“Poetry is like passion--it should not be merely pretty; it should overwhelm and bruise.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“Hope was such a painful thing, far more painful than rage.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“Fleurs du mal,” Eve heard herself saying, and shivered. “What?” “Baudelaire. We are not flowers to be plucked and shielded, Captain. We are flowers who flourish in evil.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“What did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done?”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“I will not tell you one single solitary fact about my work, my friends, or the woman I was arested with. But I will tell you this, Rene Bordelon. You're a gullible fool. You're a terribly lover. And I hate Baudelaire.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“How do I know what I'm up for if you won't tell me what this is about?'
'It's about a friend,' she said simply. 'A blond woman with a sunshine laugh and the courage to light the world on fire.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“So you're met Finn. He's a dash, isn't he? If I weren't older than dirt and ugly as sin, I'd climb that like a French alp.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“It is facile to condemn the French for giving in to the Nazis too easily when many French citizens would have still borne the horrendous scars of the first occupation, would have clearly remembered having to stand back while German sentries robbed them of everything but the nearly inedible ration bread because the only alternative was to be arrested, beaten, or shot. The French survived not one but two brutal occupations in a span of less than forty years, and deserve more credit for their flinty endurance than they receive.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“Life ought to be more like a play; the entrances and exits would be a lot cleaner.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“Steel blades such as you and I do not measure against the standards for ordinary women”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“finally turned away. My aunt stood watching from the back door, frail and hunched. “Tell me the rest,” I said, and she did, her voice flat. My uncle had sent Rose to a little town outside Limoges to give birth away from anyone she knew. She didn’t write when the baby was born, told them nothing about it, and they didn’t ask.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“will not tell you one single solitary fact about my work, my friends, or the woman I was arrested with. But I will tell you this, René Bordelon. You’re a gullible fool. You’re a terrible lover. And I hate Baudelaire.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“You think there are no idiots in the intelligence business, that your superiors are all brilliant men who understand the game? [...] This business is rife with idiots. They play with lives and they play badly, and when people like you die as a result, they shrug and as 'Risks have to be taken in wartime.' You'd really march yourself into a firing squad for that kind of fool?”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“Facing a pistol-wielding murderer does tend to put parents further down the list of things to be intimidated by.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“did tell him. I suppose he thought it wasn’t suitable for your ears.” I swallowed. “What happened then?” “Rose’s boy got caught with the Resistance. They shipped him off, who knows where. Half of Paris was disappearing overnight. Rose probably would have too—she’d already nearly been arrested for kicking a Brownshirt on the Rue de Rivoli, so we brought her back here to Rouen. But . . .”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“want to do something different.” And she’d had it in her—of course she’d be striding through the Paris nights breaking windows and kicking Brownshirts. I should have known Rose would get involved with the Resistance. But she’d gotten caught in the oldest trap there is, just like me. Rose wasn’t going to write a book or swim the Channel or do anything different—because once you’re pregnant, you’re finished.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“Whose fault is that? I wanted to lash out. You’re the one who threw Rose away like trash. You should have left her in that café in Provence. The words burned at my lips, aching to come out, but I bit them down. My aunt was so thin a breeze could blow her away, finally looking like the invalid she’d always claimed she was. A husband and two sons dead. She’d lost so much.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“Oh, pfft. I manage. With any paper one sticks under their nose and plenty of self-possession, one can get through, Especially a woman. Sometimes I take an armload of parcels and bags and drop every single one as I try to find my identity cards, chatting all the while, and they wave me through out of sheer irritation.'
Lili exhaled a long steam of smoke. 'To tell the truth, much of this special work we do is quite boring. I think that's why women are good as it. Our lives are already boring. We jump an Uncle Edward's offer because we can't stand the thought of working in a file room anymore, or teaching a class full of runny-nosed children their letters. Then we discover this job is deadly dull as well, but at least there's the enlivening thought that someone might put a Luger to the back of our necks. It's still better than shooting ourselves, which we know we're going to do if we have to type one more letter or pound one more Latin verb into a child's ivory skull.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“Each morning she woke with alacrity, tossing the covers aside and springing from bed, her mind one long hungry scream for what the day had to offer.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“The idea made her sick and scared, but so what? Why did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done anyway?”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“He’d turn his own mother in to the Germans for a profit, not that he has a mother. The devil probably shit him out after a night’s drinking with Judas.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
“Rose wasn't going to write a book or swim the Channel or do anything different - because once you're pregnant, you're finished.”
― Kate Quinn, quote from The Alice Network
Kate Quinn
Born place: in Long Beach, CA, The United States
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“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quote from Pangeran Kecil
“Look, I might biologically be a sphinx, but I’m an imp in every other way that counts. That means I’m unmanageable, stubborn, secretive, I don’t like rules, and I make people tired and irritated – and I take pride in it.”
― Suzanne Wright, quote from Burn
“At sunrise, everything is luminous but not clear”
― Norman Maclean, quote from A River Runs Through It
“The truth is, we are never just one thing. We all have many titles and labels, but far too often, we get trapped inside a single definition. We get so lost in it that we forget about all the other pieces that make up who we are.”
― Jessica Brody, quote from A Week of Mondays
“The guests filed out, the women turning toward the tablinum, the men moving into the study. Cicero told me to close the door. Immediately the pleasure drained from his face. “What’s all this about,”
― Robert Harris, quote from Conspirata
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The Happy Prince and...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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