Francesca

“My next thought was for Lord Suckling’s charming song: ‘I prithee send me back my heart / Since I cannot have thine.”
― Louis Bayard, The Pale Blue Eye

“I was given a room overlooking Constitution Island. The shutters kept out nearly all the starlight and moonlight—sleeping was a dive into a pit, and the sound of reveille seemed to come from a distant star. I lay there, watching the red light steal through the bottom of the shutters. The darkness felt delicious. I wondered if maybe I’d missed my true career.”
― Louis Bayard, The Pale Blue Eye

“She started writing notes and keeping them under her pillow, and then she started writing them on her pillowcase, hoping they would help her have better dreams. And if she couldn’t sleep, she could just read them and be reminded of something so stunningly beautiful that her heart would swell and her bones would sigh and for just a second, the world would not seem like it was going to crush her.”
― Emily Brontë

“Books, Mr. Landor!” “I do read, yes.” Not much of a library—a scant three rows in all—but mine. Poe’s fingers glided along the bindings.”
― Louis Bayard, The Pale Blue Eye