Quotes from Selling Scarlett

Ella James ·  426 pages

Rating: (6.9K votes)


“I think of him as part tiger. He's languid to the point of appearing almost lazy, and yellow or green, those eyes are framed by ridiculous lashes, set in a strong face with prominent cheekbones, full lips, and a sensuous smile.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“It dawns on me that most people would probably be happy with my weekend. I just won five million dollars. But one of the strange things about being rich as shit is five million's just not that exciting.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“I can see the exact moment he realizes what I've been doing. His torso stiffens as his hands, pressed against the mattress, curl into big fists. He makes a low, approving sound and speaks in a voice that sounds like molten lava. "That’s so sexy.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“I'd gotten my first glimpse of Elizabeth DeVille. She'd had her hair in a pony-tail that stuck up off the side of her head, and she'd been wearing short red shorts and a light blue tank top with a whale on it. “You like whales?” I'd asked her when I finished with the car. Her face had gone all soft and pretty, making me feel more like one-hundred-and-three than the twenty-three I was, and she'd shrugged. “Yeah, but not a lot more than any other animal. I just like saving things.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“Instead I go to the vineyard and jerk off in my bed. When I'm finished, I call Marchant. I can't tell him about Priscilla's threats...”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett



“Priscilla is a masochist, but she has a sadistic side, I learned tonight. She brought the whip to keep me out of the party, but she definitely enjoyed using it.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“I'm a recovering addict who visits brothels and has a penthouse at a casino. You've seen me fucking a porn star—not too easy, either. You're riding an awful fucking lot on intuition.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“I'm surprised you went to a brothel for sex,” I say after a few minutes.
“Are you?” he smiles a little ruefully.
“You could get it on your own.”
“True. But I'm emotionally detached. Women don't like that.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“My life has been fucked up this way ever since that night with Sarabelle. I woke up the next morning stark naked, sprawled out on my back, with a splitting headache, a killer case of dry-mouth, and a lipstick heart drawn around my left nipple. When I sat up, the room tilting around me…”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“Next I think about that night on my bed: her head pressed into my pillow, her hair spread out around her face. The memory of it makes me hard, but then I remember how it ended, with Libby seeing me with Priscilla. Impotent rage washes over me, but I'm still hard as a damn diamond. I shift my weight; that makes it worse. Libby's eyes are on mine, thankfully.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett



“Priscilla is having Libby followed. That means when I follow Libby, I have to be discreet. The last thing I need is Priscilla knowing that I know what she's doing. It would ruin everything.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“I imagine Hunter sitting at a poker table in a Vegas casino. He's resplendent in black jeans, a black shirt, and a Stetson. His poker face is beautiful; intriguing. I feel my body heat again as I think about kissing his lips. I wonder if the women there fall all over him. I bet the escorts would pay him to take a tumble.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“I'm thinking of making it a project for my PhD. You know, writing about value judgments people place on things. One sexual encounter is just that: it's a ten minute thing. And virginity? It's just a hymen, an antiquated measure of a woman's value,”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“Something's wrong with Hunter. I can tell the moment he steps into the ring. I've been watching him from afar for years, and I'm an old pro at his body language. Hunter West is a guy who's used to setting the agenda. His limbs are usually loose and relaxed, carried with the kind of self-assurance that comes from knowing you've got it all handled.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“Eventually, I decide to salute him. I’m reaching all the way back to middle school for this one. "Yessir," I say smartly, snapping my feet together. "Damn right," he mutters as he opens the door for me.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett



“C'mon, Libby…I don't have room for wherever this might be headed, so why not end it while we're both ahead?”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“It's kind of surprising, considering he spends most of his time in Vegas, playing poker (professionally, of all things), man-whoring, and tossing back his family's infamous Louisiana bourbon. That was his great-grandfather, Willard West's legacy. Hunter's father, Conrad West, after a long life in politics, is Secretary of State. He disapproves of Hunter’s lifestyle, or so I’ve heard.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“As it is, I'm Elizabeth DeVille, super spy and resident poor girl, and watching him out of the corner of my eye will have to do. I nod at something my best friend Suri is saying to me, feeling like a shitty friend because I'm not really listening.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“With the exception of Hunter West, who's been my own personal porn since that fateful night Mom's Porsche broke down, I don't find that many men attractive. Maybe I am a lesbian, but I don't think so.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“Last night, the Hunter was hunted. Do you remember how hard I made you cum?”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett



“There’s a common perception, partially true, that rich people are above the law. It’s true for a lot of us, but I have a feeling my notoriety could work against me. I’m the kind of guy prosecutors like to stick a case to. And I've got a dirty past.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“ A good twenty percent of this idea's allure is in my eagerness to get rid of my V-card so I can stop saving it for Hunter. I need to be freed of that idea. Freed of my crush. I hope that after spending some time at Love Inc., I never blush in the middle of a sexual encounter ever again. No Hunter West or anybody else will be able to knock me off my feet, and I like that idea.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“Do you realize anyone could have won?"
"Anyone without a criminal record," she corrects. "And yes.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“He ducks and pulls my panties down, and before I know it his mouth is covering me right where I'm throbbing. I'm coming off the mattress, tugging on his hair, and he is moaning like he loves it.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


“Hope can turn ugly when it's dashed over and over.”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett



“paisley apron, has her back to me. Her curly brown hair is locked away in pigtails, and she looks like she just stepped”
― Ella James, quote from Selling Scarlett


About the author

Ella James
Born place: in The United States
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Popular quotes

“-Estou a tentar pensar em qualquer coisa memorável, mas é difícil quando o sangue me saiu todo da cabeça.
-Experimenta.
-Uau.”
― J.D. Robb, quote from Remember When


“There ought to be a while separate language, she thought, for words that are truer than other words - for perfect, absolute truth. It was the purest fact of her life: she did not understand him, and she never would.”
― Anne Tyler, quote from Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant


“Molly gave him a questioning smile, revealing two slightly crooked front teeth.”
― Jayne Ann Krentz, quote from Absolutely, Positively


“Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. To put the matter shortly, woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist. Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world. But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. For I cannot with the utmost energy of imagination conceive what they mean. When domesticity, for instance, is called drudgery, all the difficulty arises from a double meaning in the word. If drudgery only means dreadfully hard work, I admit the woman drudges in the home, as a man might drudge at the Cathedral of Amiens or drudge behind a gun at Trafalgar. But if it means that the hard work is more heavy because it is trifling, colorless and of small import to the soul, then as I say, I give it up; I do not know what the words mean. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, providing toys, boots, sheets, cakes. and books, to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness.”
― G.K. Chesterton, quote from What's Wrong with the World


“The whiles some one did chaunt this louely lay;
Ah see, who so faire thing doest faine to see,
In springing flowre the image of thy day;
Ah see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly shee
Doth first peepe forth with bashfull modestee,
That fairer seemes, the lesse ye see her may;
Lo see soone after, how more bold and free
Her bared bosome she doth broad display;
Loe see soone after, how she fades, and falles away.

So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre,
Ne more doth flourish after first decay,
That earst was sought to decke both bed and bowre,
Of many a Ladie, and many a Paramowre:
Gather therefore the Rose, whilest yet is prime,
For soone comes age, that will her pride deflowre:
Gather the Rose of love, whilest yet is time,
Whilest louing thou mayst loued be with equall crime.”
― Edmund Spenser, quote from The Faerie Queene


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