicions and put her on the alert.
Instead, his approach would require a deft touch and gentle, patient persuasion. A shy doe required proper coaxing, after all. The key was to figure out what kind of inducement she liked best and be there to offer it. ~ Tracy Anne Warren

Raphael pulled out a paperback and handed it to me. The cover, done back in the time when computer-aided imagine manipulation had risen to the level of art, featured an impossibly handsome man, leaning forward, one foot in a huge black boot resting on the carcass of some monstrous sea creature. His hair flowed down to his shoulders in a mane of white gold, in stark contrast to his tanned skin and the rakish black patch hiding his left eye. His white, translucent shirt hung open, revealing abs of steel and a massive, perfectly carved chest graced by erect nipples. His muscled thighs strained the fabric of his pants, which were unbuttoned and sat loosely on his narrow hips, a touch of a strategically positioned shadow hinting at the world's biggest boner.
The cover proclaimed in loud golden letters: The Privateer's Virgin Mistress, by Lorna Sterling.
"Novel number four for Andrea's collection?" I guessed.
Raphael nodded and took the book from my hands. "I've got the other one Andrea wanted, too. Can you explain something to me?"
Oh boy. "I can try."
He tapped the book on his leather-covered knee. "The pirate actually holds this chick's brother for ransom, so she'll sleep with him. These men, they aren't real men. They're pseudo-bad guys just waiting for the love of a 'good' woman."
"You actually read the books?"
He gave me a chiding glance. "Of course I read the books. It's all pirates and the women they steal, apparently so they can enjoy lo ~ Ilona Andrews

He saw a square room furnished as a library. The entire section of the walls which he could spy was covered from floor to ceiling with books. There were volumes of every size, every shape, every colour. There were long, narrow books that held themselves like grenadiers at stiff attention. There were short, fat books that stood solidly like aldermen who were going to make speeches and were ashamed but not frightened. There were mediocre books bearing themselves with the carelessness of folk who are never looked at and have consequently no shyness. There were solemn books that seemed to be feeling for their spectacles; and there were tattered, important books that had got dirty because they took snuff, and were tattered because they had been crossed in love and had never married afterwards. There were prim, ancient tomes that were certainly ashamed of their heroines and utterly unable to obtain a divorce from the hussies; and there were lean, rakish volumes that leaned carelessly, or perhaps it was with studied elegance, against their neighbours, murmuring in affected tones, "All heroines are charming to us. ~ James Stephens

There's no denying the fact he is really, really good-looking, in this rakish, edgy, badass, I-just-rolled-out-of-bed-and-screw-you-I-don't-need-a-mirror kind of way. ~ Hannah Harrington

Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle, but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Despite some initial reluctance to spend a whole book's worth of time with a man who flirted with misogyny, I took the plunge. Wolfe, after all, had the good sense to live in Manhattan, and besides, you had to like a man who surrounded himself with exotic tropical plants, consumed epicurean meals, and had the chutzpah to make the universe conform to his rules. And when I met Archie Goodwin, his ebullience and his earthy, rakish charm won me over. ~ Rex Stout

Your innocence is on at such a rakish angle it gives you quite an air of iniquity. ~ Christopher Fry

They're not tourists, either, they're nothing like the gawkers and brayers in a place like Times Square, but they don't live here, they live in Jersey or Westchester, they're burghers right out of seventeenth-century Amsterdam, they cross Broadway as if they fucking own it, they think they look rakish, they think they're creatures of the night, they have neighbors whom they consider burghers because they don't like driving in New York, because they'd rather stay home (right now, the woman in the fringed pashmina shawl, the one walking arm-in-arm with Cowboy Boots, explodes in laughter, a great smacking hoot of a laugh, a three-martinis laugh, audible for a block or so), while the residents of downtown Manhattan, the ones who survive the days here, walk more modestly, certainly more quietly, more like penitents, because it's almost impossible to maintain a sense of hubris when you live here, you're too constantly confronted by the rampant otherness of others; hubris is surely much more attainable when you've got a house and a lawn and an Audi, when you understand that at the end of the world you'll get a second's more existence because the bomb won't be aimed at you, the shock wave will take you out but you're not anybody's main target, you've removed yourself from the kill zone, no one gets shot where you live, no one gets stabbed by a random psychopath, the biggest threat to your personal, ongoing security is the possibility that the neighbor's son will break in and steal a ~ Michael Cunningham

