Julie Anne Long Quotes

“You shouldn't ask questions when you know at heart you'd prefer not to hear the answers.”

— Julie Anne Long

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

— Julie Anne Long

“I don't know,' he said irritably. 'Is it meant to improve you?'
She swiveled toward him, eyes wide with shock.
'Because nothing could,' he added.
Her mouth dropped in astonishment. Blotchy scarlet rushed her complexion. One would have thought he'd shot her.
Oh dear God!
He realized belatedly how wrong it had sounded.
'No! God ... that is to say.. nothing is necessary to improve you. Nothing could possibly make you better ... than you already are.”

— Julie Anne Long

Mister ... "
"Wrexion." Chase supplied with great dignity. "Mr.Hugh G. Wrexion.

— Julie Anne Long

“Jules could have sworn there was a devilish glint in the shopkeepers eye.
'I find today I am in need of a bonnet.'
Mr. Postlethwaite was silent. And then his eyes crept toward the marquess's hairline.
'It will be a gift for a woman, Mr. Postlethwaite.'
'Of course, sir.'
The marquess wished the 'of course' sounded a bit more sincere. He'd scarcely been in the shop for more than three minutes and already his dignity was fraying.”

— Julie Anne Long

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.

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

“Do you think Kinkade is Welland-Dowd? she wondered
Chase burst into laughter so booming that every head on the street rotated, startled.
Oh,God. She'd just understood when she'd said it aloud.
Welland-Dowd.
Well-endowed.”

— Julie Anne Long

“She wouldn't look up at him, wouldn't take her hands from her eyes; she didn't want him to see her. So he wrapped his arms around her like armor, making a shelter for her to fall apart ... He surreptitiously rested his cheek against the top of her head. That rich hair was too silky and fine and warm, and her narrow pale part seemed ridiculously pale and vulnerable as a fontanelle. Here, it seemed to say, was proof that Thomasina de Ballesteros could be broken. Cracked like an egg. That she was human.
The rage he felt then toward the duke was almost euphoric. Almost holy.
This is how crusades are born, he thought. With this kind of certainty about right and wrong, good and evil, and the need to avenge.”

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

“Vicars, he often thought, are essentially God's lawyers on the earth. Interpreters of the law, the finders of nuance, sifters through rationalizations to get at the truth or the need of the moment.
Guessers, in other words.”

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

“Ah, Lyon: the Achilles' heel of this family. She had forgotten about Lyon, and about disappearing Redmonds.”

— Julie Anne Long

When and if Violet ever fell in love, lightning would split the heavens, tectonic plates would shift, continents would reorder themselves.
Because she might be willful and spoiled and impetuous, but no one loved with the force of his sister. Her love story would be epic.

— Julie Anne Long

“He supposed it would be considered pastoral-there were trees clustered in a meadow, with two muscular black cows and two improbably fluffy sheep arranged beneath them-and in the sky were two winged cherubs so fat that surely the miracle in question as how they have gotten aloft at all. They would have needed to have the wingspans of albatrosses, not those foolish wee flaps sprouting from their shoulders, he decided, irritated. One of the cows was looking up at them with what he fancied was an expression of surpise and alarm. Which was precisely the expression he would wear if he'd suddenly noticed two fat cherubs bearing down on him.”

— Julie Anne Long

“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?”

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

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

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

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

— Julie Anne Long

“No one understood what his legend had cost him.”

— Julie Anne Long

I can only think god is responsible for passion,for god gives us bodies with which to express it and heart in which to hold it

— Julie Anne Long

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

— Julie Anne Long

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

— Julie Anne Long

One could tolerate an acid tongue for a time when the owner of it was so very pretty.

— Julie Anne Long

“Oh, I'm bowed, but unbroken.”

— Julie Anne Long

“Rhys told himself that everything came with a price. He'd made a difficult choice years ago to regain all he had, and some days he could convince himself that life was like war: bitter, desperate choices were often made in the name of survival, and some inevitably survived at the expense of others.”

— Julie Anne Long

“Gentleness was sometimes perilously close to pity.”

— Julie Anne Long

“Her laugh was wonderful. It was mischief made musical.”

— Julie Anne Long

“I shall expect your reply within a month. Surely that is time enough to ... weigh your other offers.'
She stared at him. Well. She'd underestimated Lord Prescott. Or perhaps, more accurately, she hadn't fully estimated him ...
'Thank you, Lord Prescott. It's helpful to know that your desire for me will expire by a particular date.'
'Much like the desirability of any woman. You of all people should be fully aware that a woman's bloom doesn't last forever. Nor does her ability to bear children.'
...
'Thank you for reminding me. It slipped my mind, temporarily.'
He nodded, smiling a little, acknowledging her little barb. 'Good day, Miss de Ballesteros. I am not a man without feeling, and I think I shall depart now, to recover from the decidedly ambivalent receipt of my proposal.'
She smiled a little at that.
'Good day, Lord Prescott. Perhaps I should retire, too, to preserve my bloom.”

— Julie Anne Long

“The two of them froze and stared at each [sic] from across the silent, woolly garden.
And Ian, as he always did when he saw Falconbridge, felt a certain amount of shame. They had both shamed each other, on that fateful night, and really, it was hardly conversation kindling.
'Good morning,' Ian said politely.
'Good morning.'
Their voices echoed absurdly in the cool morning air.
A silence. Ian supposed it would be just a little too ironic if he scrambled up a fruit tree and clambered over a wall instead of walking past the duke, back to where he'd tethered his horse.”

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

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.

— Julie Anne Long

You wagered you could indulge passion and receive trust and honor in return, and lost.

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

“The one thing she'd been able to count on her entire life was her cleverness. She was so often right. It was humbling and disorienting to realize that she in truth knew nothing at all. One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one's own prejudices.”

— Julie Anne Long

“She mulled how very Jonathan of him to effortlessly find his way to her when she needed him, labyrinth or no. Just as he'd effortlessly uncovered her secrets. But that was simply because he'd been born knowing the secret to her. He was hers and she was his. Just as there was one key for every lock”

— Julie Anne Long

“Do the girls emerge quite ruined for marriage after you stuff them full of knowledge?"
"I should imagine most of our girls emerge less tolerant of fools, if that's what you mean."
- Dryden and Phoebe”

— Julie Anne Long

“Only two things kept her from loathing him.
The expression on his face when he'd said, "France."
And the expression on his face when he'd said, "home.”

— Julie Anne Long

“He was close enough now to see that her profile was designed to do dramatic things to hearts: stop them, steal them, break them.”

— Julie Anne Long

“Something was stirring in him, though; a bud of comprehension that could very well bloom into forgiveness if left unchecked.”

— Julie Anne Long

“Should I apologize for my species for trotting out the same compliment again and again? Isn't it better than having none at all?"
"When you hear the same one again and again, it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that it's the only thing of note about one's person.”

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

“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.”

— Julie Anne Long

“She would be incapable of not broaching. It took”

— Julie Anne Long

“Confidence. He contained worlds.”

— Julie Anne Long

“There had been counts in his life before. Counts before dueling pistols were fired. Counts before footraces and horse races. Counts in his head to postpone his release while some beautiful woman lay beneath him.”

— Julie Anne Long