Romantic Fiction Quotes & Sayings

I was commissioned to write some romantic fiction, and I really liked doing those, and they were very instructive in terms of building characters and plots. But it never felt right for me. — Paula Hawkins

His jaw was clenched. His breathing became labored, like he was carrying something heavy. She watched the muscles in his throat working, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed, hard.
Victory.
At that moment, she knew he wouldn't try to stop her. She stepped forward, raised herself up on her tiptoes, and kissed him. Softly. Then she pulled back, challenge unspoken.
Come on, Sam. Fight for me. — Isobel Irons

Maybe I should get a gun... — Elizabeth Horton-Newton

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

When you say that you write romantic fiction, there are a lot of people who have an image in their mind of the 'bodice ripper.' It's the one term that most romantic fiction writers absolutely hate because it has no bearing on what people are writing. — Susanna Kearsley

You're not safe with me."
He cut me off, seeming to growl. "I don't want to be safe. I want to be with you. You can't do this alone. — S.G. Holster

It made a romantic tale. The young rouge, cheating death, returning to his grieving lover. But in reality? Ashyn had always known life did not resemble one of her book stories or Moria's bard tales, and yet there was a part of her that hoped it did. The more she saw, the more she realized she was wrong. People made up stories because that is what they wanted from their world. A place where goodness, kindness, and honor were rewarded. They were not rewarded. The people of Edgewood could attest to that. - Sea Of Shadows — Kelly Armstrong

She averted his eyes, but not before he recognized the pain in them, a tormented and languished gaze, a stare preserved for people who were able to love deeply enough that they could be destroyed by it. For a moment, he knew that gaze intimately, remembering it from a time long gone. The ache of a shattered belief once known. He knew that feeling. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

My looks are other peoples' problem because I don't have to look at myself. — Gerry Burnie

Rough lips crashed against her own, and all those problems she'd had with breathing? They were a dim memory as her panic was replaced by something much better. If this was what human kissing was like, she could understand why it caused people's clothes to fall off. She wished her clothes would start falling off already. — Patricia Eimer

Keep cool, Corri. Don't panic until he says the word "alien." That's the time to panic. — Patricia Eimer

The heavy rain dripped off his thick leather hat and sloshed on the dry hard ground. To someone with a soul, it might have been peaceful, pretty, even to watch the drops bounce and form graceful puddles before they disappeared into the cracks in the Earth.

Daniel Marlin merely cursed. He only saw the weather as another delay before they could rescue their brother from jail. He turned the horse back into the copse of trees, hating to admit defeat. — Grace Willows

And when whatever happened in that barn happened, it was a moment I'll never forget. Like a missing key slid into a dusty old lock. Click. My world opened. — Jennifer Walkup

When I first started drawing the earliest incarnation of 'Optic Nerve,' I hadn't even been on a date; I hadn't had a romantic relationship of any kind yet, so in a way, I was almost writing science fiction. — Adrian Tomine

Because of that, he didn't know how to love someone who actually loved him. He had learned a twisted, tormented kind of love filled with pain and exploitation. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Romantic fiction, in the broader sense, can be any novel that has a love story somewhere in it. It can be a mystery or a historical novel, as long as it has this very strong romantic thread running through it. — Susanna Kearsley

From Flood, Flash, and Pheromones
coming soon:
In the torrential downpour with water swirling that threatened to pull her down, she didn't see the voice's owner. The hurricane had blessed the entire city with a surprise drenching. All weather reports had predicted it to pass over with sporadic rainfall but that didn't happen. The storm settled over Houston as if it had no intention to move on. Cassie flailed in panic as the roof of her car disappeared under the water twenty feet beyond. She prayed once more that the container in it was watertight. And that she'd see her car again. Then she concentrated on living. Where had the voice come from? — Shelley K. Wall

There are several authors who are also lawyers - and not only the ones who write legal thrillers. There are other attorneys who write romantic fiction, and I know of at least one who writes young adult books. — Candace Camp

I may have loved to read my romance and smut novels, but I was not blinded by the 'fiction' part of it all. I knew the difference between what was real and what came from a hopeless romantic's imagination. — Christine Zolendz

The extremists had declared jihad against anyone and anything that challenged their vision of a pure Islamic society, and these artifacts - treatises about logic, astrology, and medicine, paeans to music, poems idealizing romantic love - represented five hundred years of human joy. They celebrated the sensual and the secular, and they bore the explicit message that humanity, as well as God, was capable of creating beauty. They were monumentally subversive. — Joshua Hammer

It was something Ferdo said. We may not have it all, you and I, but we have more than is granted most men or women, he told me, and he was right. — Mary Brock Jones

You know," Kavita begins, "I think I can pick out my own furniture. I am an artist after all. I do have some taste."
"No you don't." Nick plainly states. "No man has taste. Besides, I didn't pick it out, she did. Wives are good for things like that. — Carroll Bryant

Wells is teaching us to think. Burroughs and his lesser imitators are teaching us not to think. Of course, Burroughs is teaching us to wonder. The sense of wonder is in essence a religious state, blanketing out criticism. Wells was always a critic, even in his most wondrous and romantic tales.

And there, I believe, the two poles of modern fantasy stand defined. At one pole wait Wells and his honorable predecessors such as Swift; at the other, Burroughs and the commercial producers, such as Otis Adelbart Kline, and the weirdies, and horror merchants such as H.P. Lovecraft, and so all the way past Tolkien to today's non-stop fantasy worlders. Mary Shelley stands somewhere at the equator of this metaphor. — Brian W. Aldiss

Say it again," he says.
"That whole drawn-out speech?" I remember something about a solar system, but I'm too light-headed to recite the entire thing all over again.
He steps closer. "No. The part about you fallin' for me. — Simone Elkeles

If you don't have sex with me right now, I swear I will light you on fire and bury your body in the desert. — Patricia Eimer

The most romantic creation to have come out of regret is time-travel — Preeti Bhonsle

No one can stop death, Omari. It is normal and certain. And nothing should get in the way of a person's true destiny. — Stephen Whitfield

She paused and saw him tense in expectation. He wouldn't like to hear this, but better from her than one of the others. "You aren't the only pilot I have in my service. And you aren't the only person with a dark past, though the illegal things that you did, you were forced to do by the Core. But I will tell you what I've told the others. This is your last chance. You screw up with me and you get shipped up river. I don't offer second chances - I offer last chances."
Nope, he didn't like it. She saw the hand not holding the bottle of beer curl into a fist.
Sin and Del, from Sunscapes Trilogy, Book 1: Last Chance — Michelle O'Leary

Children, Hadley thinks to herself, children are more civilised than this gang on the sauce. — Naomi Wood

When I make love to you, Lanie, I want you to feel every inch of me buried deep inside of you, loving you, worshiping your body ... — Flora Roberts

I don't know who he was," Kavita flat-out states, "but whoever he was he sure did a number on you, didn't he?"
Mary leans forward to ensure he would see her deviant stare. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe I did a number on him?"
Kavita leans in closer as well, and with that same deviant expression, "Yes. I have. — Carroll Bryant

I don't know who those other people are and what they did to you, but I'm not one of them," I whispered, on the verge of tears. (Molly)
"You are. You just don't know yet." (Victor) — A.B. Whelan

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened. — Tom Wolfe

See? Instead of thinking of a way to help my people, all I can think of is the smell of your hair and that small dimple on your cheek when you smile. (Victor) — A.B. Whelan

These were not the belongings of the past prisoner he had imagined. These were a lady's things - hairpins and stockings and a glove. There were more clues waiting but William no longer felt certain he wanted to know the dark secrets of this cell. — Gwenn Wright

He slept still in the induced coma his doctors had kept him in since he arrived. She could see the bruises, see the healing wound of the burn that stretched over his side. She reached out a hand, hovered just above the field and traced the path of the yellow, black and angry red of his healing flesh.
She had done that to him. — Mary Brock Jones

