Mackenzi Lee > Quotes

“God bless the book people for their boundless knowledge absorbed from having words instead of friends.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“We are not broken things, neither of us. We are cracked pottery mended with laquer and flakes of gold, whole as we are, complete unto each other. Complete and worthy and so very loved.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“We're not courting trouble," I say. "Flirting with it, at most.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Just thinking about all that blood." I nearly shudder. "Doesn't it make you a bit squeamish?"
"Ladies haven't the luxury of being squeamish about blood," she replies, and Percy and I go fantastically red in unison.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“The stars dust gold leafing on his skin. And we are looking at each other, just looking, and I swear there are whole lifetimes lived in those small, shared moments.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“The great tragic love story of Percy and me is neither great nor truly a love story, and is tragic only for its single-sidedness. It is also not an epic monolith that has plagued me since boyhood, as might be expected. Rather, it is simply the tale of how two people can be important to each other their whole lives, and then, one morning, quite without meaning to, one of them wakes to find that importance has been magnified into a sudden and intense desire to put his tongue in the other's mouth.
A long, slow slide, then a sudden impact.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“It is remarkable how much courage it takes to kiss someone, even when you are almost certain that person would very much like to be kissed by you. Doubt will knock you from the sky every time.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Because women don't have to be men's equals to be considered contenders; they have to be better. That's the lie of it all. You have to be better to prove yourself worthy of being equal.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

“It's beginning to feel like he's shuffling his way through the seven deadly sins, in ascending order of my favourites.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Love may be a grand thing, but goddamn if it doesn't take up more than its fair share of space inside a man.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“In the east," she says after a time, her gaze still downcast, "there is a tradition known as kintsukuroi. It is the practice of mending broken ceramic pottery using lacquer dusted with gold and silver and other precious metals. It is meant to symbolize that things can be more beautiful for having been broken."
"Why are you telling me this?" I ask.
At last she looks at me. Her irises are polished obsidian in the moonlight. "Because I want you to know," she says, "that there is life after survival.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“You deserve to be here. You deserve to exist. You deserve to take up space in this world of men.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

“Ugh. Feelings.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I love you, but I don’t know how to help you. I still don’t! I’m an emotional delinquent and I say wrong things all the time, but I want to be better for you. I promise that. It doesn’t matter to me that you’re ill and it doesn’t matter if I have to give up everything, because you’re worth it. You’re worth it all because you are magnificent, you are. Magnificent and gorgeous and brilliant and kind and good and I just . . . love you, Percy. I love you so damn much.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Against the sky, the stars crown him, marking the edges of his silhouette like he is a constellation of himself.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I swear, you would play the coquette with a well-upholstered sofa."
"First, I would not. And second, how handsome is this sofa?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“What’s the use of temptations if we don’t yield to them?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“And then Jesus says, 'Well, watch this' - "
"Really? Well, watch this?"
"That's biblical language."
"If your Bible is written by Henry Montague.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Oh no."
Percy looks sideways at me. "Oh no what?"
I swallow. "I'd first like it to be noted that I am most certainly not a smuggler."
"Monty..." he says, my name sopping with dread.
"And," I continue overtop him, "I'd like you to both remember just how much you adore me and how dull and gloomy your lives would be without me in them."
"What did you do?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Everyone has heard stories of women like us—cautionary tales, morality plays, warnings of what will befall you if you are a girl too wild for the world, a girl who asks too many questions or wants too much. If you set off into the world alone. Everyone has heard stories of women like us, and now we will make more of them.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

“It is not a failure to readjust my sails to fit the waters I find myself in.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

“It occurs to me then that perhaps getting my little sister drunk and explaining why I screw boys is not the most responsible move on my part.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“it’s hard not to see. You’re the kind of pair that makes everyone around them feel as though they’re missing out on a private joke.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“You're trying to play a game designed by men. You'll never win, because the deck is stacked and marked, and also you've been blindfolded and set on fire. You can work hard and believe in yourself and be the smartest person in the room and you'll still get beat by the boys who haven't two cents to rub together. So if you can't win the game, you have to cheat. You operate outside the walls they've built to fence you in. You rob them in the dark, while they're drunk on spirits you offered them. Poison their waters and drink only wine.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

“I'm learning there is no one way for life to be lived, no one way to be strong or brave or kind or good. Rather there are many people doing the best they can with the heart they are given and the hand they are dealt. Our best is all we can do, and all we can hold on to is each other.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

“I have lived most of my life as a devotee of the philosophy that a man should not see two sevens in one day,”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I wish I could be better for you." She looks over at me, and I duck my head, shame sinking its teeth in. "I'm older and I know I'm supposed to be... an example, I don't know. At least someone you aren't embarrassed of."

"You do fine."
"I don't"

"You're right, you don't. But you're getting better. And that isn't nothing.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I’m sorry,” she says. “What for?” “You’ve had a rough go.” “Everyone has a rough go. I’ve had it far easier than most people.” “Maybe. But that doesn’t mean your feelings matter less.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“The room is warm and smells like dust, and just the presence of so many books makes it easier to breathe. It’s remarkable how being around books, even those you’ve never read, can have a calming effect, like walking into a crowded party and finding it full of people you know.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy

“I've always been of the mind that subtlety is a waste of time. Fortune favors the flirtatious.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue