Kate Quinn > Quotes

“I love you. I love the way you rub the scar on the back of your hand when you're nervous. I love the way you make a sword into a living part of your body. I love the way you burn your eyes into me, as if you're seeing me fresh every time. I love the black streak in you that wants to kill the world, and the soft streak that is sorry afterward. I love the way you laugh, as if you're surprised that you can laugh at all. I love the way you kiss my breath away. I love the way you breathe and speak and smile. I love the way you take the air out of my lungs when you hold me. I love the way you make a dance out of death. I love the confusion I see in your eyes when you realize you are happy. I love every muscle and bone in your body, every twist and bend in your soul.”
― Kate Quinn, Mistress of Rome

“What did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done?”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

“Hope was such a painful thing, far more painful than rage.”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

“Have you ever been - well, i mean, have you ever - really wanted someone ? Wanted them like water in the desert - even when you knew all their faults, every single one - and it didnt matter ?”
― Kate Quinn, Mistress of Rome

“There are two kinds of flowers when it comes to women,” Eve said. “The kind that sit safe in a beautiful vase, or the kind that survive in any conditions . . . even in evil. Lili was the latter. Which are you?”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

“Poetry is like passion--it should not be merely pretty; it should overwhelm and bruise.”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

“Fleurs du mal,” Eve heard herself saying, and shivered. “What?” “Baudelaire. We are not flowers to be plucked and shielded, Captain. We are flowers who flourish in evil.”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

“Paulinus, everyone knows. Say the word, and I'll run the bitch over with my chariot”
― Kate Quinn, Mistress of Rome

“Snipers must make themselves calm in order to succeed, and that is why women are good at sharpshooting. Because there is not a woman alive who has not learned how to eat rage in order to appear calm.”
― Kate Quinn, The Diamond Eye

“I am Athena. Before that I was Thea, singer and slave and lover of gladiators. Before that I was Leah, daughter of Benjamin and Rachael of Masada. I am as mortal as you, you common little man. And I fear no one!”
― Kate Quinn, Mistress of Rome

“The dead lie beyond any struggle, so we living must struggle for them. We must remember, because there are other wheels that turn besides the wheel of justice. Time is a wheel, vast and indifferent, and when time rolls on and men forget, we face the risk of circling back. We slouch yawning to a new horizon and find ourselves gazing at old hatreds seeded and watered by forgetfulness and flowering into new wars. New massacres. New monsters like die Jägerin.

Let this wheel stop.

Let us not forget this time.

Let us remember.”
― Kate Quinn, The Huntress

“Some men ogle, some men look. The first makes us bristle, and the second makes us melt, and men are at an utter loss knowing the difference. But we do, and we know it at once.”
― Kate Quinn, The Huntress

“If he doesn’t love me in a boiler suit, he’s not worth dressing up for in the first place.”
― Kate Quinn, The Rose Code

“Building a generation is like building a wall—one good well-made brick at a time, one good well-made child at a time. Enough good bricks, you have a good wall. Enough good children, you have a generation that won’t start a world-enveloping war.”
― Kate Quinn, The Huntress

“Lepida, has anyone ever told you that you're a cruel spiteful selfish slut?...You're vicious. You're unprincipled. You mistreat your slaves and abuse your daughter. And furthermore you're the worst, most neglectful, most criminal wife in Rome. I think we can go now.”
― Kate Quinn, Mistress of Rome

“So you're met Finn. He's a dash, isn't he? If I weren't older than dirt and ugly as sin, I'd climb that like a French alp.”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

“Steel blades such as you and I do not measure against the standards for ordinary women”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

“But if men are the makers and breakers of empires, then women are the makers and breakers of men.”
― Kate Quinn, Lady of the Eternal City

“He loves me hard”
― Kate Quinn, Mistress of Rome

“I will not tell you one single solitary fact about my work, my friends, or the woman I was arrested with. But I will tell you this, Rene Bordelon. You're a gullible fool. You're a terrible lover. And I hate Baudelaire.”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

“Moments like this should have been glorious, and they never were. The monsters always looked so ordinary and pathetic, in the flesh.”
― Kate Quinn, The Huntress

“What kind of moron wants to be a gladiator?”
― Kate Quinn, Mistress of Rome

“He doesn't need to tend her, because she hunts her own prey. He doesn't need to shield her, because she kills her own enemies. He doesn't need to look for her, because she's always at his side.”
― Kate Quinn, Lady of the Eternal City

“...but nightmares were easier to bear when there were warm arms in the dark to burrow into.”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

“Are not there little chapters in everybody’s life, Beth had read in Vanity Fair only that morning, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history?”
― Kate Quinn, The Rose Code

“Is a Russian thing. Sit around, drink too much, talk about death.” She pushed her empty plate away. “It makes us cheerful”
― Kate Quinn, The Huntress

“Every night, tell yourself what you told me. How you’re a patriot, not a traitor. How you’re the hero of this story, not the villain.” Beth smiled. “Then remember that you got an innocent woman locked in a madhouse to save your own skin, and ask yourself: how goddamned heroic is that?”
― Kate Quinn, The Rose Code

“I gripped her, drowning, and I loved
her more than anything on this wide
green earth.”
― Kate Quinn, Empress of the Seven Hills

“Why and if. The two most painful words in existence”
― Kate Quinn, The Rose Code

“...You know why none of us judge?' I bumped his shoulder with mine until he finally looked down at me. 'Because none of us have the goddamn right to look down our noses at anyone else's sins.”
― Kate Quinn, The Alice Network