Quotes from The Angel of Darkness

Caleb Carr ·  752 pages

Rating: (19.4K votes)


“She has that quality, does the Hudson, as I imagine all great rivers do: the deep, abiding sense that those activities what take place on shore among human beings are of the moment, passing, and aren't the stories by way of which the greater tale of this planet will, in the end, be told.”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness


“It didn’t make any more sense to me then than it does now, how life can pile troubles up on a man what don’t deserve them, while letting some of the biggest jackasses and scoundrels alive waltz their way through long, untroubled existences.”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness


“There's plenty of stories that need telling what never get told, just because people can't bear the listening.”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness


“Still, it's an interesting technique--leaving one person behind in order to find her or him somewhere else. And *in* someone else.”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness


“No, since we began this case, another possibility has presented itself to me--the thought that, although my mother cared for her children, their welfare was simply not her first priority. And the real question is not why that should have been so, but why it should have been such a difficult theory to either formulate or accept--why, indeed, it should have taken a murder case to make me think of it. After all, a man who makes his children of secondary or even minor importance, though he may be criticized by some, is hardly held to be unusual. Why should we believe any differently of a woman?”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness



“there’s plenty of stories that need telling what never get told, just because people can’t bear the listening. My”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness


“Whatever poor team of maidservants had to stuff her into the kind of tight-waisted gown she was wearing that evening earned their pay as sure as any coal miner, that much was certain. The”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness


“It isn’t really possible for men to understand how much the world doesn’t want women to be complete people. The most important thing a woman can be, in our society—more important, even, than honest or decent—is identifiable. Even when Libby’s evil—perhaps most of all when she’s evil—she’s easy to categorize, to stick to a board with a pin like some scientific specimen. Those men in Stillwater are terrified of her because being terrified lets them know who she is—it keeps them safe. Imagine how much harder it would be to say, yes, she’s a woman capable of terrible anger and violence, but she’s also someone who’s tried desperately to be a nurturer, to be a good and constructive human being. If you accept all that, if you allow that inside she’s not just one or the other, but both, what does that say about all the other women in town? How will you ever be able to tell what’s actually going on in their hearts—and heads? Life in the simple village would suddenly become immensely complicated. And so, to keep that from happening, they separate things. The normal, ordinary woman is defined as nurturing and loving, docile and compliant. Any female who defies that categorization must be so completely evil that she’s got to be feared, feared even more than the average criminal—she’s got to be invested with the powers of the Devil himself. A witch, they probably would have called her in the old days. Because she’s not just breaking the law, she’s defying the order of things.”
― Caleb Carr, quote from The Angel of Darkness


About the author

Caleb Carr
Born place: in Manhattan, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“I wanted to fly up beyond the clouds, where nothing would hear me but the stars”
― Julie Kagawa, quote from Soldier


“Here I sit in the presence of queens and heroes and magic. Yes, magic. It is only when we have grown too old that we fail to see that the Maker’s world is swollen with magic – it hides in plain sight in music and water and even bumblebees”
― Andrew Peterson, quote from North! or Be Eaten


“And overpowered by memory
Both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely
For man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching
Before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,
Now for his father, now for Patroclus once again
And their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.”
― Homer, quote from The Iliad of Homer


“People say actions speak louder than words, but sometimes it’s the words that hurt the most. Actions are easy to ignore, but words hit you right where it hurts.”
― quote from You’re the Password to My Life


“It is not down on any map; true places never are.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Moby Dick: or, the White Whale


Interesting books

The Sound
(2.1K)
The Sound
by Sarah Alderson
Midwinterblood
(9.3K)
Midwinterblood
by Marcus Sedgwick
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
(12.9K)
Malcolm X: A Life of...
by Manning Marable
The Wisdom of Crowds
(20.3K)
The Wisdom of Crowds
by James Surowiecki
How to Say Goodbye in Robot
(8.1K)
How to Say Goodbye i...
by Natalie Standiford
Letter from the Birmingham Jail
(3.2K)
Letter from the Birm...
by Martin Luther King Jr.

About BookQuoters

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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.