Quotes from Burnt Offerings

“Never trust people who smile constantly. They're either selling something or not very bright.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“Life's a bitch,” I said.
“And then you die,” Larry finished for me.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“Questions are great, but only if you know the answers. If you ask questions and the answers surprise you, you look silly.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“I will bathe in your warmth ma petite. Roll you around me until my heart beats only for you. My breath will grow warm from your kiss.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“Asher was a vampire. How much more dangerous could he be with a gun? But I couldn't do it. "Let me test my understanding. Is Asher going to ride in the car with us to the meeting?"
I must to give you directions," Asher said.
Then lean against the Jeep." He frowned at me in an amused, condescending sort of way.
Excuse me?"
I don't care if you're the second coming of the Antichrist, you can't sit behind me in my own car until I know you're not carrying a weapon." Asher smiled briliantly at both of us, flashing fang.
...I could rip you into pieces with my bare hands, and you're worried I have a gun?" He chuckled, a low, skin-prickling sound. "That is so very cute.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“So just tell me what you like on the menu, and we'll negotiate."
All that is required is that you taste what is ordered. You do not have to eat it."
No, no more of this tasting shit. I've gained weight. I never gain weight."
You have gained four pounds, so I am told. Though I have searched diligently for this phantom four pounds and cannot find them. It brings your weight up to a grand total of one hundred and ten pounds, correct?"
That's right."
Oh, ma petite, you are growing gargantuan." I looked at him, and it was not a friendly look.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“When you apologize, try not to smile at the same time. It ruins the effect”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“He ordered food with a childlike glee and watched me eat, tasting it as I did. In private he'd roll on his back like a cat, hands pressed to his mouth as if trying to drain every taste. It was the only thing he did that was cute. He was gorgeous, sensual, but rarely cute.
- Anita Blake about Jean-Claude”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“Mercy will get you killed, but sometimes it's all that makes us human.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“He balled his hand into a fist. "You are such a bitch." "Woof, woof," I said.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“Oh, ma petite, you are growing gargantuan."

I looked at him and it was not a friendly look. "Never tease a woman about her weight, Jean-Claude. At least not an American twentieth-century one."

He Spread his hands wide. "My deepest apologies."

"When you apologize, try not to smile at the same time. It ruins the effect.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“I'm not sure there are enough white roses in the world to make me forget Richard." I held up my hand before she could interrupt. "But I'm not sure there are enough cozy afternoons in all eternity to make me forget Jean-Claude.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“Nothing is certain, ma petite, not even death."
- Jean-Claude”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“Every time I thought I understood the rules, they changed. Why was it that the damn rules always seemed to change for the worse?”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“It's not the fur or the fangs that make you a monster, not always. Sometimes, it's just where you draw the line.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“She looked up at me, eyes puffy, nose running. Real crying is like real sex. If you really do it, it isn't pretty.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“we’re all creatures of light and darkness. Embracing your darkness won’t kill the light. Goodness is stronger than that.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“They all piled into Kevin’s and Teddy’s cars, and I went for my Jeep. Happy to be rid of them for a while. Happy even if it meant another crime scene. Happy even if I still didn’t know how to tell if Malcolm was alive down there in the dark. Nathaniel watched me through the back window of the car, his lilac gaze on me until the car turned a corner. He’d been lost, and now he thought he’d been found. But if he expected me to be more than friends, he was still lost.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“Is he your only child? I asked, "my only son" padma said. "My condolences" I said....Anita Blake”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“I got my shoulder holster complete with Browning Hi-Power out of the top desk drawer and slipped it on. Since I’d stopped wearing my suit jacket in the office, I’d put the gun in the drawer, but outside the office and always after dark I wore a gun. Most of the creatures that had scarred me up were dead. The majority I’d done personally. Silver-plated bullets are a wonderful thing.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“Nathaniel was in the other bed. His hair was longer than Stephen’s. Waist length, I was betting. Hard to judge since I’d only seen him prone. It was the darkest of auburns, almost brown but not. It was a rich, deep mahogany. The hair lay on the white sheets like the pelt of an animal, thick and shining. He”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“Bet I can blow a hole in your chest before you can crush my leg."
"You wouldn't dare."
"Why not?" I asked.
A touch of fear flowed through his eyes. "I am the human servant of a council member."
"Not impressed," I said. "Try door number two.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“I laughed. I laughed while his lips hovered over my mouth and the gun pressed into his body. It was the laughter, not the gun, that made him draw back. Hannah collapsed to her knees. The Traveler had gone. Someone needed to help her to the stairs. I thought of Willie and he came. He helped her to her feet without looking at me. I kept my eyes on the bad guys. One problem at a time. “Why are you laughing?” Fernando asked. “Because you are too fucking stupid to survive.” I drew back from them, the gun still pointed at him. “Is he your only son?” I asked. “My only child,” Padma said. “My condolences,” I said. No, I didn’t shoot him. But staring into Fernando’s angry eyes, I knew there’d be other opportunities. Some people seek death through desperation. Some people fall into it out of stupidity. If Fernando wanted to fall, I was more than happy to catch him.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“It is all right to be a lady, Anita. It is not a bad thing being a woman.” “You try being one, then talk to me,” I said. I hung up. “My lady” sounded like my dog. Ownership. I was his human servant. Short of killing him, I couldn’t change that. But I didn’t belong to him. If I belonged to anybody, I belonged to me. And that was how I was going to approach the council, as me: Anita Blake, vampire executioner, police liaison for the monsters. They wouldn’t listen to Jean-Claude’s human servant, but they might listen to me.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“He raised his gloved hands skyward, still smiling. He was a hard man to insult, because I’d been trying. He had this sort of cheerful goodwill that seemed to deflect everything. Never trust people who smile constantly. They’re either selling something or not very bright. Wren didn’t strike me as stupid. Insult”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“It wasn’t hard to spot Dolph. Pete McKinnon was standing with them. It was like walking towards two small mountains. Dolph”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“A tall, thin fireman with a grey mustache watched me stride across the street. He was still wearing a helmet and coat in the July heat. Four others had stripped down to T-shirts with just the rubbery-looking pants on. Someone had sprayed them down with water. They looked like an ad for a beefcake wet T-shirt contest.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“One of the other firemen joined us. His damp T-shirt clung to a stomach that had required far too many sit-ups, but I enjoyed the view anyway. He was tall, broad-shouldered, blond, and looked like he should have been carrying a surfboard or visiting Barbie in her Malibu dream house. There was a smear of soot on his smiling face, and his eyes were red-rimmed. He offered his hand without being introduced. “I’m Wren.” No rank, just his name. Confident. He held my hand just a little longer than necessary. It wasn’t obnoxious, just interested. I dropped my eyes. Not out of shyness, but because some men mistake direct eye contact as a come-on. I had about as much beefcake on my plate as I could handle without adding amorous firemen. Captain”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

