Tess D'urbervilles Quotes & Sayings

I shake my head at his largesse, and I frown as a scene from Tess crosses my mind: the strawberry scene. It evokes my dream. To hell with Dr. Flynn - Freud would have a field day - and then he'd probably die trying to deal with Fifty Shades. — E.L. James

What silence? I hear every word you write, every word you speak with your incredible face as if you'd spoken the words out a loud. You were meant to be with me, Scotlyn. Not him. — Tess Oliver

He'd been showing her what was beneath the surface for nearly a fortnight, Tess realized, struck by the sudden insight. He probably wasn't even aware that he'd shown her the man beneath the mantle of a fierce warlord. She liked what she saw, liked it so much that it terrified her. She had been so concerned with controlling her reactions to what she saw on the surface, that she didn't take time to guard against what went much deeper. Her eyes widened over the knowledge. Kenric didn't find her disgusting. He hadn't lost the least bit of interest. He was waiting for her to tell him that she felt the same. — Elizabeth Elliott

Wasn't she a good person? She felt a dim awareness of something almost shameful about the way she'd lived her life. Wasn't there something closed off, even small-minded and mean, about the way she cut herself off from people, ducking down behind the convenient wall of her shyness, her social anxiety? When she sensed the overtures of friendship, she took too long to respond to phone calls and e-mails, and eventually people gave up, and Tess was always relieved. — Liane Moriarty

Find depressing his determination to make his characters suffer even when a little common sense on both his part and theirs could avoid it. Tess is one of the most irritating young women in Victorian fiction. Won — P.D. James

We said we'd be friends.'
He looks confused. 'Yeah.'
I don't want to be.'
There's space between us, and in that space there's darkness. I take another step, so close that we share a breath. The same one. In and out.
Tess,' he says. I know it's a warning, but I don't care.
What's the worst thing that can happen?'
It'll hurt,' he says.
It already hurts.'
He nods very slowly. And it's like there's a hole in time, as if everything stops and in this one minute, where we look at each other so close, is spread out between us. As he leans towards me, I feel a strange warmth filtering through me. I forget that my brain is full of every sad face at every window I've ever passed. — Jenny Downham

Because I'd rather fell guilty for the rest of my life than for her to have felt a second's fear - Tess's Mother — Rosamund Lupton

Since Dreygon likes to run this place like a medieval king, I would suggest a duel with pistols at dawn. But after the way you handled that gun yesterday, I wouldn't have a chance."
"I guess not."
"How are you with swords?" Jericho said.
I laughed. "Not sure. But for that girl, I think I'd fight with flaming chainsaws if that's what it took. — Tess Oliver

The last romantic novel I think I read was 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles.' — Bartlett Sher

Tess," I said. For a moment, Emilia and I studied each other. She was tall, with strawberry-blond hair and eyes that walked the line between green and blue. She wore almost no makeup, except for a light gloss on her lips. "So you're Ivy Kendrick's sister," she said finally. "I thought you'd be taller." "I'll get right to work on that." Emilia cracked a very small smile. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Even if I never sold another book, I'd keep writing, because the stories are here, in my head. Stories that just need to be told. I love watching a plot unfold, and feeling the surprise when the unexpected happens. — Tess Gerritsen

I'd kill for you, Tess. I have killed for you. Don't undermine me by fearing others. Fear me. Let me rule you! — Pepper Winters

For a moment Tess felt her strange, inappropriate happiness teeter. It was as though she were balanced on a narrow crevice surrounded by chasms of grief. One wrong thought and down she'd tumble. — Liane Moriarty

During the last few hours of the trip, he and Tess had drilled procedures and done a whole lot of worst-case-scenario type war-gaming. He was now as convinced as he'd ever be that she knew what to do and where to go if Godzilla attacked Kazabek ... — Suzanne Brockmann

Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.
She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly -the thought of the world's concern at her situation- was found on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. — Thomas Hardy

Kenric grabbed her arms and pulled her closer, shaking her once. "I've told you it will make no difference! Why are you doing this?"
"Because I love you," she whispered brokenly.
Those were the words. Of any she could have said to him, those were the only ones that could crumble his defenses. He'd heard them too often in his mind, certain she would never think to use them as a weapon. They sliced through him as cleanly as the sharpest knife. — Elizabeth Elliott

What Aunt Tess loved to say was: Sugar, it's no parade but you'll get down the street one way or another, so you'd just as well throw your shoulders back and pick up your pace. — Barbara Kingsolver

What's wrong?" "Nothing. I just wish there was a way to bottle your laugh. I'd wear it on a chain around my neck. That way, I could listen to it anytime. — Tess Oliver

