C.S. Harris > Quotes

“He was like a god to her. What happens when your god dies? Sebastian wondered. When someone is your sun and moon and stars, and then you discover something, something that reveals a hitherto unknown weakness so fundamental, so shattering that it destroys not only your trust in the other person, but your respect, too.
Some people never recover from that kind of disillusionment.”
― C.S. Harris, When Gods Die

“She touched her hand to his cheek, and he turned toward her, his arms coming around her to draw her close, his cheek pressed to the side of her hair. She felt his chest lift against hers as he drew in a ragged breath and held her tight. And then he said the words she'd long thought she'd never hear.
"God, how I love you, Hero. So much. So much...”
― C.S. Harris, Why Kings Confess

“those for whom war is lucrative are rarely satiated.”
― C.S. Harris, Why Kings Confess

“Do you think I don't worry about you?"
"That's not—"
"Not the same? Because you are a man and I am a woman?"
"No. Because it's one thing for me to make the choice to put my own life in danger and something else entirely when my actions endanger someone else."
She touched her fingers to his lips. "I knew what I was letting myself in for when I married you, Devlin."
He smiled against her hand. "I'm not sure I did.”
― C.S. Harris, What Darkness Brings

“I’ve never attended a Quaker service before.” “We believe that true religion is a personal encounter with God rather than a matter of ritual and ceremony, and that all aspects of life are sacramental. Therefore, no one day or place or activity is any more spiritual than any other. But we gather together at such times to discover in stillness a deeper sense of God’s presence.”
― C.S. Harris, Where Serpents Sleep

“Life is full of scary things,” he used to tell Kat. “The trick is not to let your fears get in the way of your living. Whatever else you do, Katherine, don’t settle for a life half-lived.”
― C.S. Harris, What Angels Fear

“Sometimes he wondered if most people experienced the world around them a little bit differently from their fellows, if the assumption of commonality was simply an illusion.”
― C.S. Harris, What Angels Fear

“Love. I think an angel would fear falling in love with a mortal—someone who could be theirs for only a short time and then would slip away forever.”
― C.S. Harris, What Angels Fear

“Hero . . .” He came to stand behind her. She was aware of his hands hovering for a moment over her shoulders without touching her. Then he turned her in his arms and drew her close. She felt his breath warm against her cheek, the beating of his heart against hers. He said, “I’ve loved Kat since I was twenty-one. There was a time I’d have sworn I could never learn to love anyone again. But . . . I was wrong.”
She touched her fingertips to his lips. “You don’t need to tell me what you think I want to hear.”
He gave her a strange, crooked smile. “I hope it is what you want to hear, because I’m telling you how I feel.”
She said, “It’s what I want to hear.”
― C.S. Harris, What Darkness Brings

“How do you explain a world that gifts evil men with privilege and wealth and looks the other way while they torment and abuse the weakest members of society?”
― C.S. Harris, Where the Dead Lie

“I believe we are all connected, every living thing one to the other, so that I owe to each what I would owe to myself.”
― C.S. Harris, Who Speaks for the Damned

“Theirs was a bond that transcended class, nationality, and other such trivialities.”
― C.S. Harris, Who Speaks for the Damned

“She had been born with a different name, to a woman with laughing eyes and warmly whispered words of love who’d died degraded and afraid on a misty Irish morning.”
― C.S. Harris, When Gods Die

“Christopher didn’t understand that there was a fine line between seeking death and being indifferent to its occurrence.”
― C.S. Harris, What Angels Fear

“You can’t know that. I may not believe in God, but I’ve come to believe that there is a pattern. A pattern that works itself out in ways we can’t begin to understand.”
― C.S. Harris, When Gods Die

“Murder is unseemly. Making certain a killer doesn’t get away with what he has done is an obligation we the living owe to the dead—no matter how unsavory we consider them to be.”
― C.S. Harris, Who Speaks for the Damned

“In my experience, those for whom war is lucrative are rarely satisfied. For them, war is opportunity, not hardship or sorrow. After all, it is rarely their sons who lie in unmarked graves on foreign soil.”
― C.S. Harris, Why Kings Confess

“When one lived a life that was, essentially, a lie, appearances were everything.”
― C.S. Harris, What Angels Fear

“Religion is important to the order of society. It reconciles the lower classes to their lot in life and teaches them to respect their betters.”
― C.S. Harris, When Maidens Mourn

“Lord love us, I need a drink,” said Calhoun, looking faintly green around the gills as he paused on the flagway in front of the chapel to draw in a deep breath of fresh air. “I’ve dressed many a gentleman in my career—sober, drunk, and even dead. But I must say, this is the first time I’ve ever been called upon to dress one who was in bits.”   Monday,”
― C.S. Harris, Where Shadows Dance

“The world was full of ugliness, Sebastian knew that; ugliness, and ugly people. But you couldn’t let them win, those men who took what they wanted with never a thought or care for the ones who suffered and died as a result. You could never stop fighting them, never let them think that what they did was right or somehow justified. Never let them triumph unchallenged.”
― C.S. Harris, What Angels Fear

“He wanted to tell her that he’d learned a man could come to love again without betraying his first love.”
― C.S. Harris, When Maidens Mourn

“that things like ’onor, and justice, and love are the most important things in the world and that it’s up to each and every one of us to always try to be the best person we can possibly be.”
― C.S. Harris, What Angels Fear

“War tends to make us all students of diplomacy, does it not? There is a story that Napoléon once told the widow of the Marquis de Condorcet that he detested women who meddled in politics. Do you know her reply?’

Sebastian shook his head.

‘She said, “You are right, of course, General. But in a country where one cuts off women’s heads, it is natural that they should wish to know the reason why.”
― C.S. Harris, Where Shadows Dance

“Hardly. Guin was passionate about many things, but government wasn’t one of them. As far as she was concerned, one crowned puppet is pretty much the same as the next.”
― C.S. Harris, When Gods Die

“Is he dead?" [Hero Devlin]
Alexi knelt in the snow beside the still body. "Not yet. But he will be soon."
Hero sucked in a deep breath tainted with the stench of fresh blood and burning fur. "Good."
Alexi looked up at her. "Your muff is on fire."
"Drat," said Hero, dropping the flaming fur into the melting snow. "I just purchased it.”
― C.S. Harris, Why Kill the Innocent

“Love. I think an angel would fear falling in love with a mortal—someone who could be theirs for only a short time and then would slip away forever.” He”
― C.S. Harris, What Angels Fear

“We like to believe the world arcs towards justice--I suppose because it reassures us and makes us think there's some sort of order to our existence. but what if we're wrong? What if it's All meaningless chaos and chance?”
― C.S. Harris, Why Kill the Innocent

“Far too many people will believe anything of those they hate, no matter how absurd or patently fabricated it may be.”
― C.S. Harris, Why Kings Confess

“Hero gave a faint, sad smile. ‘The odd thing is, he’s always claimed he likes women who are ornamental rather than educated. Yet while Victoria affects a kind of chatty, cheerful mindlessness in public, she’s never made any attempt to hide either her intelligence or her learning from Jarvis. I wouldn’t have expected that to appeal to him, but it obviously does.’

‘People’s tastes can change over the years.’

‘Dear Lord,’ said Hero suddenly, as if a thought had just occurred to her. ‘I don’t even like her. What am I going to do if he marries her?’

‘Get a lot of practice at smiling dissemblance.”
― C.S. Harris, Who Slays the Wicked