Quotes by Courtney Milan

I’ll be your friend in daylight. I’ll treat you as a comrade in every gas-lit ballroom. But alone, under moonlight, I’ll not pretend that I want you for anything but mine.

Over the years, everyone stumbles. Thats why Ill be here for you — and youll be there for me. I dont expect perfection. I want you, and youre a thousand times better.

Maybe that’s what I have been looking for. When storms and rockslides threaten, I am looking for someone who will hold on to me and not let go.

Jenny: You didnt leave?Gareth: Of course I left. I was hungry, and I couldnt find anything to eat. I bought a loaf and some cheese. And oranges. Wait. You mean you thought I had left. Without saying a word to you. Would I do that?(Jenny nodded)Gareth: Damn it. You know better than most Im no good at these things but even I am not that bad. Really, Jenny. Why would you believe such a thing of me?Jenny: I dont know, Maybe because you once told me all you wanted from me was a good shag?Gareth: I said that? (he looked surprised, then contemplative. Then apparently, he remembered and winced) God. I said that? Why did you even touch me?

Jenny: But surely Lord Blakely could not abandon his estates for so long.Gareth: No. Lord Blakely could not. Not unless he had someone he could trust to run his estates in his absence. And Lord Blakely...Well, Lord Blakely did not trust anyone.Jenny: Lord Blakely is talking about himself in the third person, past tense. Its disturbing.

You could make me say it again, he whispered. Make me say it always. Make me say it so often that you never have cause to doubt. I love you.

Libraries are the future of reading. When the economy is down, we need to make it easier for people to buy and read books for free, not harder. It is stupid to sacrifice tomorrow’s book buyers for today’s dollars, especially when it’s obvious that the source in question doesn’t have any more dollars to give you.

Friendship was a concept men bandied about to save face when they were rejected.

This is why people are so hard to understand. I cannot even estimate their gravitational pull.

If a man ever lets you know that he sees marriage as a trap, and women as nothing but scheming connivers, you are by no means to marry him. Any man that sees your entire sex in so harsh a light has nothing to offer you.

She looked like a woman talking about astronomical parallax, and that made her brilliantly beautiful.

He knew taht many of his compatriots avoided marriage at all costs. They saw matrimony as an annoyance, a wife as another person who would nag and prod. But when he repeated his vows, he heard as long as we both shall life and he hoped.

I think thats when I understood that you only ruined my life because my life needed ruining. Because the life you rejected demanded that I spend all my time telling my daughter to be less and my son to be more.

One mustn’t justify day-to-day morality with extraordinary circumstances. Otherwise, we would all feel free to rape and murder at the drop of a cat.

A man must claim responsibility for his own temptation, and not pin it on the woman who arouses him. It’s a gown, Sir Mark. Not even one of my more daring ones.

I hated you,” she continued, “because you have done nothing more than abide by rules that every gentlewoman follows every day of her life. Yet for this prosaic feat, you are feted and cosseted as if you were a hero.” She felt nothing as she spoke, but still her voice shook. Her hands were trembling, too. “I hate that if a woman missteps once, she is condemned forever, and yet the men who follow you can tie a simple ribbon to their hats after years of debauchery, and pass themselves off as upright pillars of society.

Men touch their horses to calm them,” she said distantly. “They caress their falcons to remind them that they are bound. Touch smacks of ownership, and I am weary of being a possession.

What would one do if one were forced to choose between saving an innocent child’s life or engaging in unchaste behavior? This is, after all, the choice that some unfortunate women are put to—sell their bodies, or see their children starve.

She wagged a finger at him. “You’re mispronouncing that word.” “Your pardon?” He groped, trying to remember what he’d said. “Suffragette? How does one pronounce it, then?” “Suffragette,” she said, “is pronounced with an exclamation point at the end. Like this: ‘Huzzah! Suffragettes!

When someone elses safety and acceptance in society is on the line, your personal discomfort comes in a very distant second.