(Dominic after winning King & Queen contest at Prom along with Tess)
"You like me, you really like me!" he said in a mock high-pitched voice, channeling his inner Sally Fields. "First of all, I have to thank my first grade teacher, what was her name? Mrs. Johnson? Nichols? Jameson? Prescott? Yeah, that was it. Man, I had such a crush on her. Even at five, I had awesome taste in women - just look at Tess. Isn't she banging? Anyway, I need to thank Mrs. Pentecostal, because she told me I'd never win anything, and that hurt, man. But I guess I showed her. So take that, Mrs. Presley! — J.M. Darhower

An important dimension of Tess of the d'Urbervilles is its debt to the oral tradition; to stories about wronged milkmaids, tales of superstition, and stories of love, betrayal and revenge, involving stock figures. This gives Tess of the d'Urbervilles an anti-realistic inflection. From the world of ballad and folktale Hardy draws such fateful coincidences as the failure of Angel to encounter Tess at the 'Club-walking' on which he intrudes with his brothers, the letter to Angel that she accidentally slips under the carpet, the loss of her shoes when she tries to visit his family, and the family portraits on the wall of their honeymoon dwelling, as well as several omens. This chimes effectively with a world in which the rural folk have a superstitious and fatalistic attitude to life. — Geoffrey Harvey

Please, Mum, I want that sugary treat with all the preservatives and the cleverly branded packaging and I know I promised I wouldn't ask for anything but I want it. Please, Tess, I want your delicious-looking cousin and I know I promised to be true to you in good times and bad, in sickness and health, but pleeeease. No. You may not have her. I said no. "We couldn't work out the right time or the right place," said Will. "And we both wanted to tell you. We couldn't - and then we just thought, we couldn't go any longer without you knowing - so we just . . ." His jaw shifted, turkeylike, in and out, back and forth. "We thought there would never be a good time for a conversation like this." We. They were a "we." They'd — Liane Moriarty

After twelve years of living in Hawaii, I'd gotten a serious case of 'rock fever.' I just couldn't live on an island any longer. — Tess Gerritsen

I'd been writing stories since I was a child. I wrote little books for my mom and bound them myself with needle and thread. Mostly, they were about my pets. — Tess Gerritsen

Jesus. She even knew Liam's name. How was that possible? She'd forgotten her very existence until thirty seconds ago.
Liam looked over, aimed his stick straight at Cecilia and pulled the imaginary trigger.
"Liam!" said Tess at the same time as Cecilia groaned, clutched her chest and buckled at the knees. She did it so well, for an awful moment Tess worried that she really was collapsing.
Liam held the stick up to his mouth, blew on it and grinned, delighted. — Liane Moriarty

So, when I thought June might take you away, I didn't know what to do. I felt like she was taking everything that mattered to me. I felt like she was taking away from you all the things that I didn't have. That's why I'm sorry. I'm sorry because you shouldn't have to be everything to me. I had you, but I'd forgotten that I had myself too. — Marie Lu

Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a novel that I have read over and over and over again. Tess is a pure child who has an inner glow none of the others in the book possess. They reject her because she is different, and they try in every possible manner to destroy her, because they are jealous. It is an extraordinary love story. — Laetitia Casta

She was in love with you," he says. "And I don't think she got to tell you, did she?"

My heart lurches, seizes inside my chest, fluttering to life at the words I've always wanted to hear. I shake my head. Tears spill down my cheeks.

"She loved you. She wanted to be with you. That's why she told me about herself. She said she'd made her choice. It was you. I think it was always you. — Tess Sharpe

And I never wanted her to be scared of me, or scared of anything again. She'd already lived through the worst life had to offer. She'd earned that right, the right to never be terrified again. Let's — Tess Oliver

I was a writer first, and knew I'd be a storyteller at age seven. But since my parents are very practical, they urged me to go into a profession that would be far more secure, so I went to medical school. — Tess Gerritsen

You temptress,Tess; you dear damned witch of Babylon- I could not resist you as soon as I met you again. — Thomas Hardy

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Johnny Got His Gun, A Farewell to Arms, A Prayer for Owen Meany, some years Wuthering Heights, Silas Marner, Their Eyes Were Watching God, or I Capture the Castle. Those books are like old friends. When — Gabrielle Zevin

IT WAS TESS who told me about the crowd going to the all-night dance. We'd been school friends. We'd picked mushrooms and pretended to have seen a big ship. She had got married since I went away; it was a made match, a man from the midlands, a Donal, who had worked in a garage but took to farming, out all day, draining fields and callows so that he could till them and sow corn. — Edna O'Brien

When someone dies they can be any age you remember can't they ' she asked. As I tried to think of a reply she continued 'You probably think about the grown-up Tess because you were still close to her. But when I woke up I thought of her when she was three wearing a fairy skirt I'd got her in the Woolworth's and a policeman's helmet. Her wand was a wooden spoon. On the bus yesterday I imagined holding her when she was two days old. I felt the warmth of her. I remembered all her fingers clasped around my finger so tiny they didn't even meet. I remembered the shape of her head and stroking the nape of her neck till she slept. I remembered her smell. She smelled of innocence. Other times she's thirteen and so pretty that I worry for her everytime I see a man look at her. All of those Tesses is my daughter. — Rosamund Lupton

