“Every fairy tale, it seems, concludes with the bland phrase "happily ever after." Yet every couple I have ever known would agree that nothing about marriage is forever happy. There are moments of bliss, to be sure, and lengthy spans of satisfied companionship. Yet these come at no small effort, and the girl who reads such fiction dreaming her troubles will end ere she departs the altar is well advised to seek at once a rational women to set her straight.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“With that, I hurled the slipper at him, not caring if I caused his decapitation. (I did not.) Marshaling what little dignity I yet possessed, I stomped down the corridor - challenging indeed with one shoe - and around the corner. I lay awake for hours. The prince had no right, not one, to indict me so, and if I had held the slightest hope of the book's assistance, I would have climbed at once to my wizard room for a spell with which to punish him. Death, perhaps, or humiliation. A croaking frog would be nice, particularly a frog that retained Florian's dark eyes. I should keep it in a box and poke it occasionally with a stick; that would be satisfying indeed.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“And have your mother put my head on a stake? Do you have any notion what that would do to my handsome good looks?”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“What is a staircase, but a corridor improved by elevation?”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“I could not but wonder at the queen's unprecedented civility, until I realized with a flush of shame that it was my own improved behavior that motivated hers. So it is that we in life determine our own treatment.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“Despite all my public misconduct, in the past year, I had learned the Elemental spells, the Doppelschläferin, and the preparation and flying of a magic broom; I had survived two months as prisoner of war, saving the life of captain Johanne in the process; I had escaped the dungeons of Fortress Drachensbett, and after an arduous journey successfully reunited with my double, so preserving her, and all Montagne, from Prince Flonian's rapacity, I would somehow master the despicable art of being a princess.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“I ultimately decided to hold my tongue and settle instead for the comfort of ignorance. Not knowing the truth, I retained hope, and that hope I held like a smooth warm stone against my heart.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“Why was it that jam always coated me so?”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“The truth that our futures are so often determined not by some grand design or deliberate strategy but by an ordinary run-of-the-mill head cold.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“Bend like the sapling you are. With time we shall find your oaken core.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“With every morsel I consumed, I was informed that princes most love slender young ladies. As I was as interested in a prince’s love as in sticking my fish fork into my ear, I reacted to this by cleaning my plate ever more thoroughly.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“How many times I have wondered what my fate might have been had I accompanied my parents that rainy spring morning. Such musings, I recognise, are more than a trifle insane, for envisioning what might have been had no more connection to our own true reality than a lunatic has to a lemon.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“According to Montagne legend, the mountain has forever been the abode of giants. Long ago a traveling pair of sorcerers, husband and wife, scaled the cliff into the valley, and the woman cured the giants’ chilblains with ointments and the gift of fire. In gratitude, the giants built Chateau de Montagne out of the living rock of Ancienne, and from that castle the couple founded the kingdom of Montagne, using their magic to shield the country and its people from harm.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“I could not help but wonder, that night and later, why my father would even mention my marrying someone who came from a country that my mother so obviously disliked. I recall wondering that distinctly, while somehow missing the obvious connection that this boy was a prince and that I, the niece of a king, was a princess.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“If in this narrative I have not yet paid Queen Sophia adequate consideration, particularly given the unrelenting domination the woman would soon claim over every single element of my life, I offer this simple yet honest explanation: for fifteen unbroken years, my mother had toiled to protect me from the woman. It is remarkable, as I reflect upon my childhood, how utterly unaware I was of this situation while it transpired, the truth coming to my notice only in despondent hindsight.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“Lord Frederick had been a stalwart member of the Montagne court since at least the time of my grandfather; this I knew. Even more, he had the marvellous ability to pull peppermint drops from my ears, which used to entertain me for hours.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“So it was that my life passed from the joyous realm of heaven to the choking and inescapable tortures of hell.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“How could Paolo think the queen and her ilk were my people? I had no more relation to them than a pigeon does to a flock of swans – or a vortex of vultures, which the castle’s denizens better resembled in both attire and attitude.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“As for the queen, I had no more interest in her company than in plunging my face into a nest of hornets.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“My downfall, inevitably, was triggered by food.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“A princess,” (Queen Sophia) would proclaim, “requires a graceful and willowy carriage, not the appetite of a swineherd.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“I mulled on the tower-bound princess whose lover employed her hair as rope. My own curly locks – one of my better features, I will admit, better being a relative term – hung just past my shoulders, and barely draped over the windowsill.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“No matter how I prayed, no fairy godmother appeared. No elf or leprechaun or world-weary wizard materialised to provide the secret weapon against my foe. I remained alone in a mouse-infested cell, empty but for a pallet and the nightdress into which I now had to struggle.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“I could not help but notice that in this regard the book, inanimate though it was, cared more for my welfare than any human in the castle.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“Finally I halted, my cloak soiled with grease and jam. Why was it that jam always coated me so?”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“The day of the ball was spent preparing me much as one prepares a goose for Christmas, with the same ultimate effect.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“I trust you are enjoying your stay in our castle?” I asked at last. “Would that I were, Your Highness. But I am afraid my sleep last night was quite troubled. This morning I identified the source of my bruises” – here he reached into a pocket of his waistcoat – “as a pea that had been tucked beneath my mattress.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“The situation collapsed completely at dinner one September evening. Perhaps it was the full moon that drove me to madness, or the gnawing, relentless emptiness of my heart. Whatever the trigger, the powder had been well packed, and my explosion, though shocking, was not altogether unexpected.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“Better I would have been at pulling parsnips out of my nose than charming any man, even if I so desired it, even if I quadrupled my studies in her unique curriculum.”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
“With time, when I was very old and in my twenties, I might find a man to love, not one forced upon me…”
― Catherine Gilbert Murdock, quote from Princess Ben
Catherine Gilbert Murdock
Born place: The United States
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“One hand smothered her laughter in unconscious effort to keep from advertising our presence more than necessary. “It is too. Who’d have imagine big, bad Lucian Bane is afraid of spiders.”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Dom Wars: Round 4, 5, 6
“According to research, people who live with animals have decreased anxiety and lower blood pressure. They have lower cholesterol. They are more relaxed and less stressed and are, overall, in better health. Unless of course you have a dog who pees uncontrollably wherever it wishes or eats your furniture to shreds.”
― Mary Kubica, quote from The Good Girl
“We have turned doctors into gods and worship their deity by offering up our bodies and our souls - not to mention our worldly goods.
And yet paradoxically, they are the most vulnerable of human beings. Their suicide rate is eight times the national average. Their percentage of drug addiction is one hundred times higher
And because they are painfully aware that they cannot live up to our expectations, their anguish is unquantifiably intense. They have aptly been called 'wounded healers.' "
~ Barney Livingston, M.D.”
― Erich Segal, quote from Doctors
“If you’re thinking that you’ll just dabble in these things, then you’ll never really understand them—you’ll never really penetrate into the mysteries of life and death. To do this requires full attention upon the goal. It requires one’s whole life, one’s whole existence to be put toward it, sincerely, fully, wholly.”
― Belzebuub, quote from Gazing Into the Eternal
“There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna
Dreaming Awake
Madness and Civiliza...
Living to Tell the T...
You Were Mine
Fury's Kiss
Cinderella Screwed M...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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