Quotes from An Affair Before Christmas

Eloisa James ·  400 pages

Rating: (5.3K votes)


“She still remembered sitting for hours as a little girl and pretending to be a hassock. A foot stool. Because if she could just stay very small, and very quiet, her mother would forget she was there, and then she wouldn't scream about people and places and things that had gone wrong.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas


“Then he just blurted it out, with no preparation. 'The truth of it is that whether your mother arranged our marriage, or whether it was all an illusion, I must be horribly obtuse, because I can't talk myself out of being in love with you.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas


“I miss talking to you.'
'I can't imagine why. We haven't talked about anything particularly interesting in years.'
'I thought it was interesting. Perhaps I like talking about boring things with you.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas


“A number of visitors called this morning,' Finchley announced with some pride. He took a tray from a waiting footman and displayed it as if it were a baby. Sure enough there was a little heap of cardboard bits, embossed with the names of nobility, acquaintances, friends and the purely curious.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas


“She found a small picture made entirely of feathers and was trying to decide whether it depicted a monkey climbing up the back of a man—or possibly a person climbing a flight of stairs or perhaps a cow next to a tree, when she saw a chess piece, sitting by itself on a small pedestal.

It was the white queen, carved from ivory. She stood with a regal frown, her body shadowed by the enormous crown that bloomed on her head. The crown was a hollow sphere, exquisitely carved with open work, and when Jemma peered inside she saw inside another sphere, also open, and inside that, yet another.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas



“He walked until his heart was as dreary as the sky, until some sort of truth came to him.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas


“Fletch took his wife’s arm. 'We aren’t going to turn anyone out into the cold and dark, are we, Poppy?'

She looked up at him and said, 'Absolutely, we are. If you pay them double, Fletch, they’ll probably be quite grateful.'

He always knew that women were the crueler sex. But there was something slightly unnerved in her voice that he found interesting. “Unkind wench. I don’t turn people out into the dark. It’s coming on to snow.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas


About the author

Eloisa James
Born place: in The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“There are some people in life that you can vent to, or pour out sadness to, or voice frustration to, and they readily and willingly absorb it for the sole purpose of ridding you of it. They're the same people who can immediately replace that negativity with their light. Their presence gives you the power to purge the bad and embrace the good. It's rare. I've only known a few people in my life who are that way. Now”
― Kim Holden, quote from Franco


“Thus people--so it seems to me--
Become good friends from sheer ennui.”
― Alexander Pushkin, quote from Evžen Oněgin


“Don't hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace.”
― Epictetus, quote from Discourses and Selected Writings


“If love is easy, you're not doing it right.”
― Sophie Kinsella, quote from Surprise Me


“My first choice would be to give you more god children, but that would be far too cruel a thing to do—to them.”
― Allison Tebo, quote from The Reluctant Godfather


Interesting books

Being and Time
(16.4K)
Being and Time
by Martin Heidegger
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster
(313.9K)
Into Thin Air: A Per...
by Jon Krakauer
The Arabian Nights
(60.5K)
I Am Number Four
(282.6K)
I Am Number Four
by Pittacus Lore
The Hours
(112K)
The Hours
by Michael Cunningham
Twelfth Night
(135.8K)
Twelfth Night
by William Shakespeare

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.