Society thinks of violent acts as manifestations of evil or immorality. We're told we have ultimate control over our own behavior, that each and every one of us has the free will to choose not to hurt another human being. But it's not just morality that guides us. Biology does as well. Our frontal lobs helps us integrate thoughts and actions. They help us weight the consequences of those actions. Without such control, we'd give in to every wild impulse. — Tess Gerritsen

Why do you ... keep tantalizing me?
I tell you, Tess, I'd take you for a flirt,
For a sit you could catch,
If I didn't know just honest and pure you are. — Thomas Hardy

Let truth be told - women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye. While there's life there's hope is a connviction not so entirely unknown to the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would have us believe. — Thomas Hardy

I felt like she was taking everything that mattered to me. I felt like she was taking away from you all the things that I didn't have.
That's why I'm sorry. I'm sorry because you shouldn't have to be everything to me. I had you, but I'd forgotten that I had myself too.
It's a new feeling, something I'm still getting used to. — Marie Lu

I would prefer," Pat said, his voice a little stiff, as if he expected resistance, "that I be the cosigner on the loan, if you go through with this. I know I'm not a famous billionaire, but I think my credit's just as good."
No, you're wrong about that," Tess said, shaking her head.
What?"
As far as I'm concerned, it's better. I'd much rather do business with you."
They shook on it. It was a deal, after all, not a time for hugging.
Favors, Arnie Vasso had once said. Your father knows all about favors. He had meant it as an insult, a sly reference to the corners the Monaghans and Weinsteins cut here and there. Now Tess saw it for the simple truth it was: Her father understood favors. How to do them, how to accept them, how to walk away when the price was too steep. It was a lesson she wouldn't mind learning someday.
Maybe this was the place to start. — Laura Lippman

The moment Tess walked into my life she owned me. I would never be free again. I never wanted to be free again. If Tess thought she'd leave me by killing herself, she'd hate me for eternity when I kept her alive. — Pepper Winters

O, you have torn my life all to pieces ... made me be what I prayed you in pity not to make me be again! — Thomas Hardy

Seeing that guy touch you was too much. I couldn't stop myself. Before I knew it, I was flying across that bar thinking, he touched you and I was going to have to pound him for it. No one fucking touches you except me." His mouth came down over mine again. He held me so tightly, I was sure he'd squeeze the breath from me. "Since I had you pressed up against the wall in that closet, I knew that you had to be mine," he whispered against my mouth. — Tess Oliver

In his Preface to the 1892 edition of Tess of the d'Urbervilles Hardy warns the reader that 'a novel is an impression, not an argument'. However, the text offers several explanations of Tess's tragedy; social, psychological, hereditary, and fatalistic, all of which proceed from the assumption that Hardy's text is in some sense determined, and that the character of Tess is somehow knowable. Indeed, the tragedy of Tess is in this sense overdetermined. But it should be remembered that the character of Tess is constructed in the text from many points of observation, including that of the ambivalent narrator; constructed that is from impressions. — Geoffrey Harvey

And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. — Thomas Hardy

As a bookish child in Calcutta, I used to thrill to the adventures of bad girls whose pursuit of happiness swept them outside the bounds of social decency. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina lived large in my imagination. The naughty girls of Hollywood films flirted and knew how to drive. — Bharati Mukherjee

here that he learns of the disappointment of Ana's best friend, Kate, editor of the student newspaper, about not having original photos to illustrate the article. To see Ana again, Grey agrees to a photo shoot, and then invites the young woman out for a drink. A few hours after their date, she receives an original edition of Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas — Bright Summaries

Well, if you wanted to love me, why do you blow so hot and cold?
Why do you ... keep tantalizing me?
I tell you, Tess, I'd take you for a flirt,
For a sit you could catch,
If I didn't know just honest and pure you are. Angel — Thomas Hardy

Vlad hated doing the paperwork as much as he did when a human employee quit, which was why they'd both made a promise not to eat quitters just to avoid the paperwork. As Tess had pointed out, eating the staff was bad for marale and made it so much harder to find new employees. — Anne Bishop

For the first time in her life, she read voraciously. Anything that was on Joe's bookshelves she considered to have a worthy seal of approval. She tried authors she'd never heard of and authors she'd always meant to read. Every now and then she read passages twice, three times even, enjoying the wordcraft, the drama - but imagining that Joe had liked the book and wondering when he might be back and if there would be dinners they could share to discuss books they'd both read. [ ... ] Tess was well aware it was escapiscm but what a way to pass another evening on her own. — Freya North

