Sandra Gulland · 448 pages
Rating: (14K votes)
“I play out the cards. They say: This is Heaven, this is Hell. It is one.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“He calls me Josephine. He says I'm an angel, a saint, his good lucky star. I know I'm no angel, but in truth I have begun to like this Josephine he sees. She is intelligent; she amuses; she is pleasing. She is grace and charm and heart. Unlike Rose; scared, haunted and needy. Unlike Rose with her sad life.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“A feeling of disquiet continues to haunt me. As a youth one dreams of love; by the time one wakes, it is too late.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“The Queen has been guillotined, accused of crimes beyond imagining. Last night she appeared to me in a dream, handing me her head.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“You are thinking of the past." I put my arms around her. She'd risen from childbed too soon. "We are the past," she said.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“Daggers ever at the ready, I went about the day: children fed, linens mended, bedclothes aired. In little ways one conquers fear.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“I lowered myself into an armchair. I was enveloped in a cloud of dust. All that remained of my life was in my lap. I sat for a time thus, as still as the mute objects that surrounded me. How little it all meant, in the end.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“I kissed his cheek. "My King." I swooped into the courtly curtsy he'd taught me as a girl, regally kicking an imaginary train aside as I turned to go. He was laughing silently as I left. For a moment I saw that spark again. I did not say goodbye.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“Now I have discovered where it is that she goes. It's the guillotine that draws her, across the river in the Place Louis Quinze- Place de la Revolution now-where daily crowds gather, the vendors selling lemonade, the children playing prisoner's base, the old ladies gossiping as the heads fall.”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
“One leads, willing or not," Deputy Tallien answered. "It takes courage to face one's own death but even more so the death of others. We are learning this lesson well." The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. by Sandra Gullan”
― Sandra Gulland, quote from The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
Sandra Gulland
Born place: in Miami, The United States
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“Doubt, he would say, set men free … Doubt, not truth! Beliefs were the foundation of actions. Those who believed without doubting, he would say, acted without thinking. And those who acted without thinking were enslaved.”
― R. Scott Bakker, quote from The Warrior Prophet
“Would you think me such a fool that you could be here, in this city, this building, THIS ROOM and me not know about it??”
― Jessica Shirvington, quote from Empower
“Yes. I tried to use the same technique with you. I didn’t want to pass out.”
― Lynsay Sands, quote from Vampire Most Wanted
“There's never any warning that something extraordinary is about to happen, is there?”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“Goodness is adorable, and it is immortal. When it is trodden down into the earth it springs up again, and human beings scrabble in the dust to find the first green seedling of its return. The stock cannot survive save by the mutual kindness of men and women, of old and young, of state and individual. Hatred comes before love, and gives the hater strange and delicious pleasures, but its works are short-lived; the head is cut from the body before the time of natural death, the lie is told to frustrate the other rogue’s plan before it comes to fruit. Sooner or later society tires of making a mosaic of these evil fragments; and even if the rule of hatred lasts some centuries it occupies no place in real time, it is a hiatus in reality, and not the vastest material thefts, not world wide raids on mines and granaries, can give it substance.”
― Rebecca West, quote from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon
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