Connie Brockway Quotes & Sayings

Find out what people want to do, then tell them to do it. They'll think you're a genius. — Connie Brockway

I want you cool and regal, earthy and impertinent, spoiling for a fight and abashed at your own temper. I want you flushed with exertion and rosy with sleep. I want you teasing and provocative, somber and thoughtful. I want every emotion, every mood, every year in a lifetime to come. I want you beside me, to encourage and argue with me, to help me and let me help you. I want to be your champion and lover, your mentor and student. — Connie Brockway

The toughest role is real life. — Connie Brockway

Conscience is like a pet: If you spoil it by too much attention it'll start yipping at the most inopportune times. — Connie Brockway

Love shouldn't be comfortable. — Connie Brockway

How can you love me?" she asked, forcing herself to say the words that would kill the tenderness in his eyes. "You don't even know me. You know 'Lady Agatha,' a composite, a character, a role I played."

He shook his head, his negation gentle but certain. "I didn't fall in love with a character, a title, or an occupation. I didn't fall in love with you because of your past or despite it.
"I love you because of your intensity and passion, because you make me want to be better than I am, because seeing my reflection in your eyes makes me better than I am. I love you because you laugh easily and honestly. I love you because you carried an ugly mutt into a drawing room as though it were a prince and because you gave an old soldier a strawberry trifle. I love you, Letty. — Connie Brockway

Some days you're the cockroach, some days you're the boot heel. — Connie Brockway

This is all very interesting," Briarly said. "But, perhaps you can reacquaint yourself with Miss Peyton at a more appropriate time, Captain Oakes. Though you may be my sister's guest, here you are very much de trop."
"Am I?" Neill asked. "Allow me to rectify the situation." He turned to Kate. "I believe I saw you limping just now."
She blinked in confusion. She wasn't limping-Before she knew what he was about, he'd taken hold of her hand, pulled her forward, and was scooping her up into his arms as neatly and carelessly as a laundress collects bedding. — Connie Brockway

The heart doesn't ask permission. It is singularly unconcerned with the qualifications of those it chooses to love. It mocks the intellect, it subjugates reason, and it holds hostage the will to survive. — Connie Brockway

Ignorance is never better. I may not like what I learn, but I would rather know the truth than naively give credence to something that does not exist. — Connie Brockway

I am no good without you, Ginesse," he said. "I spent a lifetime alone, but I never understood loneliness until I was away from you. I never understood happiness until I saw you again. — Connie Brockway

Foolish Lily," he said. "Don't you know why I haven't touched you? Didn't you guess that once you were in my arms I would never let you go? — Connie Brockway

She was as unused to seeing tenderness in a man's eyes as she was to being caught off guard. Admiration? Amusement? Yes. Even desire. But those looks could be leveled at any inanimate object: a beautiful painting, a political cartoon, a French postcard. Tenderness was far more intimate, reserved for beings, not things. — Connie Brockway

The sound of the surf mingled with the wind rushing in his ears, and still it did not drown out the sound of her voice: "Can you think of any reason why I should not stay?"
A thousand. None of them good enough. — Connie Brockway

If you forget your lines, you had better mumble with conviction. — Connie Brockway

Anyway, as I was saying, I don't know about you, Granddad, but I come from a long line of" - her gaze flicked through the open door into the room behind - "fishermen, who taught me that whilst I wasn't ever to think I was better than anyone else, I should always keep in mind that I was just as good. — Connie Brockway

Give me a strong back, over a soft heart. — Connie Brockway

Who of us would have ended up where we are if someone hadn't had the good sense to interfere with us? — Connie Brockway

Resist demonstrating that your worldliness was more fiction than fact," he whispered. "You, Lady Agatha, in the common parlance with which you are so fascinatingly familiar, 'ain't so tough. — Connie Brockway

You are my country, Desdemona ... My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining. — Connie Brockway

Come on, Avery." Fresh tears stained her cheeks. Her voice shook. "Wake up,
damn it!" She sobbed, rocking forward and back, her arms wrapping tightly
around his big body. "Don't you want to shout at me for disobeying you, you
overbearing, domineering male?"
She squeezed her eyes shut and bit hard on her lip. He couldn't die. He was too
stubborn, too alive, too vigorous. And she couldn't lose him. She loved him too
much.
"I ... am a ... gentleman," she heard him gasp. "I never shout at women. — Connie Brockway

"Do you know," his gaze speared her where she stood, "that since I have loved you, I have not regretted one word, one glance, one touch? And I am so certain in loving you, so sure of it, of us, that I cannot conceive that you regret any of these things, either."

