Cat Sebastian > Quotes

“Honor was a luxury item, like hair pomade and snuff. Its only purpose was to show the world that you could afford to be impractical, that you had enough money to behave in a way that was compatible with some ludicrous code instead of acting out of self-preservation like the rest of humanity.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Soldier's Scoundrel

“Families might usually be bonded by blood, but maybe sometimes they’re bonded by shared secrets, by a delicate mixture of caution and faith, by the conviction that hiding together is better in every way than hiding alone.”
― Cat Sebastian, We Could Be So Good

“I used to think that revenge was about defending one’s honor, but it turns out that honor is just spite dressed up for Sunday.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Queer Principles of Kit Webb

“Nobody had been more surprised than Jack to discover that when he was happy, he wanted to make others happy. What a soggy lot of rubbish, but there you had it.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Soldier's Scoundrel

“There's something so comforting in the ability to be wordlessly petty with someone, in knowing that as soon as you have a closed door between the two of you and the rest of the world, you can share all your least attractive thoughts.”
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky

“if I have to choose between work and you, between a story and you, between anything and you, I’m picking you.”
― Cat Sebastian, We Could Be So Good

“That’s the thing about walls. They don’t tend to appear for no good reason; they’re either closing something off or holding something up, and you can’t just wish them away.”
― Cat Sebastian, We Could Be So Good

“If the old lady who’s been giving me tea and biscuits for twenty-five years is a trained assassin, I suppose I might like assassins after all. I might have very positive and warm associations with assassins.”
― Cat Sebastian, Hither, Page

“I want a life with you. I want this to be—I want more than we can have.” Andy is looking at him so carefully, too carefully. “But I want it anyway,” Nick admits.”
― Cat Sebastian, We Could Be So Good

“He took hold of Jack’s collar and bent down for a kiss. With each stroke of his tongue he thought, This is ours. It wasn’t something he was doing to Jack, or Jack was doing to him. Neither of them owned it. It was theirs. This was what he had wanted; as much as the physical pleasure he wanted the sense of shared desire, mutual longing.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Soldier's Scoundrel

“Missing you is profoundly inconvenient, I’ll have you know. I have things to do and places to be, and all the while I’ll feel like I’ve mislaid a piece of my soul and I won’t get it back until I see you again. That can’t be normal.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Ruin of a Rake

“That was how it was when your soul was in pieces and somebody else had one of them. Only when you were together would the pieces fit into place and become whole.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Ruin of a Rake

“Percy realized he had had it all wrong when he told Kit that honor is just spite dressed up; spite was honor when it was the only weapon you had against someone more powerful.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Queer Principles of Kit Webb

“A couple times a year, Nick finds a tale of gay misery and woe on his desk, because apparently Bailey has taken it upon himself to be Nick's personal sad gay librarian.”
― Cat Sebastian, We Could Be So Good

“The lady obviously spent her days reading, napping, and eating biscuits. He didn’t know whether to be disgusted
or jealous.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Soldier's Scoundrel

“When you smile I want to do awful things to you,” Oliver said, leering wolfishly.
“A lucky coincidence, because when I’m smiling it’s because I’m thinking of you doing filthy things to me.” Jack grinned back at him.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Soldier's Scoundrel

“Only two things in the world people count by months. How old a baby is, and how long since something awful happened.”
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky

“You’re mine,” Jack repeated, dusting kisses along Oliver’s jaw. “I’ve tried being without you, and it’s not any good, Oliver.”
“It really isn’t,” Oliver agreed. “Let’s not do that again.”
“Never again.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Soldier's Scoundrel

“Rooting for a team doesn’t always mean that you need them to win; sometimes you just want to see them fight, do their best, or even just keep showing up. Sometimes you want to look at a guy and say: Well, he’s fucked, but he’s trying.”
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky

“He couldn't be serious and stern with a man who had ducklings in his hair, or who talked to baby birds like they were guests at a tea party, or who seemed to dearly want Phillip to smile.”
― Cat Sebastian, It Takes Two to Tumble

“Everyone he knows is trying to assemble some kind of life from the spare parts they have lying around, just like Andy.”
― Cat Sebastian, We Could Be So Good

“You get older, and things change. That’s the price of admission. You lose the people who knew you first, and then you start to lose everyone else. You lose your work. You lose the place where you grew up. You get things in return—new people, new hobbies, a chance to see everything new that the world has to throw at you. But you lose the things you’ve had the longest, the things that went into making you.”
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky

“The man meant to stay here, to meddle and talk and distract; he planned to smell good and be handsome and obviously Lawrence should never have agreed to any of this.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Lawrence Browne Affair

“But Nick's tired of dead queers. Nick's tired of people like him having to suffer in order to provide the right kind of ending. He's done his time with shame and doesn't want any more of it.”
― Cat Sebastian, We Could Be So Good

“Even the absence of information was included: “Wraxhall. No debts, no secrets.” And “Servants overpaid,”
followed, amazingly, by “Very friendly dog.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Soldier's Scoundrel

“Percy was somehow still young or naive enough to think that there was any difference between being strong and acting strong.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Queer Principles of Kit Webb

“He tended to think that when the Bible condemned something practically everyone did, whether it be tossing oneself off or eating pork, there was likely some nuance that had been lost either to history or to translation. And then he didn’t think about it anymore.”
― Cat Sebastian, It Takes Two to Tumble

“But here is Andy, laying himself bare, and Nick isn’t sure he’s ever seen anything so brave in his life. This is a man who plays it safe, a man who orders the same sandwich every day for lunch. And now he’s taking a risk, and he’s taking it for Nick.”
― Cat Sebastian, We Could Be So Good

“I’m not picky. I’m particular. I care about quality. I like nice things. And it’s been perfectly clear to me for weeks that whatever happened between us was not going to lack for quality.”
“Has it, now?”
“Yes,” Mark says, poking Eddie in his chest. It’s like poking a wall. “And you don’t need to look so smug about it.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. I need to look exactly this smug about it. My dick just got called quality.”
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky

“So, is this to be a business arrangement?”
“No! Of course not. I want to share my meals and my bed and my life with the man I love. Christ, Jack. Don’t say such filthy things.”
― Cat Sebastian, The Soldier's Scoundrel