Virginia Rounding > Quotes

“The four courtisans or grandes horizontales whose lives and legends are examined in this book were all, in different ways, representative of the demi-monde in nineteenth-century Paris - that is, of that half-world midway between respectable high society and the low life of the common prostitute. demi-monde is a term suggestive of twilight, of a world of shifting appearances and shadow, where nothing is quite what it seems, a world between worlds.”
― Virginia Rounding, Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans

“One learns more,’ she said to me one day, ‘talking to ignorant people about their own affairs, than in addressing oneself to”
― Virginia Rounding, Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power