Michael Palin : "I am sorry to interrupt you there Dennis, but he's crossed it out. Thomas Hardy here on the first day of his new novel has crossed out the only word he has written so far and he is gazing off into space. Ohh! Oh dear he's signed his name again."
Graham Chapman: "It looks like Tess of the D'Urbervilles all over again."
- Matching Tie and Handkerchief, "Novel Writing — Graham Chapman

The undulating terrain was cloaked in lush abundance, the vineyards like garlands of deep green and yellow, orchards and farms sprouting here and there, hillocks of dry golden grass crowned by beautiful sun-gilt houses, barns and silos. And overhead was the bluest sky she'd ever seen, as bright and hard polished as marble.
There was something about the landscape that caught at her emotions. It was both lush and intimidating, its beauty so abundant. Far from the bustle of the city, she was a complete stranger here, like Dorothy stepping out of her whirling house into the land of Oz. Farm stands overflowing with local produce marked the long driveways into farms with whimsical names- Almost Paradise, One Bad Apple, Toad Hollow. Boxes and bushels were displayed on long, weathered tables. Between the farms, brushy tangles of berries and towering old oak trees lined the roadway. — Susan Wiggs

Don't for God's sake speak as saint to sinner, but as you yourself to me myself - poor me! — Thomas Hardy

She'd not known grief would come in waves, brought on by the smallest of things. Nor had she realized that ordinary acts of living would continue even after the loss of a love and that it would remain possible to get caught up in the moment of a simple pleasure before remembering. — Tess Thompson

Mom and I often talked about the trip we'd someday take together to the 'city of eternal spring' where she was born. In Kunming, she said, the fruits are sweeter, the mountains look like Chinese paintings, and the weather is always perfect. — Tess Gerritsen

He loves you, really he does. He'd love you even if it destroyed him. He matches you. — Marie Lu

All those mounted heads in the living room," said Jane. "And he ends up hanging, like some dead animal. I'd say we've got a theme going here. — Tess Gerritsen

But death wouldn't deter her killer. It would whet his appetite. He'd look at her corpse and see only an object of desire. Someone he can control. She doesn't resist him. She is cool, passive flesh, yielding to any and all indignities. She is the perfect lover. The — Tess Gerritsen

Even if she'd wanted to, she couldn't look away as he approached. His eyes held hers with commanding authority and she never backed down from a challenge. Forget that their azure color was crystal clear and they held a sort of animal magnetism. If Tess didn't know better, she'd say he wanted to devour her. Holy shit. — Robin Bielman

I'd say most of my songs I write from personal experience. When I feel like I don't have any inspiration in my personal life, I think about others that are close to me and maybe what they're going through or even just people I've come across, acquaintances. — Tess Henley

I love you, Tess, he told me, tightening his arms around me as if he would never let go.
He'd better not.
We'd never let go of each other
not Jayden and me, and not the rest of us. We would always be together; we would always be a team.
No matter what happened. No matter what we went through. No matter where our lives took us.
We would always be a family. — Embee

I'd tell you that was pretty much impossible," Asher replied, "but your Tess Kendrick. My spider senses tell me that impossible is kind of your thing. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Dante watched Tess eat the thick, caramel-laced brownie, feeling her pleasure radiate across the small space that separated them on the river-walk bench. She'd offered him a bite, and although his kind could not consume crude human food in anything more than a mouthful, he accepted a small taste of the sticky chocolate confection if only to share in Tess's unabashed enjoyment. He swallowed the heavy, pretty much revolting bit of pasty sweetness with a tight smile.
"Good, huh?" Tess licked her chocolate-coated fingers, slipping one after the other into her mouth and sucking them clean.
"Delicious," Dante said, watching her with his own brand of hunger.
"You can have some more if you want it."
"No." He drew back, shaking his head. "No, it's all yours. Please. Enjoy it. — Lara Adrian

What about fateful turns in your life? Naturalists like Thomas Hardy proposed that some people are simply born under 'a blighted star' like his heroine in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. If so, then no matter what we did, we couldn't improve our lives. — Roger Leslie

That's what I imagined, a giant game park with comfortable lodges and roads. At a minimum, roads. According to the website, there'd be "bush camping" involved, but I pictured lovely big tents with showers and flush toilets. I didn't think I'd be paying for the privilege of squatting in the bushes. — Tess Gerritsen

Most of Cecilia's friends were talkers. Their voices overlapped in their desperation to tell their stories. I've always hated vegetables . . . The only vegetable my child will eat is broccoli . . . My kid loves raw carrots . . . I love raw carrots! You had to jump right in without waiting for a pause in the conversation, because otherwise you'd never get your turn. But women like Tess didn't seem to have that need to share the ordinary facts of their lives, and that made Cecilia desperate to know them. Does her kid like broccoli? she'd — Liane Moriarty