Sarah Dunant · 368 pages
Rating: (21.6K votes)
“If grace belongs to God, there are those who say that luck belongs to the Devil and that he looks after his own.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“Outside, the city is changing. While we have been talking of God's laws and seacrets of the earth, a cold fog has come rolling off the sea, pushing through the allys, sliding over the water, rubbing up agienst the cold stone. As I walk the street falls away behind me, the shop's blue awning lost within seconds. People move like ghosts, their voices disconnected from their bodies; as fast as they loom up they dissapear agien. The fog is so dense that by the time I have crossed toward the Merceria, I can barely see the ground under my feet or tell if the gloom is weather of the beginning of dusk.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“I listen to people talking sometimes, that great river that is language, with all its undercurrents of grammar and nuance, and I wonder how we all learn so quickly to speak it, given that we begin when we are barely old enough to stand upright. I have no memory of finding it hard. Indeed, I have no memory of it at all.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“It is the ones who keep you in thrall to more than their snatches who command the houses and the gowns to go with them. And for that they have first to love themselves.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“in the chaos of war, I would have looked simply small, and therefore neither a promise nor a threat.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“I know what she is thinking. That she will never have those feelings. And she wants to have them. Oh, how much she wants to...I have seen it before, the way women yearn more for a child when they have fallen in love. It is part of the disease, like the ague that goes with fever. Maybe the real lover's prick goes deep enough to ignite some loning in the womb. Maybe it is the promise of a future, something left over once the passion is spent.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“beauty is your gift from God and it should be used and not squandered. Study this face as if it were a map of the ocean, your own trade route to the Indies. For it will bring you its own fortune. But always believe what the glass tells you. Because while others will try to flatter you, it has no reason to lie.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“no one bothered dressing up in priests’ robes, for even in chaos hierarchy rules and their cloth wasn’t rich enough.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“Venice the peaceful demands Venice the just.”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from In the Company of the Courtesan
“Adam ” Lori called loudly enough for me to hear her but not so loud that her voice would carry up to my mom in the marina office- or to her dad who might be listening from their screened porch facing the water.
“I came over to get some tips from the boys about teaching Tammy and Rachel to board. Of course I did not come over here to see you. How could you think such a thing That would be disobedient.”
I held up the wax.
“For my own disobedience I have to buff the boat. Then I’m going for a jog.”
She tilted her head. Probably her eyes widened but I couldn’t see them behind her sunglasses. I hated not being able to see her eyes.
She asked “In this heat?”
I didn’t mind jogging in the heat. The heat was a big friendly animal that liked to wrestle and only occasionally sat on me until I lost my breath. Anyway she was missing the point.
I repeated carefully ”I am GOING for a JOG.”
“I HEARD you the FIRST time ” she said. “It’s late afternoon in the middle of June. It’s ninety-five degrees out here.”
“He means he’s GOING for a JOG” Rachel and Tammy said at the same time.
“He’s GOING for a JOG.”
Lori still didn’t get it. Normally her blondeness was one of the things I loved about her. At the moment not so much.
Exasperated Cameron told her “Adam wants you to go for a jog too.”
She said “Oh ”
“If you two airheads have to hook up secretly for very long ” Sean said “you’re not going to make it.”
― Jennifer Echols, quote from Endless Summer
“it is the vibrational essence of the subject of your attention that is attracted. That which you really, really want, you get—and that which you really, really do not want, you get.”
― Esther Hicks, quote from The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham
“Yesterday was a memory. Today was a hope.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Into the Dreaming
“Not Brangien who was faithful, not Brangien, but themselves had these lovers to fear, for hearts so stricken will lose their vigilance. Love pressed them hard, as thirst presses the dying stag to the stream; love dropped upon them from high heaven, as a hawk slipped after long hunger falls right upon the bird. And love will not be hidden.”
― Joseph Bédier, quote from The Romance of Tristan and Iseult
“In a bleak, urban desert, I saw it again that selfsame day, drinking the cup of humiliation offered by a lowly button.”
― Raymond Queneau, quote from Exercises in Style
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