Quotes from Nine Coaches Waiting

“Perhaps loneliness had nothing to do with place or circumstance; perhaps it was in you; yourself. Perhaps, wherever you were, you took your little circle of loneliness with you...”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“I was thankful that nobody was there to meet me at the airport.
We reached Paris just as the light was fading. It had been a soft, gray March day, with the smell of spring in the air. The wet tarmac glistened underfoot; over the airfield the sky looked very high, rinsed by the afternoon's rain to a pale clear blue. Little trails of soft cloud drifted in the wet wind, and a late sunbeam touched them with a fleeting underglow. Away beyond the airport buildings the telegraph wires swooped gleaming above the road where passing vehicles showed lights already.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“I knew that I had turned my world back to cinders, sunk my lovely ship with my own stupid, wicked hands.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“I'd live with loneliness a long time. That was something which was always there... one learns to keep it at bay, there are times when one even enjoys it - but there are also times when a desperate self-sufficiency doesn't quite suffice, and then the search for the anodyne begins... the radio, the dog, the shampoo, the stockings-to-wash, the tin soldier...”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“...kissing me with a violence that was terrifying and yet, somehow, the summit of all my tenderest dreams.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“I'm very much to blame for not seeing it before, but who on earth goes about suspecting an impossible outlandish thing like murder? That's something that happens in books, not among people you know.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“There was one thing that stood like stone among the music and moonfroth of the evening's gaieties. It was stupid, it was terrifying, it was wonderful, but it had happened and I could do nothing about it. For better or worse, I was head over ears in love...”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“I remember thinking with a queer detached portion of my mind that here was someone wringing her hands. One reads about it and one never sees it, and now here it was.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“By the time that adorable steak and I had become one flesh I could have taken on the whole Valmy clan singlehanded.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“The street lamps glowed like ripe oranges among the bare boughs. Below in the wet street their globes glimmered down and down, to drown in their own reflections.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“The car whispered up the slope and nosed quietly out above the trees. He was driving like a careful insult.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“Well, what was luck for if it was never to be tempted?”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“Damn it, the tiger played velvet paws with me, didn't he?”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“Funny, one somehow imagines her snuffing quietly out now, the way the moon would if the sun vanished.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“I'd settle for what you had to give”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“One always got the same shock of recognition and delight when someone's words swam up to meet a thought or name a picture.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“It was as if the past, till then so longed after, so lived over, had slipped off my shoulders like a burden. The future was still hidden, somewhere in the lights that made a yellow blur in the sky beyond the end of the dark street. Here between the two I waited, and for the first time saw both clearly.... I had made myself a stranger in England, not only bereaved, but miserably dépaysée, drifting with no clear aim, resenting the life I had been thrust into with such tragic brutality; I had refused to adapt myself to it and make myself a place there, behaving like the spoiled child who, because he cannot have the best cake, refuses to eat at all. I had waited for life to offer itself back to me on the old terms. Well, it wasn't going to.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“The boredom and annoyance that shut down over it were humiliatingly plain to see. I could have slapped her for it.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“His voice was quite flat, dull, almost. 'You were prepared to take chances - once.'
'Myself, yes. But this was Philippe. I had no right to take a chance on Philippe. I didn't dare. He was my charge - my duty.' The miserable words sounded priggish and unutterably absurd. 'I - I was all he had. Besides that, it couldn't be allowed to matter.'
'What couldn't.'
'That you were all I had.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

“to talk to Léon about it, I can see”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Nine Coaches Waiting

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Popular quotes

“The books in Mo and Meggie’s house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms. There were books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory. Books on the TV set and in the closet, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books old and new. They welcomed Meggie down to breakfast with invitingly opened pages; they kept boredom at bay when the weather was bad. And sometimes you fell over them. “He’s just standing there!” whispered Meggie, leading Mo into her room. “Has he got a hairy face? If so he could be a werewolf.” “Oh, stop it!” Meggie looked at him sternly, although his jokes made her feel less scared. Already, she hardly believed anymore in the figure standing in the rain—until she knelt down again at the window. “There! Do you see him?” she whispered. Mo looked out through the raindrops running down the”
― Cornelia Funke, quote from The Inkheart Trilogy: Inkheart, Inkspell, Inkdeath

“there is an imbalance of power. It is an imbalance that is easy to exploit, but it is not a wise course. Where there is love, there is often also hate. They can exist side by side." - jace”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from The Mortal Instruments

“I tell you, commander, it's true that some of the most terrible things in the world are done by people who think, genuinely think, that they're doing it for the best, especially if there is some god involved.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Snuff

“Tamani checkled. ‘If it makes you feel any better, it scares the daylights our of me on a regular basis.’ He rained kisses on her again, his fingers pressed against her back and her waist, and Laurel realized that his chest was shaking convulsivly.
‘What?’ She asked pulling away. ‘What’s wrong?’
But he wasn’t sobbing-- he was laughing! ‘The World Tree,’ he said. ‘It was right all along.’
‘When you got your answer?’
He nodded.
‘You said you would tell me someday what it said. Will you now?’
‘Commit.’
‘What?’
‘The tree just said, commit.’ He ran his fingers through his hair, smiling a little.
‘I don’t understand,’ Laurel said.
‘Neither did I. I was already your fear-gleidhidh; I’d committed my life to protecting you.
When the tree told me that, I figured you were as good as mine. Easy.’
‘And then I told you to leave,’ Laurel said, sorrow at the memory settling deep within her.
‘I understand why you did,’ Tamani said, threading his fingers through hers. ‘And it
probably was better for us in the long run. But it hurt.’
‘I'm sorry.’
‘Don't be. I was listening to the tree, and to my own selfish desires, when I should have
been listening to you. I think I know what the tree really meant now,’ he said, his voice rumbling against her ear. ‘I needed to commit my life to you-- not to guiding you or protecting you, completely, in my core. I needed to stop worrying about whether you would ever do the same for me. In a way, I think that's what coming to the human world did, and why I wasn't sure I could bare to go back.’ He traced his finger down her face. ‘I was committed to the idea before-- to the love I felt for you. But not to you. And I think you sensed that change or you’d have rejected me.’
‘Maybe,’ Laurel said, although at this moment she couldn't fathom rejecting him for any
reason.
His fingers found her chin, lifting it so he could look her in the eyes. ‘Thank you,’ he said
softly.
‘No,’ she said, running one finger across his bottom lip, ‘Thank you.’ Then she pulled his

face down, their lips meeting, melting together again. She wished she could stay there all day, all year, all eternity, but reality came creeping slowly back in.”
― Aprilynne Pike, quote from Destined

“Not letting the world destroy you. That’s a daily battle.”
― Matthew Quick, quote from Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

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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.

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