“We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Sometimes the truth has difficulty breaching the city walls of our beliefs. A lie, dressed in the correct livery, passes through more easily.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“The world inside myself is vaster and richer than this paltry plane, peopled with mere galaxies and gods.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“That’s the secret to performance: conviction. The right note played tentatively still misses its mark, but play boldly and no one will question you. If one believes there is truth in art – and I do – then it’s troubling how similar the skill of performing is to lying. Maybe lying is itself a kind of art. I think about that more than I should.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“He did not know the truth of me, yet he had perceived something true about me that no one else had ever noticed. And in spite of that—or perhaps because of it—he believed me good, believed me worth taking seriously, and his belief, for one vertigi-nous moment, made me want to be better than I was.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“For future reference: do not underestimate the seductive power of math.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Who will kiss you? Who will rock you to sleep?" His voice was slow, drowsy.
"You never did," I said, trying to tease him. "You were more father to me than my father, but you never did that."
"Someone should. Someone should love you. I will bite him if he will not.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I’m attracting small children,” Orma muttered, twisting his hat in his hands. “Shoo it away, will you?”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I mistook you for a metaphor.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Your lies didn't stop me loving you; your truth hasn't stopped me either.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I became the very air; I was full of stars. I was the soaring spaces between the spires of the cathedral, the solemn breath of chimneys, a whispered prayer upon the winter wind. I was silence,and I was music, one clear transcendent chord rising toward Heaven. I believed, then, that I would have risen bodily into the sky but for the anchor of his hand in my hair and his round soft perfect mouth.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I was drawn to his aloofness, the way cats gravitate toward people who’d rather avoid them.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“He was laughing, silently, and then we were both laughing, and then something changed. It was as if I had been watching the world through oiled parchment or smoked glass, which was yanked abruptly away. Everything grew very clear and bright; the music burst forth in majesty; we stood still and the room turned around us; and there was Kiggs, right in the middle of all of it, laughing.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Love is not a disease...I cannot let them cut you out of me, nor her either. I will cling to my sickness, if it is a sickness. I will hold it close to me like the sun.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“He looked up at the reddening sky and said with a self-deprecating laugh, "You put me to shame, Seraphina. Your bravery always has."
"It's not bravery; it's bullheaded bumbling."
He shook his head, staring off into the middle distance. "I know courage when I see it, and when I lack it.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I barely noticed loneliness anymore; it was my normal condition, by necessity if not by nature.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“How dare the world be beautiful when I was so horrifying?”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“The borderlands of madness used to have much sterner signage around them than they do now.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I scrupulously hide every legitimate reason for people to hate me, and it turns out they don’t need legitimate reasons. Heaven has fashioned a knife of irony to stab me with.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Music is only work when someone else makes you do it.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Peaches and Cheese”:
The vagabond sun winks down through the trees,
While lilacs, like memories, waft on the breeze,
My friend, I was born for days such as these,
To inhale perfume,
And cut through the gloom,
And feast like a king upon peaches and cheese!
I’ll travel this wide world and go where I please,
Can’t stop my wand’ring, it’s like a disease.
My only regret as I cross the high seas:
What I leave behind,
Though I hope to find,
My own golden city of peaches and cheese!”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“The truth may not be told. Here is an acceptable lie.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Please, Orma, I’ve already gotten you in so much trouble—”
“That I can’t possibly get into more. Take it.” He wouldn’t stop glaring at me until I’d put the earring back on its cord. “You are all that’s left of Linn. Her own people won’t even say her name. I—I value your continued existence.”
I could not speak; he had pierced me to my very heart.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I was half lawyer; I always noticed the loopholes.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“My own survival required me to counterbalance interesting with invisible.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“I felt lighter when I had finished, and for once emptiness was a sweet relief and a condition to be treasured.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“He looked at me again and his eyes shone in the lamplight, or with the inner light of delighted anticipation.
His enthusiasm made him beautiful.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“A feeling rose in me, and I just let it, because what harm could it do? It only had another thirty-two adagio bars of life in this world. Twenty-four. Sixteen. Eight more bars in which I love you. Three. Two. One.”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
“Always I hev my fists and my war pipes!”
― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina
Rachel Hartman
Born place: in Lexington, KY
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“I stretched out on the carpet, eyes glazed over, my heart whirring with frustration and fear, and as my mother’s curse slowly, firmly, pushed my eyelids closed, my body went still. But on the inside I was screaming.”
― Kendall Kulper, quote from The Witch of Salt and Storm
“Her mental list of items she’d need from her apartment was growing. There were things a girl just couldn’t live without, so Keegan would have to get them when he retrieved Muffin.
“I need another purse. Can you get me my Prada knockoff? It’s in my closet on the shelf. Pink. It’s pink. I got it from a vendor in Manhattan. Jeez he was a tough negotiator, but it was worth the haggling. It’s soooo cute.”
Keegan sighed, raspy and long. “Okay.”
“Oh! And my nail polish. I have two new bottles in the bathroom under the sink in one of those cute organizer baskets, you know? Like the ones you get at Bed Bath and Beyond? God, I love those. Anyway, I need Retro Red and Winsome Wisteria.”
Another sigh followed, and then a nod of consent.
“My moisturizer. I never go anywhere, not even overnight, without my moisturizer. Not that I ever really go anywhere, but anyway I need it, or my skin will dehydrate and it could just be ugly. Top left side of my medicine cabinet.”
“Er, okay.”
“My shoes. I can’t be without shoes. Let’s see. I need my tennis shoes and my white sandals, because I don’t think there’s much hope for these, wouldn’t you say?” Marty looked up at him and saw impatience written all over his face. “And my laptop. I can’t check on my clients without my laptop, and they need me. Plus, there’s that no-good bitch Linda Fisher. I have to watch that she’s not stealing my accounts. Do you have all of that?”
He gave her that stern look again. The one that made her insides skedaddle around even if it was meant in reproach.
“I’m going too far, huh?”
His smile was crooked. “Just a smidge.”
― Dakota Cassidy, quote from The Accidental Werewolf
“I find that the less emotion I put into life, the less the past seems to hurt.”
― David Estes, quote from The Moon Dwellers
“I remember the day when I realized I had no memory of her voice. That morning I had been reading the newspapers like I did everyday. I would read a report or two, and Ma would point out advertisements of houses for sale. There were many of them.”
― Rahul Pandita, quote from Our Moon Has Blood Clots: The Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits
“Let’s call the prince —” “Ruff, ruff!” “Pickles!” Jonah cries gleefully. My brother is so weird.”
― Sarah Mlynowski, quote from Bad Hair Day
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Wicked as They ComeBookQuoters 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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