She knew with chilling and absolute certainty she was next. — Alexa Grace

Uh-uh. We are not even going to start with the whole I come in peace thing, E.T. — Patricia Eimer

Did you mean what you said before? About the dead hanging around? You really believe it? — Jennifer Walkup

The importance of the romantic element does not rest upon conjecture. Pleasing testimonies abound. Hannah More traced her earliest impressions of virtue to works of fiction; and Adam Clarke gives a list of tales that won his boyish admiration. Books of entertainment led him to believe in a spiritual world; and he felt sure of having been a coward, but for romances. He declared that he had learned more of his duty to God, his neighbor and himself from Robinson Crusoe than from all the books, except the Bible, that were known to his youth. — Robert Aris Willmott

You fill my soul with hope and love.
Together, we will remain through the heavens above.
One soul, together. For always and forever ... — A.R. Von

Admittedly, they [(places in novels)] didn't all have such ridiculous names as the ones in the Piddle Valley where her father's group of parishes was centered. It would have been hard to make credible a romantic fiction set in Farleigh Piddle, Middle Piddle, Nether Piddle and Piddle Dummer. — Val McDermid

I define science fiction as the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible. Science fiction, again, is the history of ideas, and they're always ideas that work themselves out and become real and happen in the world. And fantasy comes along and says, 'We're going to break all the laws of physics.' ... Most people don't realize it, but the series of films which have made more money than any other series of films in the history of the universe is the James Bond series. They're all science fiction, too - romantic, adventurous, frivolous, fantastic science fiction! — Ray Bradbury

I stared at my lap. I wished I were confident, I wished I were brave. I wished he didn't scare me. But the more he spoke the less I wanted to look away, and the more I did. — Rose Fall

I look away, but we've caught each other. And I know this wasn't just a ghost story to him, even if it was to the others. — Jennifer Walkup

I'm going to make love to you, Lanie. I'm not your first, but I will be the last. — Flora Roberts

Ian Fleming may have been very practical about writing James Bond, but at heart he was a romantic. He ... was tapping directly into a deep wellspring of his own imagination, which he laced with the usual blend of sex, travel, culinary detail and fine living that encapsulated the aspirations of the age, and was absolutely an expression of Fleming himself. He may have dismissed his creation as idle fantasy, but he was entirely serious about the world he had created ... Ian Fleming could not put any clear water between himself and his fiction because he was living his work as he wrote it ... To discover the origins of James Bond one has to begin by exploring the deep streams that fed the well of Fleming's imagination, and his own complicated personality. — Henry Chancellor

You remember?' he said incredulously. 'What could you possibly remember?' he asked, staring at her, waiting for the answer.
The beauty from within her soul shined brightly through her loving eyes as she looked deep into Noah's now melting eyes.
'I remember - I love you,' she said in a soft voice, nervously biting her lip. — Sebastian Cole

Sometimes, if you want to survive, you've got to run. You have to run as far and as fast as you can — Patricia Eimer

A political philosophy (often called "political science" by practitioners who are not averse from verbal trickery) must deal with contemporary realities. If it does not, if it is charged with "ideals," it is merely a variety of romantic fiction, although it may not be recognized as such. — Revilo P. Oliver

We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice, heroism, war, politics and family struggle. — John Green

Lily looks back down at the necklace in her hand that Kavita had given her. "It must have cost a fortune."
"It did." He confirms. "Though not nearly as much as you're worth."
Lily looks up at him. "Don't say that. You hurt me everytime you speak. — Carroll Bryant

The man she wanted existed only in the romantic novels she was reading. She had met him. But he would never meet her. — Mary Papas

Please do not mistake me for a twopenny villain. I do nothing without a purpose. — Donna Thorland

Hope's Folly is a rapid-fire romp through futuristic political intrigue and high-risk passion The tug of war between decorum and passion keeps the romantic intrigue smoldering. With Hope's Folly, Linnea Sinclair builds on a secure reputation as a leading fashioner of science fiction romance. She straddles and blends these genres with a unique bravura and wit. — Philip K. Jason

I bid you welcome to a new Utopia where men may be free of the so-called moral subjugations and constraints, and where for a time we may shake off those bonds of servitude wherein we are so tyrrannously enslaved."
"You are the humanist,George, not I- what the deuce does he natter on about?"
"Mostly whores and Booze," George replied with a grin.
Sandwidh contined while rapping once more upon the door, "Man is led into vice only when he is denied, my friends; for it is his nature to long after things forbidden and to desire most fervently what is denied."
"Another translation?" Philip asked George.
"Whores and booze ... in boundless supply."
"Ah,"Philip said. "I stand in renewed appreciation of the philosophers. — Emery Lee

An unhappy ending makes it literature rather than romantic fiction. — Victoria Clayton

Was that - did she just grin at me? To me? A moment of stillness in this moment of pause. Without speaking, we let our gazes wander slow, groping to confirm relief in the other. There's a subdued excitement for the oncoming sharing of whatever's waiting for us behind that heavy iron door, exclusive - two solitary embers, isolated in their separate pits, far away but fanned by the same wind, the same night, alone with the night, their respective camps all gone to sleep, flaring softly cradled calling, out against the great dark backdrop of the great unknown. — Patrick Bryant

He had always liked a good mess - God knows he had sure made a few. In typical form, he squared his shoulders, furrowed his brows and muttered, bring it on. — Shelley K. Wall

What is damage but forcing yourself, memories of yourself, onto someone else? Coloring someone else's body. In reality, it's sort of romantic. It's why we love to hurt each other. — E.J. Koh

Zorro also is part of the bandido tradition, most closely associated with the possibly mythical Joaquin Murrieta and the historical Tiburcio Vasquez. As well as these local California legendary figures, Zorro is an American version of Robin Hood and similar heroes whose stories blend fiction and history, thus moving Zorro into the timeless realm of legend. The original story takes place in the Romantic era, but, more important, Zorro as Diego adds an element of poetry and sensuality, and as Zorro the element of sexuality, to the traditional Western hero. Not all Western heroes are, as D. H. Lawrence said of Cooper's Deerslayer, "hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer," but in the Western genre the hero and villain more often than not share these characteristics. What distinguishes Zorro is a gallantry, a code of ethics, a romantic sensibility, and most significant, a command of language and a keen intelligence and wit. — Robert E. Morsberger

I want you to grab hold of the brass spindles and don't let go." When she did as he required, he spread her legs wider. "Hold tight, baby. This is going to feel so good. — Maggie Adams

He pointed to the burning building as sirens heralded the approach of emergency personnel. "This is your job - this is your life. Blood and death and pain and vengeance and justice. And sometimes it sucks, but it's worth it."

Caleb sighed, but not in resignation. "I know this is the job, and it is worth it. But I refuse to believe it's my life. Not only and not forever."

Samuel pinched the bridge of his nose and waved dismissively with his other hand. "F***ing romantic. — G.S. Jennsen

I remember still how full of bad magic all those spearpoints to be put on the ends of rifles seemed to be. One was like a sharpened curtain rod. Another was triangular in cross-section, so that the wound it made wouldn't close up again and keep the blood and guts from falling out. Another one had sawteeth - so it could work its way through bone, I guess. I can remember thinking that war was so horrible that, at last, thank goodness, nobody could ever be fooled by romantic pictures and fiction and history into marching to war again.
Nowadays, of course, you can buy a machine gun with a plastic bayonet for your little kid at the nearest toy boutique. — Kurt Vonnegut

Perhaps great fiction is in reality, deep hidden truths. — S.G. Savage

Ashlinn was lovely to look upon, someone who could easily snub half of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood and break the hearts of the rest. — Calista Lynne

