Jessie Burton Quotes & Sayings

From little seeds great flowers grow. — Jessie Burton

Then where is home, Johannes?" He looks at the maps on his wall. "I don't know," He says. "Where comfort is. And that is hard to find. — Jessie Burton

the browning Assendelft flatlands, this stranger — Jessie Burton

But the words she chooses withhold their best qualities, they refuse to match the way she feels inside. — Jessie Burton

All we can do if we're lucky is stich up the mistakes other people make. — Jessie Burton

Pity, unlike hate, can be boxed and put away. — Jessie Burton

Like most artists, everything I produced was connected to who I was - and so I suffered according to how my work was received. The idea that anyone might be able to detach their personal value from their public output was revolutionary. — Jessie Burton

The pastor looks at the money. It is money coming from the wife of a sodomite. It is money coming from a woman. It is the deep-lying root of evil. But it is a lot of money. — Jessie Burton

The turnip cannot thrive in the tulips patch of soil. — Jessie Burton

But how right is it to kill a man for something that is in his soul? — Jessie Burton

A lifetime isn't enough to know how a person will behave. — Jessie Burton

Words are water in this city. One drop of rumour could drown us. — Jessie Burton

The more they try to look holy the less I am convinced, — Jessie Burton

...Is there ever such a thing as a whole story, or an artist's triumph, a right way to look through the glass? It all depends on where the light falls. — Jessie Burton

Just because someone says something with passion, doesn't make it true. — Jessie Burton

The bars on our cage are of our own making. — Jessie Burton

Take care, take care. This city thrives! It's money gives you wings to soar. But it is a yoke on your shoulders and you would do well to take note of the bruise around your neck. — Jessie Burton

Like Tracy Chevalier, Burton is skilled at evoking place . . . Wonderful' Guardian — Jessie Burton

There are horizons through the brickwork, you wait and see. — Jessie Burton

Hard grind got us the glory, — Jessie Burton

That may be. But to decide that I was never going to live as a proper woman was not your choice to make.' 'What do you mean a proper woman?' 'A proper woman marries - she has children -' 'Then what does that make me? Am I not a proper woman? Last time I looked I certainly was. — Jessie Burton

I thought I deserved them, the sort of people you found only in novels. Quick — Jessie Burton

Freedom is a glorious thing. Free yourself, Marin. The bars on your cage are of your own making. — Jessie Burton

We were born to imagine. — Jessie Burton

I love. I love you. From back to front, I love you. — Jessie Burton

We're nothing more than prisoners to your desire. — Jessie Burton

Not all of us receive the ends that we deserve. Many moments that change a life's course - a conversation with a stranger on a ship, for example - are pure luck. And yet no one writes you a letter, or chooses you as their confessor, without good reason. This is what she taught me: you have to be ready in order to be lucky. You have to put your pieces into play. — Jessie Burton

A Depressive?'
'Smiles in ballrooms, weeps in bedrooms. Ill in her head.' Olive tapped her temple. 'And here.' She touched her heart. — Jessie Burton

Souls and purses, she thinks, these two are obsessed with souls and purses. — Jessie Burton

My life was a beanstalk and I was Jack, and the foliage was shooting up and up, abundant, impressive, at such speed that I could barely cling on. — Jessie Burton

The night darkens, the stars unfriendly, the cold a knife upon her neck - but Nella waits, until she can no longer difference between Johannes and the darkness that carries him away. — Jessie Burton

In suffering do we find our truest selves," she says. — Jessie Burton

I see you are working your usual magic this evening." "Not magic, Madame. Just me." Agnes — Jessie Burton

I felt nothing change in the room, except the shock of my voice alone and the peculiar euphoria one feels in the wake of applause, feeling at once cheapened and triumphant. — Jessie Burton

Do you have a body if there is no one there to touch it? I suppose you do, but sometimes it felt like I didn't. I was just a mind floating around the rooms. — Jessie Burton

How do I begin to love you? - the — Jessie Burton

You have to keep your wealth afloat and no one will do it for you. It'll run through your fingers if you don't care. — Jessie Burton

But words are water in Amsterdam, they flood your ears and set the rot, and the church's east corner is crowded. — Jessie Burton

Amsterdam: Where the pendulum swings from God to a guilder. — Jessie Burton

The ink was secret nectar, for Marin isn't married. — Jessie Burton

What was once, is no longer. — Jessie Burton

Then the birds flew away, their names turned to kisses, a silence to spell a new world. — Jessie Burton

Growing older does not seem to make you more certain, Nella thinks. It simply presents you with more reasons for doubt. — Jessie Burton

She has always thought that kindness was an active thing. But the not doing of something, an act of restraint -- could that be kindness too? — Jessie Burton

But - love , Mother. Will I love him?

The girl wants love , ' Mrs Oortman cried theatrically to the peeling Assendelft walls. 'She wants the peaches and the cream. — Jessie Burton

What was it like to see Lawrie smile? I can try: it was as if a healer had placed their hands upon my chest. My kneecaps porridge, jaw tingling, no hope to swallow. — Jessie Burton

She had never had a friend like this, in her private room, combing her hair, listening to her, talking about silly nonsense and the uselessness of one's parents; how the future was perfect, because they hadn't lived it yet. — Jessie Burton

She had told me that the approval of other people should never be my goal — Jessie Burton

Hard grind got us the glory, the saying goes-- but sloth will slide us back into the sea. — Jessie Burton

Because, Petronella - it's something in his soul. It's something in his soul and you can't get it out. — Jessie Burton

In suffering we find our truest selves. — Jessie Burton

This is not a conversation, it is Agnes sending out darts and watching them pierce. — Jessie Burton

True love was a flower in the gut, its petals unfurling inside out. You would risk all for love -- blissful, never without its drops of dismay. — Jessie Burton

You are sunlight through a window, which I stand in, warmed. My darling. — Jessie Burton

Above their rooftops Nature is doing her best to keep up, and the clouds in colors of saffron and apricot echo the spoils of the glorious republic. Nella — Jessie Burton

Writing is a leap of faith. But how wonderful that the person you're putting faith in is yourself. — Jessie Burton

I feel younger than eighteen but burdened as a eighty-year-old. — Jessie Burton

The rules of this house are written in water. I must either sink or swim. — Jessie Burton

Why are we so trapped by the hours, the minutes of every day? Why can't we live the life that's always out of reach? — Jessie Burton

The surface of Amsterdam thrives on these mutual acts of surveillance, the neighborly smothering of a person's spirit. — Jessie Burton

As she starts crushing the nuts and cloves, the maid's whispering, her air of secrety and conviction tastes more delicious to Nella than the pasty on her plate. — Jessie Burton

You are a stone, thrown upon a lake. But the ripples you create will never make you still. — Jessie Burton

of fear beats inside her. Who is this woman, watching from afar, who comments — Jessie Burton

Believe it or don't believe it, Madame. But my feet are tired too. Bloody tired. Like a dead man's. — Jessie Burton

Love is better in the chase than caught - by Marin — Jessie Burton

Every woman is the architect of her own fortune. — Jessie Burton

A piece of art only succeeds when it's creator...possesses the belief that brings it into being — Jessie Burton

Marin believes love is better in the chase than caught. — Jessie Burton

I'd prefer to rise in love , she thinks - lifting up to the clouds , not plunging to the earth. She pictures herself , weightless and adored , delirious in ecstasy. — Jessie Burton

Here she is a puppet, a vessel for others to pour their speech. And it is not a man she has married, but a world. — Jessie Burton

There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed. — Jessie Burton

Everything Man sees he takes for a toy.
Thus is he always, forever a boy. — Jessie Burton

Love is best a phantom than reality, better in the chase than caught. — Jessie Burton

GOD - the importance of invisible over tangible — Jessie Burton

Nothing here is more fabulous than the truth — Jessie Burton

When you have truly come to know a person, Nella -- when you see beneath the sweeter gestures, the smiles -- when you see the rage and the pitiful fear which each of us hide -- then forgiveness is everything. We are all in desperate need of it. — Jessie Burton

What are we all chasing? Nella wonders. To live, of course. To be unbound from the invisible ropes that Johannes spoke of in his study. Or to be happy in them, at least. — Jessie Burton

For what am I, she wonders, but a product of my own imagination? — Jessie Burton

This city is like no other city in the world. It is brilliant but it is bloated, and I've never called it home — Jessie Burton

Perhaps this is fashionable conversation - combative and unsettling, passing for casual talk. — Jessie Burton

Love your children, for they are the seeds that will make this city bloom. — Jessie Burton

Neighbours watching neighbours, twisting ropes to bind us all. — Jessie Burton

The air is hot, the atmosphere a bruise. — Jessie Burton

sometimes it's hard to love a person you know too well. — Jessie Burton

My brother knows the danger of having nothing to do. — Jessie Burton

her bed by the stove, Cornelia's hand hovers over the remaining cabbage. — Jessie Burton

I'm doing the absolute opposite of giving myself away. As far as I'm concerned, I'll be completely visible. If the painting sells, I'll be in Paris, hanging on a wall. If anything, I'm being selfish. It's perfect; all the freedom of creation, with none of the fuss. — Jessie Burton