Caroline Elders > Caroline's Quotes

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

“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

“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

“Can’t seal up a conversation with a casual Oh, by the way, could you perhaps not touch me the way you always have because each time it puts fresh splinters in my heart? Particularly when what I’d really like to say is Oh, by the way, could you please keep touching me, and perhaps do it all the time, and while we’re at it, would you like to take off all your clothes and climb in bed? They’re both weighted alike.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“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

“So long as you don’t go falling in love with me.” I don’t know why I say it. Call it battlements around my helpless heart. Percy looks away from me fast, shoulders curling up. It almost looks like a flinch. But then he says, “I’ll try my best.” He”
― 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

“Has that been your leg all this while?” “What?” He unhooks his foot from around my calf. “I thought it was the chair. Sorry about that. Dear Lord, why didn’t you say something?” Before”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“but 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

“And then he leaves us to our own devices beside a store of gunpowder and flint and a cannon, thereby solidifying our captors’ reputation as the worst pirates in the history of the Mediterranean.”
― 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.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I understand less than half the words in that sentence, but 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

“Perhaps fashion is just a reinforcement of a lady’s chastity, in hopes that the interested party may lose interest and abandon any deflowering attempts simply for all the clothing in the way.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Blackmail is aggravating in normal circumstances, but far worse when it's coming from a younger sister.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain

“But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if
evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows
disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the
shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings.
Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because
of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn’t so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other… ”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never! You're asked an unexpected question, you don't even flinch, it takes just a second to get yourself under control, you know just what you have to say to hide the truth, and you speak very convincingly, and nothing in your face twitches to give you away. But the truth, alas, has been disturbed by the question, and it rises up from the depths of your soul to flicker in your eyes and all is lost.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“There is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Actually, I do happen to resemble a hallucination. Kindly note my silhouette in the moonlight." The cat climbed into the shaft of moonlight and wanted to keep talking but was asked to be quiet. "Very well, I shall be silent," he replied, "I shall be a silent hallucination.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Why try to pursue what is completed?”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“and a fact is the most stubborn thing in the world.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Margarita was never short of money. She could buy whatever she liked. Her husband had plenty of interesting friends. Margarita never had to cook. Margarita knew nothing of the horrors of living in a shared flat. In short... was she happy? Not for a moment.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“The most amazing combinations can result if you shuffle the pack enough.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“You should never ask anyone for anything. Never- and especially from those who are more powerful than yourself.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“To the people who look at the stars and wish, Rhys."
Rhys clinked his glass against mine. “To the stars who listen— and the dreams that are answered.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“When you spend so long trapped in darkness, Lucien, you find that the darkness begins to stare back.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury