Fiona Davis > Quotes

“No matter how she had suffered, Darby hadn’t retreated from life after all. In fact, she’d embraced it. Quietly, carefully, but with dignity and love.”
― Fiona Davis, The Dollhouse

“Leave it to a librarian to point out the alliteration in my life’s tragedies.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“So how did you get into journalism?” “In high school I worked on the paper. Then I majored in journalism in college. I loved collecting facts and then making a story out of them. The perfect combo of science and art. How about you?”
― Fiona Davis, The Dollhouse

“Why do we have to go our separate ways?” I say finally. “We don’t. As a matter of fact, I’m free for the next however-many years, and I want to be by your side for them all. Will that do?”
― Fiona Davis, The Spectacular

“Isn’t she a gem? You never know who you’re going to meet here. Now that you’re living in the greatest city in the world, anything is possible.” Of course that was Stella’s perspective. With her beauty and steady work, she had an independence Darby envied.”
― Fiona Davis, The Dollhouse

“After the first experience of the death of someone you love, each later one is exponentially more painful, because you know how hard it will be to recover from the loss.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“It’s time to expand our view of the household, and throw off the shackles of gender oppression. I can work, I can have a child, and I can love whomever I like. Just as you can.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“How easy it is to idealize someone when your time together was fraught and short. We were never bored together, never grated on each other’s nerves. It wasn’t real.”
― Fiona Davis, The Spectacular

“As they moved into the kick line for the big finale, her body tingled with anticipation and suddenly they were kicking in perfect tandem as the audience broke out into applause.”
― Fiona Davis, The Spectacular

“History is made by people in power making decisions, and their notes and writings reveal the decision-making process.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“feel like with every year, my brain is a sponge that soaks up painful experiences like water,”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“I’m aware of my limitations, but I’m not defined by them.”
― Fiona Davis, The Spectacular

“To live in a building that spilled over with books and knowledge, with its shelves of maps and newspapers from around the world, yet to feel so utterly stifled, was torture.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“Somehow, she’d always believed that if she just loved everyone enough, all would be well, that love would be the snowfall that blanketed the crevasses and jagged edges of their world, smoothing them out into a gentle field of white. Maybe she was wrong.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“We all have our own magnificent prisons, even the queen, I’d venture.”
― Fiona Davis, The Address

“The rich think they’re protected, that they have magical powers, when in fact they’re only mortals, like the rest of us. Bodies break down, betray you. People you love die. Children die.”
― Fiona Davis, The Magnolia Palace

“Then again, what child cares about their parent’s life before they were born? It’s not until it’s too late that the resonance of the earlier times, and how they echo through the next generation, are deemed valuable.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“A little history for you first. I founded a precision women’s dance company in 1925 in St. Louis, known as the Missouri Rockets. We came to New York and performed on Radio City’s opening night, way back in 1932. And we’re still going strong today, God help me.” He put a hand to his forehead and pretended to faint, making the girls laugh again. Marion felt her muscles loosening.”
― Fiona Davis, The Spectacular

“The Rockettes have been around for ages, starting back in the 1920s when Russell had the idea of doing a Ziegfeld Follies–style show featuring sixteen girls. It became a smash hit, traveling all around the country.” Bunny spoke quickly as the elevator rose. “Eventually, the impresario S. L. Rothafel, a.k.a. Roxy, brought the troupe to his Roxy Theatre in New York and changed the name to the Roxyettes.” “That’s a mouthful.”
― Fiona Davis, The Spectacular

“Even if the gifts her mother ultimately gave her were a disappointment—a pincushion or a dreary pinafore—the unwrapping was always a delight.”
― Fiona Davis, The Address

“She finished updating the ledgers and was about to head out to inspect the turndown of the guests’ rooms when a man rapped on her office door. She knew it was a man from its hard, hollow sound. Maids’ knuckles were barely audible, already apologizing for disturbing her, but the men, whether Mr. Birmingham or the janitor, had no such qualms.”
― Fiona Davis, The Address

“In 1956, with no leads and public outcry mounting, the police turned to James A. Brussel, a psychiatrist and criminologist and the assistant commissioner of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, who lived with his wife on the grounds of Creedmoor State Hospital in Queens. Brussel examined the letters from the bomber and the crime scene photos and came up with a “portrait” of the bomber—the very first case of criminal profiling ever. Among his many predictions: that when he was found, the bomber would be wearing a double-breasted suit, buttoned.”
― Fiona Davis, The Spectacular

“The loss of the community of women stung hardest, as she had no similar role models in her life.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“Both sisters knew the story well. For the past sixteen years, starting in 1940, someone had been planting pipe bombs around New York City, in subway stations, department stores, theaters, even Grand Central Terminal. The newspapers called the culprit the Big Apple Bomber, and so far, a dozen people had been injured, some seriously. The very first bomb was planted in a toolbox at a Met Power compound on Sixty-Fourth Street, with a note reading Met Power crooks—this is for you. That one hadn’t gone off. But since then, the bomber had expanded his reach and his skill, setting off explosions in well-populated places like the Port Authority and Penn Station, sometimes repeating the same target years later. And now he’d hit the library. Even worse, the madman’s pace was picking up.”
― Fiona Davis, The Spectacular

“After the first experience of the death of someone you love, each later one is exponentially more painful, because you know how hard it will be to recover from”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

“The storyline for this book bloomed from there, although there is no evidence the two women ever crossed paths. In all of my books, I like to layer a fictional story over the scaffolding of historical facts, and then parse out the inspiration for the plot and characters in the Author’s Note,”
― Fiona Davis, The Magnolia Palace

“Courage is easy when the other choices are folding sheets and dealing with guests all day. When you want to get out of a situation fast, you get courage.”
― Fiona Davis, The Dollhouse

“And many of you bought the lies ... You didn't question them. You didn't fight back. You let this happen ... This is how a society is corrupted, from the inside out. We must make a promise to not ever let this happen again. We must promise to be vigilant against our own worst tendencies. Only by doing so will our country sustain its ideals of freedom.”
― Fiona Davis, The Chelsea Girls

“He had loved her, and she had loved him. And life was full of strange and unexpected complications”
― Fiona Davis, The Dollhouse

“While she understood his shock, she couldn’t help but observe that—once again—she was being dictated to, being told what she could do and where she could go. His fury made him ugly. She sat in one of the chairs and waited for his face to soften. They’d been together for so long, she’d forgotten to see him as a man, as a partner. Instead, he’d become someone else to have to take care of, another shirt to wash, another meal to cook.”
― Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue