Quotes from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“Devil-boy Jack: "A higher power than ours directs us against the wych-kin. There is no turning back."

Thaniel Fox: "There is no higher power, Devil-boy! And I am no-one's pawn, neither man nor wych nor whatever entity you speak of."

Devil-boy Jack: "I do not speak of entities. I speak of the force that created the physics of the universe, the force that makes time flow forward and not allow everything to happen at once, the force that sets the patterns to which the planets turn. Its weapons are coincidence, unlikelihood, happenstance. It is there when a man stops suddenly to pick up a coin dropped by another man ten days before, and the woman who is to be his wife bumps into him, and five hundred years hence their offspring rules half the world. It is there when a chance comment causes a scientist to think, What if...? and ten years later a great plague is cured. It is so vast that what we call chaos is simply another part of its order, with a shape too big to see. It has no name, nor will it ever have, though man may hint darkly at fate and destiny. It is what it is... the pattern. We may choose our own paths, but the pattern is always ahead of us. It is a way. It is the way.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“This was London, and you either held on, or fell by the walkside like that fellow had.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“She was quite maniac when I met her. I scared her, maybe.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“Mad she may be, or possessed; or maybe only scared out of her wits.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“She felt like a proper lady, she did.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“I want ... something other than what I know. She is so strange to me, you see? I think that her life must have been very different from mine (...) I want to know what that is like.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“Suddenly it was if she was merely a brain, being transported inside the skull of some hideous fleshy machine, a piece of living cargo in someone else's body.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“He let the smoke drift around the inside of his mouth, trying to relax, but nothing could so easily dispel the unquiet that he felt.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“A strange irony, Crott reflected, that the most base and lowly of London folk were the most honour-bound of all, and that the value of honour diminished in direct proportion to the heights of society a man climbed to.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“Darkness, terrible cold darkness, the salty depths of the deepest oceans where no light warmed the rocks and the weight of the black water would crush a man like a grape.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“They would erect great temples, and cities built of bone and sinew, and their foulness would spread like a cancer until finally, a hundred years from now, Mother Earth would be theirs.”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

“Was it possible that he liked the world the way it was?”
― Chris Wooding, quote from The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

About the author

Popular quotes

“Wait, was that Mal Ericson from Stage Dive?
Fuck a duck, it was.”
― Kylie Scott, quote from Lead

“Finché l’uomo vive nel suo ambiente e in condizioni normali, gli elementi del curriculum vitae rappresentano per lui periodi importanti e svolte significative della sua vita. Ma appena il caso o il lavoro o le malattie lo separano dagli altri e lo isolano, questi elementi di colpo cominciano a scolorirsi, si inaridiscono e si decompongono con incredibile rapidità, come una maschera di cartone o di lacca senza vita, usata una volta sola. Sotto questa maschera comincia a intravedersi un’altra vita, conosciuta solo a noi, ossia la “vera” storia del nostro spirito e del nostro corpo, che non è scritta da nessuna parte, di cui nessuno suppone l’esistenza, una storia che ha molto poco a che fare con i nostri successi in società, ma che è, per noi, per la nostra felicità o infelicità, l’unica valida e la sola davvero importante.
Sperduto in quel luogo selvaggio, durante le lunghe notti, quando tutti i rumori erano cessati, Daville pensava alla sua vita passata come a una lunga serie di progetti audaci e di scoraggiamenti noti a lui solo, di lotte, di atti eroici, di fortune, di successi e di crolli, di disgrazie, di contraddizioni, di sacrifici inutili e di vani compromessi. Nelle tenebre e nel silenzio di quella città che ancora non aveva visto ma in cui lo attendevano, senza dubbio, preoccupazioni o difficoltà, sembrava che nulla al mondo si potesse risolvere né conciliare. In certi momenti gli pareva che per vivere fossero necessari sforzi enormi e per ogni sforzo una sproporzionata dose di coraggio. E, visto nel buio di quelle notti, ogni sforzo gli sembrava infinito. Per non fermarsi e rinunciare, l’uomo inganna se stesso, sostituendo gli obiettivi che non è riuscito a raggiungere con altri, che ugualmente non raggiungerà; ma le nuove imprese e i nuovi tentativi lo obbligheranno a cercare dentro di sé altre energie e maggiore coraggio. Così l’uomo si autoinganna e col passare del tempo diviene sempre più e senza speranza debitore verso se stesso e verso tutto quello che lo circonda.”
― Ivo Andrić, quote from Bosnian Chronicle

“Our first kiss was soft, sweet. A question on my lips. He tasted like the watermelon bubble gum he was always chewing, and the stolen summer night.”
― Jessi Kirby, quote from Things We Know by Heart

“The man who was speaking had a degree in jargon and a doctorate in nonsense.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from A God in Ruins

“At four that morning my son, Peter Williams Chambliss, slid into the world tiny and red and roaring with life and the awful love that caught and whirled me away when they laid him on my stomach was as strong and old as the earth and would, I knew dimly, abide as long.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony

Interesting books

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.