Judith Ivory > Quotes

“Very softly as he nuzzled her, his mouth near her ear, he began to sing: "I'm so happy with you, la, la...”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“Yey more and more there seemed a bevy of things she was not supposed to think about and by virtue of trying not to, she hardly thought of anything else.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“On the roof, on the duvet under the steam vent, with the planets overhead, he let her scream all she wished. She screamed into the night. To the stars. At one point, with his lying atop her, he said, “Look over my left shoulder. Venus is visible tonight.” Then he pulled the covers away from her, wrestling her for the duvet, as he called, “Here she is, all you Venusians”—he lifted out his arm, using it to span the celestial horizon-—“and the rest of you planets out there: the most beautiful woman on Earth, spread-eagled for your pleasure!” He laughed. “At my disposal, mm-m-m!” He bent down, nibbling, kissing her neck with his teeth, his lips, his mouth.”
― Judith Ivory, Untie My Heart

“You’re brave. You’re good. Why would you hesitate to explore yourself? Your dark nooks and crannies? With someone who is fascinated by the whole of you? You aren’t a bad woman, merely a human one, which entails a certain amount of”—he cocked his head—“‘awfulness,’ as you call it.”
― Judith Ivory, Untie My Heart

“I mean it,' he said. 'I love your nose.'
Love. He'd said it. Though only for her nose ...
Her eyes grew larger, wider behind her eyeglasses. She looked afraid, yet full of hope. She was dying to believe him about something she couldn't see in herself.
'I don't like my nose,' she said.
'You're so hard on yourself. I think your nose is the best nose I've ever met.'
She gave a little snort. 'You see? The best nose. Honestly. You aren't supposed to notice a woman's nose.'
'Why not?'
'It's supposed to blend in, be part of the overall beauty of her well-proportioned face.'
'Yours is part of your overall beauty.'
She made a face at him, complete with tongue stuck out.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“The ferret didn't matter. Because there was something about Mick that wasn't a fake anything. And Winnie herself felt more real somehow, running around, looking for the little animal that meant so much to him.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“A harem," she murmured into his neck and laughed at last at the notion. "I can't believe you had a harem. You are hilarious, Stuart." He laughed. At himself.

"I hated men. I loved women. I wanted them all. It seemed logical to start to accumulate them.”
― Judith Ivory, Untie My Heart

“He looked for gestures, afraid of words”
― Judith Ivory, Untie My Heart

“The sensation wasn't repellent, though she had believed somewhere it would be. Someone had left her with that impression, but, whoever they were, they were wrong. It was ... mesmerizing. She could sense the length of him against her buttocks as well as a kind of heaviness, a substantive presence. He was changing right there under her, growing longer and thicker, information she acquired through the unlikely source of her bum, while he kissed her mouth.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“Tied up a lot of women, have you?" He raised one eyebrow, whatever that meant. "A bit odd, are you?" She was being sarcastic, trying to taunt him into a sense of guilt. While perhaps bursting any bubble in herself of misguided, soft-hearted concern for a man with sad eyes and complicated wealth. Though his sexual inclinations were perhaps not the wisest of barbs to do either. He looked down at her, speculative.

"Difficult to say." He actually answered the question seriously. "Legally? Decidedly. But then British laws on the subject are so guilt-ridden I'm surprised we've propagated as a race." He mad a small, grim smile. "How delightful we're having this conversation. And what is it you like?”
― Judith Ivory, Untie My Heart

“I can't protect you from mean people, because they're everywhere, but I would be nice. That much, I can promise."

"Fine," she said. "If I"m pregnant, you can marry me." He folded his harms and contemplated her motionlessly from the dark. Then said,

"Not that nice.”
― Judith Ivory, Untie My Heart

“Any woman who can make you happy has all the information she needs to make you miserable if she wants to.”
― Judith Ivory, The Indiscretion: A Sensual and Witty Victorian Romance Between a Noble English Lady and a Rugged American

“But you are lucky. You are going to live. The one ball that might have killed you just pushed your intestines aside - like a marble dropped into a bowl of spaghetti.”
― Judith Ivory, Angel in a Red Dress

“When she wasn’t being stiff-necked, she was the friend he most wanted to talk to, who he couldn’t wait to see each day. She came into his mind with the first ray of consciousness at daybreak. He nodded off, smiling over her with his last, heavy-eyed blink before sleep. Sweet Win. Funny Win. Clever Win. Frightened, brave, careful, meticulous Winnie, trying to avoid the bite of the world by pretending it didn’t have teeth.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“What irony. This great ship that carried all their fates upon her steel and rivets sailed like a compeer under him, half-blind with a limp.”
― Judith Ivory, Beast

“She shook her head, glued now to the sight. He felt exhilarated, seeing her there, her expression amused, absorbed. Oh, he wanted to charm her. He wanted to woo her, make her stay. He just wasn’t sure how to do it.

