Quotes from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets

Eva Rice ·  368 pages

Rating: (6.3K votes)


“Men, I thought, were more trouble than they were worth. Really, one should stick to books where one sees the hero coming a mile off.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets


“Like all intelligent people, she functions very well in extreme disorder.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets


“Mama was amazing like that; I spent most of my teenage years assuming that she knew nothing about me, and all of my twenties realizing that she knew everything.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets


“There's never any warning that something extraordinary is about to happen, is there?”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets


“If I could take people out of their heads for a little while, if I could give them a dose of fantasy, that was all that mattered. You can't put a price on escape.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets



“Would it ever, ever leave? I had become used to the ache now; it was with me all the time, and never seemed to lessen. Time was no healer, I decided, but it was a great accommodator.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets


“As he started 'Whisky and Gin' and the cheering and the shrieking filled my senses, I thought of Mama, shattered by the war and Papa's death and I wished with all my heart that she could understand how it felt to be us that night - how it felt to be eighteen and unbeaten, eighteen and alive.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets


“I didn't hear you come in. I was away with the ghosts of my beautiful youth.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets


“The odd thing about Mama was that she liked to think of herself as a doomy sort of person, but there was a natural optimism in her that refused to be defeated, however hard she squashed it down, and I know that she never lost faith completely.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets


About the author

Eva Rice
Born place: The United Kingdom
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Popular quotes

“Yet for a moment it seemed to him that the men who had dragged marble from Italy and porphyry from Portugal, who had ransacked the jungle for its rarest woods and paid their millions to build this opulent and fantastical theatre, had done so in order that a young girl with loose brown hair should move across its stage, drawing her future from its empty air.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from A Company of Swans


“A church is a body of men who assert that they are in possession of infallible truth. Heresy is the opinion of the men who do not admit the infallibility of the Church's truth.”
― Leo Tolstoy, quote from The Kingdom of God Is Within You


“The health care establishment is structured to profit from chemical and surgical intervention. Diet still takes the back seat to drugs and surgery. One criticism that is constantly leveled at the dietary argument is that patients will not make such fundamental changes. One doctor charges that Dr. Esselstyn’s patients change their eating habits simply because of Esselstyn’s “zealous belief.”47 This criticism is not only wrong and insulting to patients; it is also self-fulfilling. If doctors do not believe that patients will change their diets, they will neglect to talk about diet, or will do it in an off-handed, disparaging way.”
― T. Colin Campbell, quote from The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-term Health


“Torak's dead."
"Really?" Aunt Pol said. "Have you seen his grave? Have you opened the grave and seen his bones?”
― David Eddings, quote from The Belgariad, Vol. 1: Pawn of Prophecy / Queen of Sorcery / Magician's Gambit


“Jack stares at me blankly. ‘A what?’ he asks.

I choke back the laugh. ‘A boy. You know? A Y-chromosome holder? You don’t seem to notice them as much as you do the X-carriers.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Jack asks, ‘A boy? She’s just a kid.’

I hesitate, wondering how Jack is only just doing the maths on this one now. ‘She’s seventeen. She’s not a kid anymore.’

Jack looks like he’s about to go all Incredible Hulk and burst out of his clothes before rampaging through the bar. He jumps off the stool. ‘If any boy ever lays a finger on my sister, I’m going to kill him,’ he says.

Again I stare at him in silence, thinking of all the girls Jack has laid fingers and much more of his anatomy on besides. Poor Lila. If she ever wants to have a shot at a normal life, as in one that doesn’t require a vow of celibacy, she needs to stay in London.”
― Sarah Alderson, quote from Losing Lila


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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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