Miranda!"
"What?" She batted him with her pillow.
"Hoyden! Are you drunk?"
"I don't think so. I'm not sure. They never gave us wine at Yardley. I feel happy."
"Happy?" He grabbed a corner of the pillow as she whacked him again with it. "Stop it!"
"You're too serious, Winterley!" She reached for another pillow. "I will beat you until you smile!"
He ducked out of his chair with a rakish grin as she swung at him, then tackled her flat on the soft bed, both of them laughing.
"You are ... impossible," he chided with a gentle sigh as he braced his elbows on either side of her head. He traced her cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs.
"Difficult, but not impossible." She wrapped her arms around him, relishing the weight of him atop her, the smoothness of his bare chest against her bodice. "It all depends on who's trying."
"That sounded distinctly like an invitation," he murmured. ~ Gaelen Foley

Anything she might have said died in her throat at the sight of him. His black hair was disheveled, his morning stubble hypnotic, and the rakish way his shirt was undone at the throat and his tie hung in abandoned disarray beneath the collar, was just plain panty-melting.

I'm not wearing any panties. ~ Christina Phillips

As she lifted her own backpack over the side of the black, heavy-duty dodge pickup, Owen took it out of her hands and set it beside the one-man tent and sleeping bag the FBI had provided for him.
"I could have done that," she said.
"Sure you could. But my daddy taught me a gentleman always helps a lady."
Bay was so startled at what he'd said, and the chagrined way he's said it, that she laughed. "Oh, my god. Chauvinism is alive and well - "
"We call it chivalry, or Southern courtesy, ma'am," he said. She realized he was heading around the truck to open the door for her.
She stepped in front of him and said, "It's going to be a long trip if you refuse to let me pull my weight. I can get my own door, Mr. Blackthorne."
For a minute, she thought he was going to make an issue of it. Then he touched the brim of his hat, shot her a rakish grin that turned her insides to mush, and said, "Whatever you say, Mizz Creed."
She was so flustered, she took a half step backward, slid into the seat when he opened the door for her after all, and said, "My friends call me Bay."
Bay flushed as she realized what she'd said. As he came around the hood and got in, she said, "That is - I mean - you know what I mean!"
He belted himself into the driver's seat and started the engine, before he turned to her and said, "My friends call me Owe. You can call me Owen."
She stared at him disbelief. "Oh. You. Blackthorne, you. ~ Joan Johnston

I don't know whether you have ever seen a map of a person's mind. Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. There are zigzag lines on it, just like your temperature on a card, and these are probably roads on the island, for the Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with sex elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose. It would be an easy map if that were all, but there is also first day at school, religion, fathers, the round pond, needle-work, murders, hangings, verbs that take the dative, chocolate-pudding day, getting into braces, say ninety-nine threepence for pulling out your tooth yourself, and so on, and either these are part of the island or they are another map showing through, and it is all rather confusing, especially as nothing will stand still.
Of course the Neverlands vary a good deal. John's, for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael, who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a boat turned upside down on the sands, ~ J.M. Barrie

I give Finn a wicked smile. "Don't you think a peg leg would be charming? Like a pirate? The first mate of the Calypso had one, didn't he?"
"It would add a certain rakish factor. Have you got a spare eye patch?"
"Be serious, you two. Gangrene is no laughing matter," Mrs. O'Hare scolds. ~ Jessica Spotswood