He gave a humorless laugh. "Loving you has made me a monster of egotism, my dear. But there it is. I am fearless of misstep, unable to conceive that I could err so gravely that you would turn from me." His voice strained with his need to convince her. But she needed no convincing. She knew he loved her.

"I could never turn from you" she breathed. — Connie Brockway

Do you gamble, Captain MacNeill?"
"Never, sir."
"No?" the marquis looked surprised. "Thought you soldiers were all inveterate gamblers."
"Only with our lives, sir. Never had anything else I could afford to lose. — Connie Brockway

Has he ever even said he loved you?"
"He's been telling me for years," she said softly, "I just wasn't listening — Connie Brockway

Another suitor you failed to mention?" he asked, only half in jest.

Her eyes widened innocently, she started to shake her head - and froze.

"Look mister," Jim said tiredly. "I don't know who you are, and I don't care. You're too damn old for her-"

"Hi, Daddy. — Connie Brockway

The knowledge that she was needed by something living, that she could benefit another creature, produce happiness, or contentment, or just a feeling of security
somehow it filled a part of her as nothing else had. — Connie Brockway

If it's got a beard or a battery, you're going to have trouble with it. — Connie Brockway

He loved but he did not know how to be loved. — Connie Brockway

Without remorse she gave good-bye to her fantasies. They'd served their purpose, they'd awoken her heart to its potential. But as far as using them as a template for her life ... — Connie Brockway

Mealy-mouthed. My mother would fillet any man who made such a ridiculous statement." Both men glanced at Lily who, having seen Kathy's son restored to her, had regained her seat, and was listening quietly. She lifted her dark eyes to her daughter's. "Quite right, Jenny," she said serenely with a smile at her husband. — Connie Brockway

An intelligent lady, a little too mature for recklessness, a little too young for caution. — Connie Brockway

He wanted her. Her. Nothing could take that away from her. Ever. He wanted her, not the status he thought her purloined name could bring him — Connie Brockway

She had meant to woo him. In her own weird, unsettling way she had simply been courting him and he'd been too stupid to realize it. — Connie Brockway

She clutched the train ticket tighter and waited for the sense of escape to come over her as it had a dozen times before, that heady sensation of having just scooted through the clanging gate, of eluding the thrown net. It didn't come. She was running again, but she wasn't escaping. She'd been chased to ground a long, long time ago. — Connie Brockway

War does not ask which of its victims deserves to die and which does not. It is indiscriminate. Innocent as well as guilty fall before it. — Connie Brockway

[S]he hardly deserved to be labeled a witch.'
'I find it hard to believe anyone could take such a thing seriously. This isn't the Dark Ages.'
'All ages are dark, Hayden,' Grey said gently. — Connie Brockway

Where will you go? What will you do?" he demanded.
"That need be no concern of yours
"
"The hell it isn't!" he shouted. "Everything about you is my concern."
She opened her mouth to deny this but the look of him stopped her. For a long tense moment he studied her and when he spoke his voice was low and furious and yearning.
"I don't give a bloody damn if I never share your bed, your name, or your house
you are still my concern. You can leave, take yourself from my ken, disappear for the rest of my life but you cannot untangle yourself from my
my concern. That I have of you, Miss Bede, for that, at least, I do not need your permission."
His words shocked her. She looked decades hence and she saw a specter of what might have been haunting her every moment, her every act, for the rest of her life.
"Your concern is misplaced."
"It's mine to misplace," he said steadily. — Connie Brockway

I love you," she whispered, gazing up into his pale gray eyes.
He smiled crookedly, for a moment looking at her with a dazzled air. He had, she realized sadly, no experience hearing those words. He didn't know how to react. "I figured as much."
This time, she didn't hit him. — Connie Brockway

I love you, Ginesse. Don't you see? You are my Zerzura. You are my undiscovered country, both my heart's destination and journey. Gold and temples, jewels and gems don't hold one bit of your enticement. You are my Solomon's mine, my uncharted empire. You are the only home I need to know, the only journey I want to take, the only treasure I would die to claim. You are exotic and familiar, opiate and tonic, hard conscience and sweet temptation. And now I have no more words to give you, Ginesse. I only have my heart, and you already own that. — Connie Brockway

