Quotes from This Dark Endeavor

Kenneth Oppel ·  298 pages

Rating: (10.3K votes)


“There is a passion in you that scares me.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor


“The preface? Why would he waste time with the preface? Skip the preface and move on to the meat of the thing!”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor


“It was as though, in one moment, he had become a stranger. And I a stranger to myself.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor


“You see, when medicine works, it is blessed science, and when it fails, it is witchcraft. - Polidori”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor


“No, indeed, 'pig' is very expressive. And an excellent description of a fellow who flirts with his brother's beloved.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor



“If she can bite a vulture, she can jump a crack.
~Victor Frankenstein”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor


“Beyond the lake, over the mountains, the clouds were illuminated from within by a brilliant stutter of lightning, and in that split second Elizabeth and I were etched against the sky.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor


“Konrad had gone to the New World without me, and no matter how fast I ran westward, how close I kept to the sunsets, I would never catch up with him now.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor


“We all knew no respectable physician would remove my fingers just for the asking, and we had no time anyway.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor


“What do you make of him?" I asked Elizabeth.

"Apart from the fact he's clearly insane?"

"What can he learn from Konrad's blood?" I said. "Except that he needs it in his body to live!"

"There is something ghoulish about it."

"He's like a vampyre,”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor



“Behind us I saw the water, still welling up from the tunnel, curving round in a frothing serpentine torrent to plunge down the other descending passage. For a moment we all sat there and watched, numb and exhausted.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor


“Do you worry it is sinful?" I asked.
She took a breath. "No," she said firmly. "God is the creator, and anything on this earth is here by His permission. I cannot think He minds if we use His creations - only how. For good or ill. What we seek is for good, so I will not worry about it.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from This Dark Endeavor


About the author

Kenneth Oppel
Born place: Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Sam found a chair under Robin’s butt and evicted him from it, bringing it over to his pregnant wife.“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Robin apologized.
“Thanks,” Alyssa said to Robin as she sat down, even as she gave Sam a darkly amused look.
“What?” he said. “I was just helping him think.”
― Suzanne Brockmann, quote from All Through the Night


“There is not a living man who does not wish to play the despot when he is stiff: it seems to him his joy is less when others appear to have as much fun as he; by an impulse of pride, very natural at this juncture, he would like to be the only one in the world capable of experiencing what he feels: the idea of seeing another enjoy as he enjoys reduces him to a kind of equality with that other, which impairs the unspeakable charm despotism causes him to feel.”
― Marquis de Sade, quote from Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings


“How easy it was to disturb someone with just a few words, words that didn’t fit the protocol. Humans came with a manual, a set of rules, a code that saturated every waking moment of their pitiful lives. But if you stepped outside that code, it threw people off because there was nothing in the manual about seriously fucking with somebody’s head.”
― Anne Frasier, quote from Hush


“What would have happened had he not been killed? He would certainly have had a rocky road to the nomination. The power of the Johnson administration and much of the party establishment was behind Humphrey. Still, the dynamism was behind Kennedy, and he might well have swept the convention. If nominated, he would most probably have beaten the Republican candidate, Richard M. Nixon. Individuals do make a difference to history. A Robert Kennedy presidency would have brought a quick end to American involvement in the Vietnam War. Those thousands of Americans—and many thousands more Vietnamese and Cambodians—who were killed from 1969 to 1973 would have been at home with their families. A Robert Kennedy presidency would have consolidated and extended the achievements of John Kennedy’s New Frontier and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. The liberal tide of the 1960s was still running strong enough in 1969 to affect Nixon’s domestic policies. The Environmental Protection Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act with its CETA employment program were all enacted under Nixon. If that still fast-flowing tide so influenced a conservative administration, what signal opportunities it would have given a reform president! The confidence that both black and white working-class Americans had in Robert Kennedy would have created the possibility of progress toward racial reconciliation. His appeal to the young might have mitigated some of the under-thirty excesses of the time. And of course the election of Robert Kennedy would have delivered the republic from Watergate, with its attendant subversion of the Constitution and destruction of faith in government. RRK”
― Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., quote from Robert Kennedy and His Times


“if you stay still, earth buries you, ready or not.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from For the Time Being


Interesting books

Summer Knight
(104.1K)
Summer Knight
by Jim Butcher
Moon Palace
(15.8K)
Moon Palace
by Paul Auster
The Siren
(22.7K)
The Siren
by Tiffany Reisz
The Warrior's Apprentice
(19.1K)
The Warrior's Appren...
by Lois McMaster Bujold
The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
(24.5K)
The Strange and Beau...
by Leslye Walton
Hunting Ground
(50.9K)
Hunting Ground
by Patricia Briggs

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.