They are my men and this ship my responsibility. I vowed no woman would ever alter my path. Yet I kept them from ending you, and it makes me sick to the gut, for I would still rather die myself than see one hair on your head damaged by another man. — Saskia Walker

I have never written a book that I wouldn't want to read. The trouble is, I love to read horror, sf, fantasy, mysteries, hero pulps - romantic fiction, in the original, traditional meaning of that term, as opposed to mimetic fiction. But most of all, I love thrillers. — F. Paul Wilson

If you want to talk about a subject that is important to women, romantic fiction is the place to talk about it because that's where your audience is. — Charlotte Lamb

My mom believed that you make your own luck. Over the stove she had hung these old, maroon painted letters that spell out, "MANIFEST." The idea being if you thought and dreamed about the way you wanted your life to be
if you just envisioned it long enough, it would come into being.
But as hard as I had manifested Astrid Heyman with her hand in mine, her blue eyes gazing into mine, her lips whispering something wild and funny and outrageous in my ear, she had remained totally unaware of my existence. Truly, to even dream of dreaming about Astrid, for a guy like me, in my relatively low position on the social ladder of Cheyenne Mountain High, was idiotic. And with her a senior and me a junior? Forget it.
Astrid was just lit up with beauty: shining blonde ringlets, June sky blue eyes, slightly furrowed brow, always biting back a smile, champion diver on the swim team. Olympic level.
Hell, Astrid was Olympic level in every possible way. — Emmy Laybourne

I bought a selection of short, romantic fiction novels, studied them, decided that I had found a formula and then wrote a book that I figured was the perfect story. Thank goodness it was rejected. — Louise Brown

Honest, hopelessly romantic old-fashioned gentleman seeks lady friend who enjoys elegant dining, dancing and the slow bloom of affection. — Claire Cook

Romantic poetry and fiction of the last 2000 years has blinded us to the fact that emotions are a low form of jungle consciousness. Emotional actions are the most contracted, dangerous form of fanatic stupor. — Timothy Leary

On the plane, I like to read fiction set in the location I'm going to. Fiction is in many ways more useful than a guidebook, because it gives you those little details, a sense of the way a place smells, an emotional sense of the place. So, I'll bring Graham Greene's The Quiet American if I'm going to Vietnam. It's good to feel romantic about a destination before you arrive. — Anthony Bourdain

While it's romantic fiction and bares all of its hallmarks, I ultimately want all women to see a part of themselves in Lia. We all dream of a knight galloping in on a white horse, and my book will compel readers to weight up how much of life is fate, and how much of our destiny we create for ourselves. — Timea Tokes

McCandless read and reread The Call of the Wild, White Fang, "To Build a Fire," "An Odyssey of the North," "The Wit of Porportuk." He was so enthralled by these tales, however, that he seemed to forget they were works of fiction, constructions of the imagination that had more to do with London's romantic sensibilities than with the actualities of life in the subarctic wilderness. McCandless conveniently overlooked the fact that London himself had spent just a single winter in the North and that he'd died by his own hand on his California estate at the age of forty, a fatuous drunk, obese and pathetic, maintaining a sedentary existence that bore scant resemblance to the ideals he espoused in print. — Jon Krakauer

What you must do," she continued, "you will. Your mission will be as clear to you and as demanding as your heartbeat. Everything else is just a waste of your time. — Stephen Whitfield

He stood frozen, staring at me as if he didn't know how to do anything else. I couldn't focus; it was like all the world's blue had originated from his eyes. It was all there, the color of midnight, the sky, the ocean, and blue raspberry lollipops. Why had I spent so much time pretending they weren't remarkable? — Rose Fall

The blank sheet stares up at me, its emptiness like a slap. Those were the last words Ginny ever wrote before she and her family were murdered. — Jennifer Walkup

I came at last to a recognition of myself as, in part, a Tom Sawyer who wanted everything done according to the rules of romantic fiction, and complicated simple solutions with his absurd adolescent, book-born nonsense. — Robertson Davies