“The leopards call me their Nimir-Ra, leopard queen. Me and Tarzan, huh? I”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Burnt Offerings

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Popular quotes

“Life is astonishingly short. As I look back over it, life seems so foreshortened to me that I can hardly understand, for instance, how a young man can decide to ride over to the next village without being afraid that, quite apart from accidents, even the span of a normal life that passes happily may be totally insufficient for such a ride.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“Du kannst werden, was immer du willst. Was du dir auch in den Kopf setzt. Folge einfach deinem Herzen und lebe deine Träume." - Die guten alten Plattitüden einer ausgestorbenen Spezies.”
― Blake Crouch, quote from Wayward

“The key point is that these patterns, while mostly stable, are not permanent: certain environmental experiences can add or subtract methyls and acetyls, changing those patterns. In effect this etches a memory of what the organism was doing or experiencing into its cells—a crucial first step for any Lamarck-like inheritance. Unfortunately, bad experiences can be etched into cells as easily as good experiences. Intense emotional pain can sometimes flood the mammal brain with neurochemicals that tack methyl groups where they shouldn’t be. Mice that are (however contradictory this sounds) bullied by other mice when they’re pups often have these funny methyl patterns in their brains. As do baby mice (both foster and biological) raised by neglectful mothers, mothers who refuse to lick and cuddle and nurse. These neglected mice fall apart in stressful situations as adults, and their meltdowns can’t be the result of poor genes, since biological and foster children end up equally histrionic. Instead the aberrant methyl patterns were imprinted early on, and as neurons kept dividing and the brain kept growing, these patterns perpetuated themselves. The events of September 11, 2001, might have scarred the brains of unborn humans in similar ways. Some pregnant women in Manhattan developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which can epigenetically activate and deactivate at least a dozen genes, including brain genes. These women, especially the ones affected during the third trimester, ended up having children who felt more anxiety and acute distress than other children when confronted with strange stimuli. Notice that these DNA changes aren’t genetic, because the A-C-G-T string remains the same throughout. But epigenetic changes are de facto mutations; genes might as well not function. And just like mutations, epigenetic changes live on in cells and their descendants. Indeed, each of us accumulates more and more unique epigenetic changes as we age. This explains why the personalities and even physiognomies of identical twins, despite identical DNA, grow more distinct each year. It also means that that detective-story trope of one twin committing a murder and both getting away with it—because DNA tests can’t tell them apart—might not hold up forever. Their epigenomes could condemn them. Of course, all this evidence proves only that body cells can record environmental cues and pass them on to other body cells, a limited form of inheritance. Normally when sperm and egg unite, embryos erase this epigenetic information—allowing you to become you, unencumbered by what your parents did. But other evidence suggests that some epigenetic changes, through mistakes or subterfuge, sometimes get smuggled along to new generations of pups, cubs, chicks, or children—close enough to bona fide Lamarckism to make Cuvier and Darwin grind their molars.”
― Sam Kean, quote from The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code

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― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes

“As much as I love teamwork, for this game, you all need to fly solo, like Han in Star Wars, although he always had Chewbacca in the copilot seat. But that is neither here nor there, because it is in a galaxy far, far away. Play on, Olympians.”
― Chris Grabenstein, quote from Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics

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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.

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