Quotes from Northern Lights

Nora Roberts ·  637 pages

Rating: (35.4K votes)


“I don't kick a man when he's down, unless I'm the one who put him down in the first place. I don't put him down unless he deserves it. And I don't break my word if I give it. So I'll give you my word.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Northern Lights


“What are these?”
Meg looked at the rings of keys in Nate’s hand, deliberately furrowed her brow. “Those would be keys.”
“Why do you need so many keys?”
“Because there are so many locks? Is this a quiz?”
He jingled them in his palm while she continued to give him a sunny, innocent smile. “Meg, you don’t even lock your doors half the time. What are all these keys about?”
“Well… There are times a person needs to get into a place, and hey, that place is locked. Then she would need a key.”
“And this place that, hey, is locked, wouldn’t be the property of that person. Would that be correct?”
“Techincally. But no man is an island, and it takes a village, and so on. We’re all one in the Zen universe.”
“So these would be Zen keys?”
“Exactly. Give them back.”
“I don’t think so.” He closed his fist around them. “You see, even in the Zen universe I’d hate to arrest my wife for unlawful entry.”
“I’m not your wife yet, buddy. Did you have a search warrant for those?”
“They were in plain sight. No warrant necessary.”
“Gestapo.”
“Delinquent.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Northern Lights


“Heroism's just doing more than you want to do or think you can. Sometimes it's just doing the crappy things, the unhappy things other people won't do....It's not just jumping out of a plane onto a glacier ten thousand feet up because there's nobody else there to do it. It's getting out of bed in the morning when it seems like too much trouble.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Northern Lights


“Don't say hit and mountain in the same sentence.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Northern Lights


“He looked around when he heard a window-rattling roar. "Earthquake? Volcano? Nuclear war?"
"Beaver," Peter told him.
"I don't care if it is Alaska, you don't have beavers big enough to sound like that.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Northern Lights



“Is staying quiet an interrogation technique?"
"It can be. It can be also called listening.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Northern Lights


“but those mostly tourists or crazies. Man called Teek got himself stupid drunk”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Northern Lights


“even high,” she said with a roll”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Northern Lights


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About the author

Nora Roberts
Born place: in Silver Spring, Maryland, The United States
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Popular quotes

“Ellie said, "Isn't it a little warm for black?"

You're extremely pretty, Dr. Sattler," he said. "I could look at your legs all day. But no, as a matter of fact, black is an excellent color for heat. If you remember your black-body radiation, black is actually best in heat. Efficient radiation. In any case, I wear only two colors, black and gray."

Ellie was staring at him, her mouth open. "These colors are appropriate for any occasion," Malcolm continued, and they go well together, should I mistakenly put on a pair of gray socks with my black trousers."

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Dr. Malcolm," Hammond explained, "is a man of strong opinions."

And mad as a hatter," Malcolm said cheerfully. "But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.”
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“He looked down and did something quite out of character for him: he took hold of Shmuel's tiny hand in his and squeezed it tightly.
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“No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat's cradle is nothing but a bunch of X's between somebody's hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X's . . ."
"And?"
"No damn cat, and no damn cradle.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Cat's Cradle


“In fact,' said Poirot, 'she stabbed him in the dark, not realising that he was dead already, but somehow deduced that he had a watch in his pyjama pocket, took it out, put back the hands blindly and gave it the requisite dent.”
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