She'd stood by that creed. No softness, because the world wasn't soft; lots of laughter, because if you were in on the joke, the joke couldn't be on you; And no wanting what you couldn't take, because the world never gave.
Or so she'd thought. — Connie Brockway

Pain is the only reward for clinging to impossible dreams. (Harry Braxton) — Connie Brockway

Avery?" she whispered.
He gathered her closer, his eyes still closed.
"Avery?"
"Shh." His voice was low and infinitely sad. "Hush. Tomorrow's waiting outside this door. It's crouching there in an ocean of words and uncertainties. But it's not here yet and we are. Lily. Lillian. Love. I'm begging you. Let me love you again. Let me love you all night long." She answered with a kiss. — Connie Brockway

And enigmatic smile is worth ten pages of dialog. — Connie Brockway

They locked him in the stockade for four days. No other prisoners occupied the other cells that ran the length of the room. He was alone, and that was fine with him. He needed to think, and that was best done in a place where he wouldn't see Ginesse Braxton - Ginesse, not Mildred - because she did things to his thought processes, such as dammed them up completely.
She acted and he reacted: viscerally, irrepressibly, and ruinously.
She fell in the water; he dove in after her. She laughed; he smiled. She mentioned the beauty of the sunset; he saw colors in it he hadn't ever noticed. She peeked at him from under her gold-tipped lashes; he grew hard as Damascus steel. Pomfrey said something derogatory; he wanted to kill the sonofabitch with his bare hands.
Things like that. — Connie Brockway

No one ever fell in love gracefully. — Connie Brockway

Because every time you said my name, it would touch
your lips." His voice lost its hard edge, grew as dark and
smoky as his gaze. "Like a kiss. — Connie Brockway

At best she's a scrawny, hollow-eyed croneling." "Croneling?" John tilted his head in perplexity. "Croneling. Noun. One who has yet to achieve cronehood. The adolescent phase of the British crone," Avery lectured. — Connie Brockway

Madam, I could teach lessons in hell on the subject of 'want.' — Connie Brockway

He stopped. She heard the intake of his breath. "You are my country, Desdemona." Yearning, harsh and poignant and she felt herself swaying toward him. "My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining."
She gasped.
His gaze fell, shielded by his lashes. An odd, half-mocking smile played about his lips. "You'll never hear old Blake say something like that."
She swallowed, unable to speak, her senses abraded by his stimulating words, her pulse hammering in anticipation? Trepidation?
"Remember my words next time he calls you a bloody English rose. — Connie Brockway

As a gentleman- assuming you still have some pretensions in that direction- of honor- again, perhaps presumptuous, but still supposing your passing acquaintance with the concept- it is your duty- I won't even trouble to speculate here, but remain naively hopeful- to protect those under your care. — Connie Brockway

I find sarcasm before noon sours the stomach. — Connie Brockway

Robin had never been in love before, which is precisely how he recognized the sensation with such absolute certainty. — Connie Brockway

She felt abused, used, cherished, and pleasured.
She despised him. She loved him. She mistrusted him. She had complete faith in him. Ah! — Connie Brockway

You can figure out what the villain fears by his choice of weapons. — Connie Brockway

The lower your decolletage, the less the need for conversation. — Connie Brockway

There are moments on stage when everything comes together. Then the kid in the front row coughs. — Connie Brockway

Toffs?" Jack kept his eyes averted from his — Connie Brockway

Charm is getting people to say "yes" without ever having to ask them a question. — Connie Brockway

Passion is tragedy-in-waiting — Connie Brockway

And just what sort of gentlemen do you imagine now will be paying me court? ... I see ... In other words, social climbers who will not care that I am desperate or old men as desperate as I ... I refuse to marry a mushroom for the manure from which he's sprung. Nor shall I marry an old man to be his broodmare. — Connie Brockway

I've thought of a reason," Kit MacNeill said — Connie Brockway

Etiquette, Seward had once told Jamison, was all that mattered. Ideologies waxed and waned, religions developed and eroded, political parties rose and fell from power. Only courtesy remained one of the few things valued by all civilized men. — Connie Brockway