I am a very good cook." When she did cook.
"Good. I like to eat." He lightly bit her palm.
The too-much-air feeling in Lucy's stomach pressed upward into her heart. "What?" she asked past the constriction in her chest.
"What do I like to eat?"
"Yeah."
"Blondes with blue eyes."
Oh God. She pulled her hand from his. "Are you hungry?"
His gaze lowered to her mouth. "I could eat. — Rachel Gibson

You're not so tough. No tougher than the man whose blood will spill from your veins. — Dawn M. Turner

His smile is beautiful. It's the kind of smile that can take away all nervousness and tension in a room, no matter how big. I have no choice but to smile back. — S. Elle Cameron

She couldn't be the first alien to crash-land on twenty-first-century Earth. — Patricia Eimer

If we truly detach from our childhood and abandon our inherent romanticism, then we shred any bit of humanity left in us. — Evan Meekins

In Gothic fiction, characters must contend with the dead, with active hauntings or with hallucinations of hauntings, as well as whatever other trying circumstances they might find themselves in: orphanhood, lunacy, imprisonment, inheritances that go astray, troubling romantic situations. The Gothic novel does not strive for subtlety, and it isn't to everyone's taste. It can seem adolescent, an immature version of the stately, measured, grown-up realist novel, except that the line between Gothic and the realist is never clear. A disdain for the Gothic is limiting, since this literature, in all its flagrancy, has something to say about emotional as well as physical death, and a tale of a haunting can have a narrative vitality that is far from conclusive. Gothic stories linger especially in the mind. — Brenda Walker

Scientific practice is above all a story-telling practice ... Biology is inherently historical, and its form of discourse is inherently narrative ... Biology as a way of knowing the world is kin to Romantic literature, with its discourse about organic form and function. Biology is the fiction appropriate to objects called organisms; biology fashions the facts "discovered" about organic beings. — Donna J. Haraway

Live life to the fullest and never forget the people that supported you along the way. — Dorothy W. Cosey

Writers and readers are still trying to work out unresolved problems between men and women, and that is why millions of women around the world are hooked on romantic fiction. So am I. — Charlotte Lamb

That's the funny thing about guns; even untrained hands can feel powerful using them. But take that gun away and you're left with nothing but a coward whose only skill is how to blindly pull a trigger. — Jennifer Wilson

Hey, when you love a woman, and when she's this crazy in love with you, you've got to do whatever she says, man. — Arby Robbins

Or was he the romantic fiction of a girl who'd been desperate for a handsome stranger to come along? — Ann Brashares

Sarah, I'm going to take care of you whether you like it or not. — Robyn Carr

Looking at that pain in her eyes, he felt a closeness with her that he had never experienced before. Like they shared something powerful and unspoken, something so deep and devastating, it bonded them together. He knew then, that if she didn't forgive him, he would never survive.

He was nothing without her. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

No matter how many romantic poems you recite, no matter how many glorious tales of love you read, how can you really understand the condition if you've never found yourself in it? — Sherry D. Ficklin

Amazing? My heart fluttered. "But I don't want Flash or Harry," I murmured. "You want Spider-Man," he finished for me, looking a little wistful. I shrugged. "And Peter Parker." He looked at me, very seriously. "Then don't settle," he said. — J.M. Richards

Mary approaches her before she is able to reach her station. "Hello Lily. Get anything special for Christmas?"
"Just the usual." She answers. "Shattered dreams. — Carroll Bryant

If only she could jump into the flyer and scurry back across the mountains but she had work to do and a planet to save. — Mary Brock Jones

My romantic history since arriving on Novo has been non-existent, but I don't know what, if anything, came before; thanks to the government's cerebral pilfering. — Siobhan Davis

Transition occurred not only in Neha's life. Kovai also transitioned from sweltering summers with extreme temperatures as high as 40 degrees to monsoon madness with the heavy downpour drenching everyone and everything in her line of approach to not so chilly romantic winters offering a pleasant relief to weather-beaten residents. — Neetha Joseph