Lauren Willig Quotes & Sayings

Even Sally wound't want to cross fans with the Dowager Duchess of Dovedale. The woman had a tongue of steel and drank the blood of young virgins for breakfast. — Lauren Willig

Tell them I have the headache
no, the plague! I need something nice and contagious. — Lauren Willig

I couldn't make myself write serious; I was surrounded by serious: in monographs, in articles, in my own dissertation prospectus, in the very earnest e-mails of students telling me just why that paper couldn't be in on time, cross their hearts and hope to get an A-minus. — Lauren Willig

Things turn up in strange places all the time. For example library books, which possess a disconcerting ability to move from place to place, seemingly of their own volition. — Lauren Willig

It's the exile's dilemma. The home they yearn for is never the home to which they return. If they return. — Lauren Willig

I never sat down and said, 'I'm going to write historical fiction with strong romantic elements.' It was just the way the stories went. — Lauren Willig

I've had mainstream readers complain that the book is really a romance, and romance readers complain that the book isn't a romance - with the same book! It really depends on the individual reader's expectations going into the story, and that's very hard to predict person to person. — Lauren Willig

My dear Mrs. Grimstone, sometimes cowardice is merely another word for common sense. — Lauren Willig

One of our fundamental human needs is finding our partner that we hope we will stay with for the rest of our lives. You often find the same search in other genres. The mystery novel has a romance subplot. Literary novels often focus on that relationship but do not often end well. — Lauren Willig

They were close enough that he could feel the hurried beat of her heart. He could feel Charlotte's indecision in every word she didn't say and every move she didn't make. She was tense with uncertainty, quivering with irresolution. She might not be leaning into him, but she wasn't pulling away, either. — Lauren Willig

Think before you speak. Take a deep breath, people suggested. Count to ten. Count sheep. Oh, wait, that was for sleeping. Even in her own head, her tongue ran ahead of her brain. It propelled her into all sorts of absurd situations. Elopements. Scandals. This. — Lauren Willig

My official field was Tudor-Stuart England; I also considered myself reasonably competent when it came to Renaissance and Reformation Europe. — Lauren Willig

Most of the time, there is no truth, only various levels of interpretation. Fact is a construct we provide to the public. — Lauren Willig

Why was it that cheering expressions were invariably so infuriating? — Lauren Willig

As a friend once pointed out, the crotchety dowagers do tend to get all the best lines. That may be why I have so many of them in my books. — Lauren Willig

He admired her for throwing off her aristocratic shackles
his terms, that
and making her own way in the world.
He didn't realize that the truth was so much more complex, so much less impressive. She had less thrown than been thrown. — Lauren Willig

I've been typed as historical fiction, historical women's fiction, historical mystery, historical chick lit, historical romance - all for the same book. — Lauren Willig

There's a horrible stereotype of both the romance writer and the romance reader as somehow undereducated and unprofessional, when in fact there are a number of incredibly well-educated professional women who have chosen to leave their other careers and go into writing romance. — Lauren Willig

No sin is original, no matter what the bright young things may hope. We're all merely playing to a theme. — Lauren Willig

It was the usual sort of academic battle: footnotes at ten paces, bolstered by snide articles in academic journals and lots of sniping about methodology, a thrust and parry of source and countersource. My sources had to be better. — Lauren Willig

I tend to navigate by indirection, meaning that most of the major things in my life have happened when I've been thinking about something else. — Lauren Willig

Miles was still mourning the loss of his Romantic Plan. 'There was going to be champagne, and oysters, and you'
he held out both hands as though shifting a piece of furniture
'were going to be sitting there, and I was going to get down on one knee, and ... and ... — Lauren Willig

With the complete lack of shame of the extremely deaf and the complete lack of grammar of the extremely inbred. — Lauren Willig

Its nice to know that your common sense stands between me and the grave. — Lauren Willig

As a historian, I found myself all too often treating my historical subjects like fictional characters, malleable entities that could be made to do one thing or another, whose motivations could be speculated upon endlessly, and whose missing actions could be reconstructed and approximated based on assessments of prior and later behaviors. It was one of the hazards with working a fragmentary source base. You had little scraps, like puzzle pieces, and you could put them together as best you could. But no matter how faithful you tried to be to the historical record, there would always be that element of guesswork, of imagination, of (if we're being totally honest) fiction. — Lauren Willig

Did I invent anything? I don't think so, not really. But if I've helped make history fun ... then my work here is done. — Lauren Willig

Quite definitely a Bingley — Lauren Willig

I'm not your gilded prince with the gilded chairs, Letty," Geoff said simply. "I couldn't be if I tried."
"I wouldn't want you to be." Letty's voice felt rusty.
"I'm not particularly bold or dashing or heroic. I'm happier at my desk than in a black cloak. And I've never entirely mastered all the steps of the quadrille." He looked soberly down at her. "But what I am is yours, if you'll still have me. — Lauren Willig

I went to grad school with the grand plan of getting my Ph.D. and writing weighty, Tudor-Stuart-set historical fiction - from which I emerged with a law degree and a series of light-hearted historical romances about flower-named spies during the Napoleonic wars. — Lauren Willig

I know historians aren't supposed to fall in love with their own theories, but I was head over heels about the notion of an entire band of female French agents, like a nineteenth-century Charlie's Angels. Only better. It made the Pink Carnation's organization look positively humdrum. — Lauren Willig

Her mother would be appalled, but she wouldn't say anything. She would just telegraph her distress with tightened lips and raised brows. She was good at that. Clemmie's mother's brows were better than sign language, complicated concepts conveyed with the minimum of movement. — Lauren Willig

'Purple Plumeria' I dithered over for months and then wrote the whole thing between the beginning of July and end of August. The dithering and procrastination time was three times the writing times. — Lauren Willig

embroidered Louis XV chair, legs crossed at the — Lauren Willig

Word of advice, sister mine. If you want to keep your papers private, don't write 'Private' on the cover. It set the mater right off. It was all I could do to stop her sniffing around like some great sniffing thing. — Lauren Willig

[He] had insisted that inanimate objects couldn't have malignant motivations, but Emma had extensive proof to the contrary. — Lauren Willig

I'm an eighteenth-century girl at heart. I wouldn't mind being set down in London in 1715, in the midst of all the drama of the Hanoverian succession. — Lauren Willig

They were a strange and mercantile people, these Americans. One never knew what they might come up with next. — Lauren Willig

Patience is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for. — Lauren Willig

Say what you will about Queen Eleanor, she was a savvy, quick-witted woman who made her mark on history. And as the founder of the Courts of Love, what better patron monarch could there be for a romantic novelist? — Lauren Willig

My own inclination is to skew towards humor. They say that some people view life as a comedy, others as a tragedy. Me? Comedy all the way. — Lauren Willig

There was nothing the least bit radical about her. In fact, she was the most conventional creature alive. She believed in true love, and loyalty to one's monarch, and death before dishonor. It was just that, sometimes, things didn't quite turn out as one would have wished. In those cases, there was nothing to do but carry on. And on and on and on. — Lauren Willig

If I stay in academia, I might end up going someplace random. — Lauren Willig

That was the problem with snide comments; they invariably lost all their punch on repetition. Besides, when facing impending death, what did the odd witticism matter? — Lauren Willig

People who would never sneer at sci-fi and murder mysteries have no trouble damning the whole romance genre without reading one. — Lauren Willig

Good Gad! It looks like the last act of Hamlet in here.
Turnip banged his head against his clenched fists, making inarticulate moaning noises.
Pinchingdale gave him an odd look. 'I had no idea you felt so strongly about the play, Fitzhugh. — Lauren Willig

Mr. Alsworthy!" exclaimed Letty's mother. "How can you laugh at such a matter! Although, I must say, I would have thought if a pirate were to kidnap anyone, he would kidnap Mary. She looks quite as I did in my youth, and I'm sure a pirate would have wanted to kidnap me."
"Don't taunt me with lost opportunities, my dear. — Lauren Willig

Only the silver head of his cane blazed with reflected fire, held aloft above the grave like a medieval necromancer summoning spirits from the vasty deep. — Lauren Willig

The minimum I need is six months to allow for dithering, procrastination and the research. The research times varies from book to book; some are faster because they're based off resources I have at my disposal. — Lauren Willig

All this rapture," managed Letty, wriggling out of her mother's grasp, "is decidedly premature. — Lauren Willig

I'm not sure that teaching a Core course is necessarily the best introduction to teaching. — Lauren Willig

That is fairly tame, I must say. If one is to have a blood sacrifice, I would hope there would at least be a bit more drama about it. Otherwise, it strikes me as a waste of a perfectly good human. — Lauren Willig

Romance tends to be the whipping boy of genre fiction. — Lauren Willig

Such kindness wasn't a gift but a goad, scraping against one's skin like a yoke of thorns. She would have preferred him stiff, defensive, even offensive. — Lauren Willig

Her eyes were as hard and bright as stars. Not the pretty sort that poets mooned about, but the kind that made men's destinies. The Orchid Affair — Lauren Willig

Inside, the festivities would continue, probably well into the night, with flirtation and merriment and gratuitous use of mistletoe. It was an inexpressibly wearying thought. — Lauren Willig

She responded to Letty's well-meaning suggestions with the unblinking disdain perfected by cats in their dealings with their humans. — Lauren Willig

Colin mustered a perfunctory leer, but his mind was obviously elsewhere. 'Do you know ... ' he began.
I knew many things, but I didn't think he needed to hear the entirety of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales right at just this moment. — Lauren Willig

My books fall in the wobbly middle between historical fiction and historical romance. — Lauren Willig

Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M. Kaye, and a host of other authors, in their crackly plastic library bindings. Whether historians acknowledge it or not, scholarly history's illegitimate cousin, the historical novel, plays a profound role in shaping widely held conceptions of historical realities. — Lauren Willig

LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women. — Lauren Willig

It was lovely to see cynicism in one so young. It positively restored his faith in human nature. — Lauren Willig

The leaves do fad and fall away, / Berries rot and sheaves decay; / The deer is fled back to the field. / That is all your promises yield. / All wind and words, your vows, I see, / Are barren as the fruitless tree. — Lauren Willig

There is, I have heard, a little thing called sunrise, in which the sun reverses the process we all viewed the night before. You might assume such a thing as mythical as those beasts that guard the corners of the earth, but I have it on the finest authority, and have, indeed, from time to time, regarded it with my own eyes. — Lauren Willig

I hadn't realized quite how intense the first few years of grad school would be. When you're being assigned 40 books a week ... there's not much room for novels. — Lauren Willig

Love doesn't attack; it infiltrates. — Lauren Willig

I love the sound of words, the feel of them, the flow of them. I love the challenge of finding just that perfect combination of words to describe a curl of the lip, a tilt of the chin, a change in the atmosphere. Done well, novel-writing can combine lyricism with practicality in a way that makes one think of grand tapestries, both functional and beautiful. Fifty years from now, I imagine I'll still be questing after just that right combination of words. — Lauren Willig

Amazing what the application of a knitting needle could do for one's manners. — Lauren Willig

The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language. — Lauren Willig

When I was 6, a family friend gave me E.L. Konigsburg's 'A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver' and launched me on a full-blown Eleanor obsession. I wanted to ride off on Crusade, to launch a thousand troubadour songs, to marry a king - and then jilt him and marry another. — Lauren Willig

Ever since reading Jean Plaidy's 'Queen in Waiting,' I've felt deep admiration for Caroline of Ansbach. — Lauren Willig

If a man took a lover it would be accounted commonplace. Why shouldn't you? Your virtue lies in your mind, not in what lies between your legs. — Lauren Willig

Amy wondered if Bonaparte could declare war on Miss Gwen alone without breaking his peace with England — Lauren Willig

For I shall bring you crimson leaves
And rippling wheat in golden sheaves;
A cache of berries, red and sweet,
And dappled deer on silent feet.
- Emma Delagardie and Augustus Whittlesby, Americanus: A Masque in Three Parts — Lauren Willig

But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the morning when my alarm is set for seven. — Lauren Willig

I didn't know there could be an almost kiss. It seems like the sort of thing that either happens or it doesn't.
Oh no ... There's an entire universe of near misses out there, kisses that almost were, but weren't. — Lauren Willig

This was Hist and Lit, after all. If you couldn't work the term "liminal" into your tutorial, you were doing it wrong. — Lauren Willig

I think sex is a very minor part of most romance novels. — Lauren Willig

Every young girl wants to be a princess. Then, when you find a real-life one, it's very easy to imagine yourself in that role. — Lauren Willig

Hard to believe that so nearby, just across the Channel, such atrocities could still occur in their supposedly civilized world, that one could wake up one morning and find oneself bereft of brothers, parents, friends, all with the slice of an ax. — Lauren Willig

There's nothing so attractive as a blank slate. Take one attractive man, slap on a thick coat of daydream, and voila, the perfect man. With absolutely no resemblance to reality. — Lauren Willig

It would be, like all of Pammy's parties, hot and crowded and filled with impossibly glamorous people with hip bones so sharp they could qualify as concealed weapons. — Lauren Willig

Old books exert a strange fascination for me
their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt. — Lauren Willig

This was what the poets couldn't put in their poetry, she thought dumbly, the rush of desire so fierce and pure it made one shake, all on the force of a word. — Lauren Willig

Right now, I couldn't have cared less if someone had waltzed across the room in a large flower costume with a sign saying GET YOUR BLACK TULIPS HERE. Every nerve in my body was on man-alert, screaming, incoming! — Lauren Willig

Imagination was all very well in the daylight, but it was an uncomfortable thing late at night. — Lauren Willig

When they arrived at Parva Magna, everyone agreed that it was quite a good thing that
the newly married couple had managed to find shelter in the storm, although there was some
confusion as to why it had taken them a full three days to make their way fifteen miles. — Lauren Willig

Iris Johansen's lovers weathered the sack of city states and the vagaries of the French Revolution; Judith McNaught's heroines endured amnesia, social ostracism and misunderstandings so big they deserved their own ZIP code. — Lauren Willig

There is no friend like a sister / In calm or stormy weather; / To cheer one on the tedious way, / To fetch one if one goes astray, / To lift one if one totters down, / To strengthen whilst one stands.'" Bea was much struck by this. "How lovely, — Lauren Willig

The use of charm as a tool made her hackles rise. She respected a more direct approach. A battering ram approach. At least one knew where one stood with the battering ram, none of this butter-wouldn't-melt nonsense that could mean yes, no, or maybe. — Lauren Willig

When I'm in heavy-duty writing mode, there's something great about reading a series. Soothing, but not distracting too much. — Lauren Willig

I'm not sure intentions make much difference in the end. I hear the road to hell is paved with them. She meant it frivolously, but Olivia answered seriously, "Yes, but one does have to live with one's self." "Not necessarily ... There are any number of ways to avoid living with one's self. Gin, for example." "Yes, but you're still there at the base of it aren't you. Only with a terrible head in the morning. — Lauren Willig

There's nothing like competing for your boyfriend's attention with an emotionally needy sibling to make you feel like the worst sort of evil psycho-bitch. — Lauren Willig

Some things worked far better in imagination than reality. In imagination, she was intrepid and resourceful; in reality she wished she were home, wrapped in a quilt. — Lauren Willig

About, not to. Prepositions had been invented for a reason. — Lauren Willig

Turning to Turnip, Miss Dempsey said, 'Do you think?'. 'As little as I can,' Turnip replied honestly. — Lauren Willig

Like everyone else, I grew up loving the Anne books, but L.M. Montgomery is so much more. Like Jane Austen, she has an eye for the absurd and a gift for the 'mot juste.' — Lauren Willig