I am my own rakish seducer. I do serve as my own surly, brutish bounder. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I was sicker than I'd ever been in a short but healthy life, so sick I couldn't sleep but lay watching imaginary bugs crawl up the walls. And of course it had to be while I was like this--just about the lowest I'd sunk yet--that the Marquis of Shevraeth chose to reappear in my life.
It was not long after the single bell toll that means midnight and first-white-candle. Very suddenly the door opened, and a tall, glittering figure walked in, handing something to the silent guard at the door, who then went out. I heard footsteps receding as I stared, without at first comprehending, at the torch-bearing aristocrat before me.
I blinked at the resplendent black and crimson velvet embroidered over with gold and set with rubies, and at the rubies glittering on fingers and in pale braided hair. My gaze rose to the rakish hat set low over the familiar gray eyes.
He must have been waiting for me to recognize him.
"The King will summon you at first-green tomorrow," the Marquis said quickly, all trace of the drawl gone. "It appears that your brother has been making a fool of Debegri, leading him all over your mountains and stealing our horses and supplies. The King has changed his mind: Either you surrender, speaking for your brother and your people, or he's going to make an example of you in a public execution tomorrow. Not a noble's death, but a criminal's."
"Criminal's?" I repeated stupidly, my voice nearly gone.
"It will last all day," he said with a grima ~ Sherwood Smith

Before his death your father begged a promise from me. He made me swear that I would look after you and your mother."
"And you have," she insisted.
He held up his hand to prevent her from saying more. "And made me give my word that I would never touch you in any manner other than brotherly." Another rueful smile. "So you see, I preferred being able to pretend that I had kept my promise rather than face the truth of breaking my word."
He broke her heart, damn him. "He made me promise not to become attached to you," she confided, continuing with the evening's truthful trend. "It seems Papa saw something that neither one of us did."
"Oh, I saw it. I've seen it since you were eighteen years old and we danced together at some insipid ball. I don't remember where it was, or the day of the week, but I remember that you wore a pale tea-colored gown with Belgian lace, and that you had pearls in your hair."
She couldn't breathe. The tilt of his lips, the bleakness of his gaze, it was all too horrible. "And you wore a red cravat," she whispered. "I thought you looked so rakish in it."
"I was rakish," he admitted. "Your father knew that. ~ Kathryn Smith

So it is hopeless. Is that what you are saying?"
Archer smiled. "Nothing is hopeless, but if he means enough to you that you are willing to put up with him, then I will do what I can to help you."
"Why would you do that?" She took a nibble of delicious frosting as her heart thudded hard in her chest. "You don't even know me."
But what if he could help her convince Grey to rejoin the world?
He raised a cake of his own, the frosting stark white against the tan of his fingers. "Because you are the only woman with the exception of my mother and sister who knows my brother intimately and for some reason still likes him. That's good enough for me. Now, eat some of that cake I was kind enough to fetch you. I wouldn't want you to tell Grey I was a poor companion."
Rose's smile caught on her lips. "Are you suggesting I use you to make your brother jealous?"
Archer laughed. "My dear girl, it will take better men than me to drive Grey into action." His expression turned positively rakish. "But I'm as good a place to start as any. ~ Kathryn Smith

I don't want to relax. I don't want to … oh, dear Lord." He had bent his head to her throat, searching for the visible thrum of her pulse. A light, hot shock went through her. "Don't do that," she said weakly, but he was insistent, his mouth wickedly soft, and her breath hitched as she felt the brush of his tongue. Her hands shot to his muscle-banked shoulders. "Mr. Rohan, you mustn't - "
"This is how to kiss, Amelia." He cradled her head in his palms, deftly tilting it to the side. "Noses go here." Another disorienting brush of his mouth, a wash of sensual heat. "You taste like sugar and tea."
"I already know how to kiss!"
"Do you?" His thumb passed over her kiss-heated lips, urging them to part. "Then show me," he whispered. "Let me in, Amelia."
Never in her life had she thought a man would say something so outrageous to her. And if the words were improper, the gleam in his eyes was positively immolating.
"I … I'm a spinster." She offered the word as if it were a talisman. Everyone knew that rakish gentlemen were supposed to leave spinsters alone. But it appeared no one had told Cam Rohan.
A covert smile deepened the corners of his mouth. "That's not going to keep you safe from me." She tried to turn away from him, but his hands guided her face back to his. "I can't seem to leave you alone. In fact, I'm reconsidering my entire policy on spinsters. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I would like to be taller, thinner and more rakish looking. ~ Michael Sheen

Rowan's physical effect- godlike jawline, long-lashed eyes, umber skin, rakish quiff of hair- is that of lightening strike. ~ Helen Oyeyemi