Candace Fleming > Quotes

“We may just be specters in this world, but our stories, if they are remembered and retold, become real and solid and alive... Once you hear a story, it becomes part of you. It can't die.”
― Candace Fleming, On the Day I Died: Stories from the Grave

“Oh, how I prefer the honest violence of men, who will bash in another man's skull and be done, to the thousand shallow cuts of women's malice.”
― Candace Fleming, Fatal Throne

“Once you hear a story, it becomes part of you. It can't die.”
― Candace Fleming, On the Day I Died: Stories from the Grave

“Books taught me how to think.”
― Candace Fleming, The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia

“You are filled with anguish
For the suffering of others.
And no one's grief
Has ever passed you by.
You are relentless
Only to yourself,
Forever cold and pitiless.
But if only you could look upon
Your own sadness from a distance,
Just once with a loving soul—
Oh, how you would pity yourself.
How sadly you would weep.

—Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna Romanova, poem dedicated to her mother, April 23, 1917”
― Candace Fleming, The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia

“...One thing I have noticed, child, is that tyrants are the grandest romantics. They can burn a heretic alive once day, and compose a love sonnet the next.”
― Candace Fleming, Fatal Throne

“I dreamed that I was loved. I woke and found it true.”
― Candace Fleming, The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia

“We wanted - no, we needed - to tell our stories, and more importantly, we needed our stories to be heard.”
― Candace Fleming, On the Day I Died: Stories from the Grave

“We may just be specters in this world, but our stories, if they are remembered and retold, become real and solid and alive.”
― Candace Fleming, On the Day I Died: Stories from the Grave

“At the top of the world, winters are long. But by mid-June, the twenty-four-hour darkness turns to twenty-four-hour sunlight. The sea current warms. The ice shifts. The leads widen. Time to migrate.”
― Candace Fleming, Narwhal: Unicorn of the Arctic

“Ah, the Dewey decimal system…humankind’s single greatest achievement.” From Candace Fleming’s The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School”
― Candace Fleming

“I enjoy the sun and the beauty of summer as long as I can. Who knows if one of these days I shall be prevented from doing it.

—Alexei Romanov”
― Candace Fleming, The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia

“Words hold such weight and consequence. I have not always been mindful of my tongue, and it has cost me. For if given the choice, people will believe the worst of you, not the best.”
― Candace Fleming, Fatal Throne

“The enemy perhaps may challenge my sex for that I am a woman - so may I likewise challenge them, for they are but men.”
― Candace Fleming, Fatal Throne

“when the truth is not as dramatic as the rumour, it gets altered.”
― Candace Fleming, Fatal Throne: The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All

“Darling boysy...me loves you, oh so very tenderly...you must always tell me everything, you can fully trust me, look upon me as a bit of yourself...How I love you, darling treasure, my very own one.

—Alix, to Nicholas II”
― Candace Fleming, The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia

“fond,” one catty countess recalled, “with diamonds scattered”
― Candace Fleming, The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia

“years”
― Candace Fleming, Fatal Throne: The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All

“Drinking the Kool-Aid” entered the lexicon. It quickly became a common expression used to describe self-deception, voluntary indoctrination, and blind obedience to a group identity. Said one survivor who lost her four children at Jonestown: “I hated that people laughed when they said it, like what happened was somehow funny.”
― Candace Fleming, Death in the Jungle: Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown

“Scientists call you unicorn of the Arctic because of your tusk...a single twisting rod of ivory that sprouts from your upper left jaw. It began growing when you were a year-old calf. Now, nine years later, you are full grown, and so is your tusk. Thick as a lamppost, taller than a man, it is green with algae and alive with sea lice.”
― Candace Fleming, Narwhal: Unicorn of the Arctic

“Children are never too young to begin the study of nature's book, and never too old to quit.

~Laura Hecox”
― Candace Fleming, Women of the Lights

“Here, where the lonely hooting owl
Sends forth his midnight moans,
Fierce wolves shall o'er my carcase growl,
Or buzzards pick my bones.

No fellow-man shall learn my fate,
Or where my ashes lie;
Unless by beasts drawn round their bait,
Or by the ravens' cry.

Yes! I've resolved the deed to do,
And this the place to do it:
This heart I'll rush a dagger through,
Though I in hell should rue it!

Hell! What is hell to one like me
Who pleasures never knew;
By friends consigned to misery,
By hope deserted too?

To ease me of this power to think,
That through my bosom raves,
I'll headlong leap from hell's high brink,
And wallow in its waves.

Though devils yell, and burning chains
May waken long regret;
Their frightful screams, and piercing pains,
Will help me to forget.

Yes! I'm prepared, through endless night,
To take that fiery berth!
Think not with tales of hell to fright
Me, who am damn'd on earth!

Sweet steel! come forth from your sheath,
And glist'ning, speak your powers;
Rip up the organs of my breath,
And draw my blood in showers!

I strike! It quivers in that heart
Which drives me to this end;
I draw and kiss the bloody dart,
My last—my only friend!

—Poem attributed to Abraham Lincoln”
― Candace Fleming, The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary

“Time does not soften my grief, nor can I ever be reconciled to my loss until the grave closes over the remembrance and I am again with him.

—Mary Lincoln”
― Candace Fleming, The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary

“I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours

—Abraham Lincoln”
― Candace Fleming, The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary

“I live in fear that the deep waters through which I've passed will overwhelm me.

—Mary Lincoln”
― Candace Fleming, The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary

“On this biting-cold December day, when winter ice covers the Arctic Ocean, six feet thick, and the sun does not shine, you poke your head through a patch of open water, your tusk pointed to the sky.”
― Candace Fleming, Narwhal: Unicorn of the Arctic

“By November, you are back in your winter home. But you will return to the warmer shallows of the bay again and again, along familiar routes, back and forth. Winter to summer. Summer to winter. For the next fifty seasons. You are a narwhal - shy, swift, small (for a whale), the unicorn of the Arctic.”
― Candace Fleming, Narwhal: Unicorn of the Arctic

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds...to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

—Abraham Lincoln”
― Candace Fleming, The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary

“Neta crawled out of the wreckage, hoping against hope that Amelia wasn’t hurt.

She wasn’t. She was standing next to the plane, grinning and powdering her nose. “We have to look nice [if] reporters arrive,” she said.”
― Candace Fleming, Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

“In this troublesome world we are never quite satisfied. When you were here, I thought you hindered me some in attending to business; but now, having nothing but business—no variety—it has grown exceedingly tasteless to me...I hate to stay in this old room by myself.

—Abraham Lincoln”
― Candace Fleming, The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary