Julie Anne Long Quotes & Sayings

He was sardonic even in his thoughts these days. — Julie Anne Long

The two of them froze and stared at each [sic] from across the silent, woolly garden.
And Ian, as he always did when he saw Falconbridge, felt a certain amount of shame. They had both shamed each other, on that fateful night, and really, it was hardly conversation kindling.
'Good morning,' Ian said politely.
'Good morning.'
Their voices echoed absurdly in the cool morning air.
A silence. Ian supposed it would be just a little too ironic if he scrambled up a fruit tree and clambered over a wall instead of walking past the duke, back to where he'd tethered his horse. — Julie Anne Long

I shall expect your reply within a month. Surely that is time enough to ... weigh your other offers.'
She stared at him. Well. She'd underestimated Lord Prescott. Or perhaps, more accurately, she hadn't fully estimated him ...
'Thank you, Lord Prescott. It's helpful to know that your desire for me will expire by a particular date.'
'Much like the desirability of any woman. You of all people should be fully aware that a woman's bloom doesn't last forever. Nor does her ability to bear children.'
...
'Thank you for reminding me. It slipped my mind, temporarily.'
He nodded, smiling a little, acknowledging her little barb. 'Good day, Miss de Ballesteros. I am not a man without feeling, and I think I shall depart now, to recover from the decidedly ambivalent receipt of my proposal.'
She smiled a little at that.
'Good day, Lord Prescott. Perhaps I should retire, too, to preserve my bloom. — Julie Anne Long

She slid her arms — Julie Anne Long

Oh, God," he said softly to himself. "I knew you were trouble. — Julie Anne Long

I love you," she murmured.
The words ... it was as though an entire sun had exploded in his chest.
He'd been ridiculous. His thrashing thoughts, his grand confusion and torment and helplessness
it was only love, had always been love, he supposed. It was no precipice he stood at, or rather precipices have little meaning when one finally acknowledges that one has wings. Connor stepped off.
"I love you, too."
Such grave, inadequate words for what it was he felt. — Julie Anne Long

For if light had a sound, it was that laugh. — Julie Anne Long

I suppose we all tend to want the impossible. And sometimes in attempting it we achieve something near enough to the impossible to elicit satisfaction. — Julie Anne Long

She would be incapable of not broaching. It took — Julie Anne Long

Murmured to him nonsense, which is the language of love, — Julie Anne Long

It isn't a weakness to accept kindness. It isn't a weakness to allow yourself to be cared for. — Julie Anne Long

Irony, when delivered cold and shaved very, very fine, could sound like amusement. — Julie Anne Long

Picture, if you will, Tommy, the fuse of a cannon. Now, when one touches a flame to a fuse, what happens? It's consumed bit ... '
He stepped toward her, so close that his boot toes nearly touched the toes of her slippers.
She sucked in a breath. But she stood her ground when his knees brushed hers.
' ... by bit ... '
His voice had gone perilously soft. ' ... by bit. Until ... '
His breath fluttered her hair.
His mouth was next to her ear now. 'Boom. — Julie Anne Long

Don't be tedious, Lavay. If it's so necessary for you to know," he said ungraciously. "She won a contest."
There was a short stunned silence.
"You ... played a game?" Lavay said this slow, flat incredulity, hilarity suppressed, clearly trying to picture it. "And you lost to a ... girl. What manner of contest was this? Ribbon-tying?"
Flint felt ridiculous now, in retrospect, which was doing nothing to settle his temper. "I challenged her to aim a dart ... let's just say it landed rather serendipitously in the right spot,"
he finished curtly. "She was lucky."
"You speak metaphorically, Captain? She aimed a dart as in the vein of Cupid? — Julie Anne Long

And in his weariness, only one word came to Jonathan, like a prayer. Tommy, he thought, invoking what was good and real. Tommy. The word for love in his world right now. Tommy. And he supposed the word that occurred to you in your darkest moments ... well, that word meant love. That was perhaps how you knew. And perhaps that was the purpose of dark moments. — Julie Anne Long

Fear did rather play havoc with one's self of time. — Julie Anne Long

The message was sealed with a blob of wax but no press of a signet. She slid a finger beneath to crack the seal, and read: I apologize if I've ever behaved like an ass.
It was the most romantic message she'd ever received. All other messages would strive to live up to it for the rest of her days. She was convinced of that in the moment. — Julie Anne Long

Vapidity was an excellent disguise for many qualities. — Julie Anne Long

Now, here's a philosophical dilemma for a vicar ... is it a lie if you don't know you're lying? Is it a lie if you're lying to yourself?"
"Is it a sin if I tell my cousin to bugger off? — Julie Anne Long

There had been counts in his life before. Counts before dueling pistols were fired. Counts before footraces and horse races. Counts in his head to postpone his release while some beautiful woman lay beneath him. — Julie Anne Long

I am going to take you every imaginable way,' he promised on a whisper, tugging her bodice lower.
'Excellent,' she murmured. She tugged his shirt from his trousers.
'Right side up, upside down, sideways, sitting, standing. You on top. Then me on top.'
'A brilliant plan.' His shirt fell from his shoulders. Oh, his shoulders. The vast glorious curve of them. She couldn't wait to lick one.
'Backward, forward. On the bed, on the table, on the settee.'
He paused, and lifted her dress off over her head with all the ceremony of an unveiling. It fell to the floor.
'And then?' she whispered.
'And then we'll do it all over again.'
It was the never-ending story! — Julie Anne Long

Her predicament (the word she had come to prefer in her mind, rather than "circumstances") had turned her into quite a philosopher, when by nature she'd always been a pragmatist. For instance, one allegedly wasn't rewarded for all of the good one did until on departed the Earthly Plane. But if you committed one (albeit epic) transgression, a lifetime of damnation seemed required. — Julie Anne Long

Beautiful. Jules once thought he'd understood what the word meant. He now believed it overused. Some word needed to be kept in reserve for the rare, the arresting, the surprising ... the magical. Or a new one invented. — Julie Anne Long

The wrong man could have brought it all crashing down," she told him. "A different man might have collapsed under the weight of the responsibility. — Julie Anne Long

He regarded her thoughtfully, and something about that look traveled up her spine like a trailed finger. — Julie Anne Long

How, she had no idea. She seldom considered the "how" of things. — Julie Anne Long

Your imagination has an impressive reach."
"Or my boredom an impressive scope. — Julie Anne Long

How had she ever thought his blue eyes placid as a lake? But there was untold power in any water: to buoy, to drown, to toss, to carry one to the safety of shore. — Julie Anne Long

Life is short, Tommy. Short and dangerous. A bit like you. — Julie Anne Long

Time took on a peculiarly viscous quality. — Julie Anne Long

She didn't want to need anything, particularly something - or someone - she quite simply couldn't have. Too much had been taken from her already, and she'd had enough of accommodating pain, of straightening her spine, of soldiering on — Julie Anne Long

Colin could not recall a single woman ever regarding him with anything so neutral as detachment. It suddenly seemed important to ascertain whether she was pretty, in the same way it was necessary to know whether a man was armed. — Julie Anne Long

When Phoebe glanced back at the marquess he swiftly lifted that rogue lock of hair, pointed at his forehead and mouthed: Good aim. She clapped a hand over her mouth. Dear God, he was sporting a bruise! So that's where she'd clocked him with his hat! And this explained the forelock. — Julie Anne Long

Magnanimous of you.'
His mouth twitched. 'Mmm. Use more words like that, please. Schoolmistress words. Long, impressive ones.' He'd made the last three words sound like an innuendo. — Julie Anne Long

Two is my number as well, Lady Balmain. — Julie Anne Long

I have learned that everyone else in the world is boring except you. — Julie Anne Long

Do the girls emerge quite ruined for marriage after you stuff them full of knowledge?"
"I should imagine most of our girls emerge less tolerant of fools, if that's what you mean."
- Dryden and Phoebe — Julie Anne Long

You shouldn't ask questions when you know at heart you'd prefer not to hear the answers. — Julie Anne Long

But love, real love, the kind that you fall in, isn't like Corinthians. The "suffereth long" and "is kind" nonsense. It's like the Song of Solomon. It's jealousy and fire and floods. It's everything that consumes." - Lady Fennimore — Julie Anne Long

Oh, I'm bowed, but unbroken. — Julie Anne Long

One of heartbreak's chief qualities seemed to be its ability to distort time and distances. — Julie Anne Long

I took a fall, he confirmed evenly. After a hesitation doubtless only Phoebe noticed.
And Phoebe didn't know whether it was the sort of fall Lucifer took, or the sort poets wrote about when love struck, or even if it was an innuendo at all, because she suspected everything was destined to sound like an innuendo from now on. — Julie Anne Long

Nonchalance, she could have told Argosy, does not pay. — Julie Anne Long

There are things the artist intends, and things the viewer sees, and what the viewer sees isn't always what the artist intends. Isn't always apparent upon first viewing. — Julie Anne Long

Should I apologize for my species for trotting out the same compliment again and again? Isn't it better than having none at all?"
"When you hear the same one again and again, it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that it's the only thing of note about one's person. — Julie Anne Long

A girl could forget her precise location in the universe when a man looked at her with eyes like those. — Julie Anne Long

Because "Platitude" was a language everyone spoke — Julie Anne Long

But there really was no point in asking. She read things, she knew things, and out they came, little surprises. It was strangely like unwrapping little gifts, not all of which he appreciated. She clung to facts and information, like flotsam in a shipwreck. They'd saved her. — Julie Anne Long

What are your pleasures and pursuits, Lord Moncrieffe?" Miss Eversea asked too brightly, when the silence had gone on for more than was strictly comfortable or polite.
That creaky conversation lubricant. It irritated him again that she was humoring him.
"Well, I'm partial to whores."
Her head whipped toward him like a weather-vane in a hurricane. Her eyes, he noted, were enormous, and such a dark blue they were nearly purple. Her mouth dropped, and the lower lip was quivering with shock or ... or ...
"Whor ... whores ... ?" She choked out the word as if she'd just inhaled it like bad cigar smoke.
He widened his own eyes with alarm, recoiling slightly.
"I ... I beg your pardon - Horses. Honestly, Miss Eversea," he stammered. "I do wonder what you think of me if that's what you heard. — Julie Anne Long

But the pain was old to him, and somehow it had become a part of him. He could bear it and speak of it. It had shaped him; he had accomodated it. He had loved abd he had lost and it had made him who he was. — Julie Anne Long

We did everything we could to save him, to defend him and still we knew he was going to die. One never feels more like speck upon the breast of the universe in those moments. — Julie Anne Long

Fallen woman." The term made a sort of poetic sense. Once the fall started, it seemed it never stopped. — Julie Anne Long

Ah, and that . . . that had been a mistake. If not for that, she might have been able to anticipate what happened next. Reveries made one soft. She never should have forgotten that the world was on the side of the planners, not the dreamers. — Julie Anne Long

It hurt. And just as there seemed to be no end in the kinds of pleasure he could give or to the ways in which she loved him, and because of this, no end to the way he could hurt her, again and again and again. — Julie Anne Long

And for a moment he simply held her and she held onto him.
It might have been the most perfect moment of his life so far. — Julie Anne Long

Such a fragile way to sustain a whole life: on a web one weaves for oneself. — Julie Anne Long

Use it all you want. Marry him. He'll never really be yours, and you'll never know it.
Or maybe you will. — Julie Anne Long

It knew things, that smile. — Julie Anne Long

Jules could have sworn there was a devilish glint in the shopkeepers eye.
'I find today I am in need of a bonnet.'
Mr. Postlethwaite was silent. And then his eyes crept toward the marquess's hairline.
'It will be a gift for a woman, Mr. Postlethwaite.'
'Of course, sir.'
The marquess wished the 'of course' sounded a bit more sincere. He'd scarcely been in the shop for more than three minutes and already his dignity was fraying. — Julie Anne Long

She wondered if seeds ever resented the sun, knowing it would shine with no quarter and give them no choice but to push their heads up out of the safety of the hard, hard ground and bloom. — Julie Anne Long

He wasn't at all what she expected. No: this wasn't true. He was everything she'd expected from everything she'd read about him - he was irritating, frivolous, arrogant, disconcertingly charming. It was just that she would not have suspected his intelligence had depth, that his wit was in part defense, that his charm was a result of, in part, startlingly acute perception and even ... grace. — Julie Anne Long

Very well," she said after a moment. "Here is how I see that loyalty and love are the same: You would lay down your life for someone for reasons of both love and loyalty. But loyalty implies dependence, doesn't it? For instance, dogs are loyal. It also implies indebtedness. For instance, servants are loyal."
"It also implies integrity. And honor. And - "
"Steadfastness," she completed, with only a hint of irony.
"So you see them as absolutes then, Miss Redmond? Love means to be willing to die for someone, and loyalty perhaps the same?"
"How can they be otherwise? — Julie Anne Long

Plain girls who were also clever were a ha'pence a dozen. — Julie Anne Long

Your happiness, quite simply, is my happiness.
Cynthia slowly closed her eyes against the look in his.
Cannot bear. — Julie Anne Long

Some of us walk about with the burden of old wounds. What must it be like to have the burden of ... healing? — Julie Anne Long

The sympathy calls had been shot through with a subtle, yet unmistakably morbid glee. The queen had at last been nudged from her throne. It had taken disaster to do it, but still. — Julie Anne Long

Love is like a loaded musket," he mused. "And yet it's available to everyone. It's always . . ." He mimed thrusting out a gun. "'Here you are! Try not to kill yourself or others with it.' They oughtn't allow young people near it. — Julie Anne Long

Let's say then you've made the decision to tear the life you know asunder in order to be with this person you love. A difficult decision to be sure. Putting it lightly. Because you cannot imagine a life without her, and the alternative left to you is a lifetime of desolation, as you don't intend to don a hair shirt or join a monastery or fling yourself into the ocean and drown. And so you go ahead and do the unthinkable and tear your life asunder ... only to discover the person you love won't have you after all, and she actually has a reason — Julie Anne Long

Ah, Lyon: the Achilles' heel of this family. She had forgotten about Lyon, and about disappearing Redmonds. — Julie Anne Long

You ought to choose fewer words that contain S for the time being. You are spitting all over me. — Julie Anne Long

I can only think god is responsible for passion,for god gives us bodies with which to express it and heart in which to hold it — Julie Anne Long

It might have begun a bit like a chess game, but it had taken on its own momentum, and owned both of them. — Julie Anne Long

It's ... " She couldn't finish.
"Don't try, Miss Redmond," he agreed, shading his eyes. "There are honestly no suitable words, so we shall not fault you for failing to find them. Nothing makes a man feel more like God than sailing a ship over the sea with no land in sight. And nothing makes a man feel less like a God than clinging to a shred of ship exploded by lightning in a storm. — Julie Anne Long

Why?" He sounded bemused. He'd whispered the word.
She supposed he meant: why are you here? Because her mind answered with: Because I love you, and damn you for it. You have both made my life worth living and utterly ruined it, and I'm grateful that you did.
She smiled faintly. She would never say it. — Julie Anne Long

Do you think Kinkade is Welland-Dowd? she wondered
Chase burst into laughter so booming that every head on the street rotated, startled.
Oh,God. She'd just understood when she'd said it aloud.
Welland-Dowd.
Well-endowed. — Julie Anne Long

A proper kiss, Miss Eversea, should turn you inside out. It should ... touch places in you that you didn't know existed, set them ablaze, until your entire being is hungry and wild ... It should slice right down through you like a cutlass with a pleasure so devastating it's very nearly pain ... It should make you want to do things you'd never dreamed you'd want to do, and in that moment all of those things will make perfect sense. And it should herald, or at least promise, the most intense physical pleasure you've ever known, regardless of whether that promise is ever, ever fulfilled. It should, in fact ... " he paused for effect " ... haunt you for the rest of your life. — Julie Anne Long

He wanted to be a man she admired. The way he admired her. He wanted her to think of him as brave. He wanted to be better because of her, and for her.
He was better because of her. She'd changed him irrevocably. — Julie Anne Long

Men who are fatally struck usually take a moment to drop. He felt rather suspended in that moment. — Julie Anne Long

Oh, God. She'd now have to invent a bawdy verse on the spot. She'd never had to improvise so much in her entire life as she had in the last five minutes. Improvise being another word for lie, of course. — Julie Anne Long

Their faces were inches apart now, and he traced her lips with one finger, lightly, lightly, then placed his lips there as if he'd drawn them into being. — Julie Anne Long

But now he understood why someone would write things like 'she walked in beauty like the night' and so forth. Because poetry was a barrier against raw emotions. It distilled them into bearable music, allowed one to accommodate them a little at a time. — Julie Anne Long

Imagine the ton would leap from London Bridge if the marquess did it first. Mind you, he'd land on a cart carrying a feather mattress when he did it, whilst the rest of London would splatter. — Julie Anne Long

It's just a part of her life. Sewing her world back together again, sometimes even daily. — Julie Anne Long

You wouldn't consider riding me, would you?' he asked politely.
'You've lovely manners, she purred. 'But of course. — Julie Anne Long

They immediately spent a moment in bemused silence in honor of the perilous little paradox that was the English female — Julie Anne Long

Let's refer to it as Saturday, rather than the day of my hanging, shall we? — Julie Anne Long

Vicars, he often thought, are essentially God's lawyers on the earth. Interpreters of the law, the finders of nuance, sifters through rationalizations to get at the truth or the need of the moment.
Guessers, in other words. — Julie Anne Long

"I've ... " he began.
He could have completed that any number of ways: " ... botched everything." " ... loved you since I laid eyes on you." " ... been a complete idiot for you." " ... never deserved you." " ... been so wrong about everything that matters in life."
"I love you." He hadn't planned to say it.
She went still.
She kissed her fingers, and laid them on his lips, stopping him from saying anything more.
"Thank you," she said. "Don't follow me. — Julie Anne Long

Does she make you laugh?" He thought about this. "She laughs a good deal when I'm about," he allowed. Did Colin Eversea really want to be laughed at rather than with his entire life? He was the most maddening person she'd ever met, but his humor contained angles; he used it both to deflect and persuade. And if one could see around it, one would see into vulnerability. — Julie Anne Long

Not every man will make you want to do anything he wishes because the moment he touches you your body is his to command. Not every man is capable of making you scream with bliss in every imaginable position, or knows where to touch you or listens to your breath and your sighs to know precisely how to touch you, so that the pleasure you experience is the most intense. Not every man will make you see stars every ... single ... time. — Julie Anne Long

You believed in me,' he said slowly. 'You trusted me.'
'Of course I did. That, and I love you more than life itself.'
She saw her words enter him like cupid's arrow. He closed his eyes swiftly, as if bracing against an onslaught of emotion. He mouthed something that might have been 'Hallelujah.'
Then he opened them again, as if he couldn't bear not to see her in the aftermath of those words.
'Say it again.'
'I love you.' Those magical powerful words that she never dreamed she'd be able to say to anyone.
And look, look what it did to Jonathan Redmond's face when she said them. What a humbling power she held.
He recovered, and smiled a slow satisfied smile. 'Of course you love me. How could you help it? — Julie Anne Long

Only two things kept her from loathing him.
The expression on his face when he'd said, "France."
And the expression on his face when he'd said, "home. — Julie Anne Long

The one thing she'd been able to count on her entire life was her cleverness. She was so often right. It was humbling and disorienting to realize that she in truth knew nothing at all. One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one's own prejudices. — Julie Anne Long

So she was to be savagely heartbroken and then poisoned by one of their cook's noxious herbal brews in the space of a few hours? Dante would find inspiration in this day. — Julie Anne Long

The cheek of the man. She liked cheek. She liked a man who spoke to her as if she was a person, an equal as if she were in on the joke. — Julie Anne Long

The question remains ... who takes care of you, Miss Vale?"
"I might ask the same question of you, Lord Dryden. — Julie Anne Long

Maybe we're born with a full set of qualities, some fine, some not so fine, and none of us knows what will bring out everything that lives within us. And sometimes it's the fine qualities that cause us trouble, and the not so fine that save us. — Julie Anne Long

One could tolerate an acid tongue for a time when the owner of it was so very pretty. — Julie Anne Long

Everyone needed a reminder to simply look at things and enjoy them, without labeling them. — Julie Anne Long

Did that kiss nearly destroy the memory of all other kisses, and become the benchmark against which all future kisses would be measured? — Julie Anne Long