“I must go-- the aunts will be worried. Guy, I don't know if we will meet again, but--" Her voice broke and she tried again. "Sometimes, when you're alone and you look up at--" Once more, she had to stop. Then she managed, "If I cannot be anything else... could I be your Star Sister? Could I at least be that?"
Guy dug his nails into his palms. Everything in him rose in protest at the fey, romantic conceit. He did not want her in the heavens, linked to him by some celestial whimsy, but here and now in the flesh and after the death of the flesh, her hand in his as they rose from graves like these when the last trump sounded.
"Yes," he managed to say. "You can be my Star Sister. You can at least be that.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from The Reluctant Heiress
“She took a deep breath, inhaling the night air scented with hay, honeysuckle and the rich waters of the lake, listened to the music and laughter coming from the theatre, tilted her head to the the stars. She had never seen them so brilliant and clear. Cassiopeia, Orion, the great girdle of the Milky Way-and her own birth sign, Gemini. With such staggering beauty in the world, how could anyone not rejoice?
It seemed however, that 'anyone' could. For at once came the age-old cry of lovers since time began. 'What are the stars if i am not gazing at them with him? What is beauty except something we share?”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from The Reluctant Heiress
“[Tessa] knew about phantom limbs [....] Her cheek, where the Englishman's fingers had been, did not exactly ache ... but very strangely, most curiously ... it felt.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from The Reluctant Heiress
“Do I know everything about him already? she thought, bewildered. And back came the answer: Everything. You are branded with this knowledge, you will have it for the rest of time.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from The Reluctant Heiress
“It is a fearful thing to love what time can touch.”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from The Reluctant Heiress
“The Unconscious, lately discovered by Professor Freud and used by others to store their joys, fears and frustrations, was for Nerine a gigantic subterranean wardrobe”
― Eva Ibbotson, quote from The Reluctant Heiress
Eva Ibbotson
Born place: in Vienna, Austria
Born date January 21, 1925
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“Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”
― Kingsley Amis, quote from Lucky Jim
“Everybody tells lie sometimes, she replied . Wouldn't be human if you didn't. But mostly I tell the truth. - Alice”
― Joseph Delaney, quote from Revenge of the Witch
“Though mountains melt and oceans burn,
The gifts of love shall still return.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty
“He smiled – a real smile. Damn. It was easier to deal with him when he was being thoroughly vile. "Look, I’m sorry for being so rude earlier today. Your presence came as something of a shock and I reacted badly."
"Oh." Geared for battle, his apology took me utterly by surprise. I gaped.
"Aunt Arabella spoke very highly of you," he added, heaping coals of fire on my head. "She was impressed by your work on the Purple Gentian."
"Why all this sudden amiability?" I asked suspiciously, crossing my arms across my chest.
"Are you always this blunt?"
"I’m too tired to be tactful," I said honestly.
"Fair enough." Stretching, Colin detached himself from the wall. "Can I make you some hot chocolate as a token of peace? I was just about to have some myself," he added.
Suiting action to words, he loped over to the counter beside the sink and checked the level of water in a battered brown plastic electric kettle. Satisfied, he plugged it into the wall, flipping the red switch on the side.
I followed him over to the counter, the linen folds of the nightgown trailing after me across the linoleum. "As long as you promise not to slip any arsenic in it."
Colin rooted around in a cupboard above the sink for the cocoa tin and held it out to me to sniff. "See? Arsenic free."
I leant back against the counter, my elbows behind me on the marble work surface. "I don’t think arsenic is supposed to have a smell, is it?"
"Damn, foiled again." Colin spooned Cadbury’s instant hot chocolate into two mugs, one decorated with large purple flowers, and the other with a quotation that I thought might be Jane Austen, but the author’s name was hidden around the other side of the mug. "Look, if it makes you feel better, I promise to do a very bad job hiding your body."
"In that case, carry on," I yawned.”
― Lauren Willig, quote from The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
“Well, you look…” Mirabeau hesitated as Lissianna reached them, then finally finished with, “the same. What happened?”
“Anemic.” She spat the word with annoyance.
“But he looked so healthy,” Jeanne protested.
“Padded shoulders and bottled tan,” she said. “And that’s not all.”
“What else could there be?” Mira asked dryly.
Lissianna grimaced. “He had a cucumber down his pants.”
Jeanne gave a disbelieving giggle, but Mirabeau groaned, and said, “It must have been a seedless English cucumber, the man looked huge.”
Lissianna gaped. “You looked?”
“You didn’t?” she countered.
-Mirabeau, Jeanne, & Lissianna”
― Lynsay Sands, quote from A Quick Bite
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