Evocative Quotes

“The streets of Prague were a fantasia scarcely touched by the twenty-first century—or the twentieth or nineteenth, for that matter. It was a city of alchemists and dreamers, its medieval cobbles once trod by golems, mystics, invading armies. Tall houses glowed goldenrod and carmine and eggshell blue, embellished with Rococo plasterwork and capped in roofs of uniform red. Baroque cupolas were the soft green of antique copper, and Gothic steeples stood ready to impale fallen angels. The wind carried the memory of magic, revolution, violins, and the cobbled lanes meandered like creeks. Thugs wore Motzart wigs and pushed chamber music on street corners, and marionettes hung in windows, making the whole city seem like a theater with unseen puppeteers crouched behind velvet.”
― Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone

“Marco had examined every inch of Guayanés Beach, where coconut palms that once grew along the shore in majestic rows lay crisscrossed in the sand like scattered pencils.”
― Margarita Barresi, A Delicate Marriage

“She wore people down like waves wore down stone.
Consistent. Patient. Relentless. Merciless.
       ”
― D.L. Maddox, The Dog Walker: The Prequel

“And the answers she was seeking were on full display, right in front of her.
Not chaos. Not blood. Not even sound.
Just clarity.”
― D.L. Maddox, The Dog Walker: The Prequel

“She didn’t just feel safe.
She felt chosen.
And for the first time in her life, that felt… right.”
― D.L. Maddox, The Dog Walker: The Prequel

“I call my accent Frenglian. A wee bit of French mixed with English and Sicilian." She emitted a small chuckle at her new made-up word.”
― Alyssa Hall, And Then I Heard the Quiet

“The estate was immaculate, but parts of it felt unused.
Not neglected, exactly—just sealed. Like they’d been
closed off intentionally.”
― D.L. Maddox, The Dog Walker: Secrets

“The interior of the Loomis house was silent in a way
that felt deliberate, as though the sound had been swept up with yesterday’s dust. ”
― D.L. Maddox, The Dog Walker: Secrets

“The officer looked at her. “So, to recap, you carried a package of, you don’t know what, for a girl you’ve never seen before and gave it to a man you don’t know. Or so you say. Who does that?”
― Alyssa Hall, And Then I Heard the Quiet

“Why don’t you put up a stand by the road.” I blurted out.”
― R. Gerry Fabian, Just Out Of Reach

“It was no ape, neither was it a man. It was some shambling horror spawned in the mysterious, nameless jungles of the south, where strange life teemed in the reeking rot without the dominance of man, and drums thundered in temples that had never known the tread of a human foot.”
― Robert E. Howard

“A few insect skeletons lay scattered on the narrow sill, shiny and precise and sad as broken jewelry.”
― Ed Park, Personal Days

“This was no fantasy. This
was death. We could call it, we could cast lots about it,
plan for it, gamble with it, welcome it in. But we did not
have the power to send it away.”
― Katie Hall-May, Puck's Legacy

“It’s all just coloured water. Of course it is. Don’t you
want to taste something real?”
― Katie Hall-May, Puck's Legacy

“The cafe door opened. A young man in dusty white leathers entered, and the wind blew in empty crisp packets and newspapers and ice cream wrappers in with him. They danced around his feet like excited children, then fell exhausted to the floor.”
― Neil Gaiman, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

“Jeremiah has come to see life as a serious of motions he must enact towards its conclusion.”
― Kate Rose, The Angel and the Apothecary

“ 
'This is, you understand Mr Goode, exceptional for an unknown author and on account of the South Sea Bubble bursting, well, I am no longer given to advancing large copyrights but since you are blessed by good timing - great fortune bestowing you with a cold spell that has made London so terribly sick - I make an exception.' ”
― Kate Rose, The Angel and the Apothecary

“There is a strange, slow moment. The final page in my inconclusive and fraying thesaurus. And I am floating upwards, I am driftwood between them. The bright, bright blue that is the sky. And the glitter in the tarmac, like a promise of stars.”
― Katie Hall-May, Memories of a Lost Thesaurus

“To the rhythm of my deep delight, my fingers tickled across the fabric of the sheets and of reality in bursts of euphoria, making them rustle softly yet firmly, just like sun-crisped leaves on concrete in a breeze—prime ASMR.”
― Aura Biru, We Are Everyone

“Wartime lipstick is necessarily cobbled together from whatever tailings and gristle were left over once all the good stuff was use to grease propeller shafts. A florid and cloying scent is needed to conceal its unspeakable mineral and animal origins.

It is the smell of War.”
― Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

“And as his body thaws into hers, he is no longer sure where her pleasure ends and his begins, for bodies and minds deliquesce into something of a stupor.”
― Kate Rose, The Angel and the Apothecary

“And she kisses him with a hunger, using her tongue, and he closes his eyes and sees only the brilliance of pure blinding light. ”
― Kate Rose, The Angel and the Apothecary

“Extremism, by its very nature, must
always go to its extreme.”
― Katie Hall-May, Puck's Legacy

“A sheet of white extends to the lone dark vertical of the elm tree in the centre ... It is too perfect, to inviolate ... The snow is graced with waves written by the wind, the elm raises crooked arms in sleeves of white.”
― Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“His theory stands, however, that a cure operates primarily through the dispensing healer’s understanding of the individual, as well as the nature of plants… And in the interstices where neither cure not hope can reach, there is laudanum. ”
― Kate Rose, The Angel and the Apothecary

“Hope was a knife sharp, fragile, and always cutting her hand.”
― Yarro Rai, Vice and Virtue

“Oriental vases and French tapestries and paintings filled their huge mansion, as did the magnificent carpets for which their compound was famous. A vast feast of minted chicken, lamb kabobs, and sweet saffron rice that is served at weddings had been laid out on cloths on the floor of the dining room...”
― Sattareh Farman Farmaian

“E por fim descobria o significado de todas as pequenas pegadas em todas as praias desertas por onde alguma vez caminhara, e de todas as cargas secretas levadas por navios que jamais haviam navegado, de todos os rostos velados que o viram passar por ruas sinuosas de crepusculares cidades. E, como um grande caçador de outros tempos que tivesse viajado em terras distantes e agora visse o brilho das fogueiras da sua pátria, a sua solidão desvaneceu-se. Finalmente. (...) Vinha de tão longe...”
― Robert James Waller, The Bridges of Madison County

“It'll be a cold walk home past the shuttered-up shops on the high street, the sad, beery air meaning from Cromwell's, and out toward the river, its refreshing green scent and its movement a slithering in the darkness, to her flat, where she has left all the lights burning.”
― Susie Steiner, Missing, Presumed

“Like in a graceful dance, in their interactions, there had never been any stifling, awkward, or rough movements—just light, fleeting touches.”
― Torres and Firsht, Tell Me Your Plans: A gripping novel of love, ambition, and power in a high-stakes world