…Mick knew Win wasn’t listening as he told her about the dog; he was barely listening to himself. He wanted to say, Don’t go. Just stay. Stay and keep looking at me like that. He rattled on instead.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“She thought about his naked chest again. Her memory of it both fascinated and repelled her. Hair. It had been there again as they had argued in the bathroom. She shuddered. Who would have thought? Yet she had studied it with surreptitious care: a pattern of dark hair, two perfect swirls that converged to become a dense pattern in the crevice between chest muscles, then (when he pulled hi arms away to push back his hair) ran in a dark, ever-narrowing line, like an arrow pointing downward. Mick Tremore in the rude, as it were. This way to the widge. (hardcover, large print, page 78)”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“He held the bundle of skirts against her belly, leaning into them, letting her feel his existence on the other side of all the silky stuff of her clothes. He was scaring her, he knew. Winnie didn't like not to be in charge. Well, stuff her, he thought.

Except that was the point, of course. He couldn't. And the idea of "stuffing her" was pretty much running wild through his head. Ho-o-o-o, he wanted to lay her so bad his eyes were hot at the backs from being so close to the burning thoughts in his head. (hard back, large print, page 161)”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“People missed things. People didn’t notice; people didn’t care. People’s own misperceptions made black into white, made grey into whatever they wanted it to be.”
― Judith Ivory

“She went about that afternoon looking under sheep like a pervert, happy with all the dark, purple-pink tissue at their hindquarters. New lambs in the spring.”
― Judith Ivory, Untie My Heart

“The most consistent thing about Graham Wessit was his attitude of open experiment. Can you even imagine , she asked herself, plain, quiet, intellectual little you spending a lifetime on the arm of such a havoc-producing man?”
― Judith Ivory, Black Silk

“This way to the widge.
Edwin started. Heavens! Up till now, she realized, she had carefully avoided forming in her mind any word for that part of a man. Even the scientific word made her vaguely uneasy; her sensibilities veered away from it. Still, she'd known immediately what Mr. Tremore referred to when he'd said *that*. His word seemed friendlier. A fond name. Were men fond of that part of themselves? It was certainly not the best part of statues; she made a point not to look there. And it changed, it grew. She'd read that astounding piece of information in a book. That was the worst part, the horror - or it had been the worst until this very moment, when it occurred to her that, goodness, a man might have hair there too. She did. Oh, something that grew larger, up and out of a tangle of hair. How disgusting.
No, no, she mustn't think of it anymore. Enough. She must think of something else.
The mustache.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“A man in cahoots with a woman’s sexual instinct was the devil himself, for he had the united power over her—himself and her own longing—greater than a mere man”
― Judith Ivory, Untie My Heart

“Everyone grew still, exactly as she'd asked. The little thing skittered around feet, visible one moment, lost the next. A man near Mick - the very man who was part of the couple who'd been at Abernathy and Freigh's when the ferret had gotten loose six weeks ago - said, 'Oh, I hope you can get her. My pet monkey ran out of the house last month, and we never found him. I've been distraught ever since.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“She wanted to crow. Goodness, she was having a good time as her mother used to. And so far it hadn’t killed her. How grand! Oh, how grand it was simply to do what she felt like doing! How grand to be alive tonight!”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“You had no right." Oh, yes, he did. He suggested,

"Why don't you write that down. Put it in my handwriting. Perhaps I'll chance to read it, think I wrote it: Maybe then I'll believe you.”
― Judith Ivory, Untie My Heart

“Don’t die like that, Winnie. Or live like that either. Like you can know every little thing before it happens or can explain a mess away by retelling it to yourself a hundred times.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“She could use a hundred years of admiration; she’d had too little in her life.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition

“And I need you, as sure as leaps in the air need gravity.”
― Judith Ivory, Black Silk

“He should be warning himself, he thought. God bless, the large, bold physicality of tall Winnie.”
― Judith Ivory, The Proposition