Julie Anne Long > Quotes

“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, What I Did for a Duke

“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.”
― Julie Anne Long, A Notorious Countess Confesses

“She thought that heartbreak might just give his character the shadows and corners and angles it needed to make it truly interesting. To deepen and shape it. She was sorry she would be the one to help make him truly interesting. But she’d never apologize for falling in love with a man who already was.”
― Julie Anne Long, What I Did for a Duke

“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, What I Did for a Duke

“And though she could scarcely even feel them, her lips formed the words, and sound emerged, sounding frayed, and small and cracked, forged in her somehow before she was born, since before time, words meant only for him.
“I love you.”
Three of the most powerful words in the world offered to one of the most powerful men in London in such a small voice.
And at first she thought nothing at all had happened. He didn’t blink. But then she realized she’d somehow set him . . . softly ablaze. Emotion burned from him, and his eyes . . . she would never forget his eyes in this moment.
His hands remained at his sides.
Which is when she noticed they were trembling.
God help her, that’s when she felt tears begin to burn at the back of her eyes.
One got away. And she brushed her hand roughly against it.
And the man who never cleared his throat . . . cleared his throat. And his voice, in truth, wasn’t a good deal louder than hers.
“Then it’s just as well that I love you, Genevieve.”
― Julie Anne Long, What I Did for a Duke

“Of course you're sorry. The first words out of the mouths of men who are caught doing something they're only too happy to continue until they're caught.”
― Julie Anne Long, What I Did for a Duke

“You shouldn't ask questions when you know at heart you'd prefer not to hear the answers.”
― Julie Anne Long, What I Did for a Duke

“He was still thoughtful. 'Do you think any of us ever really knows anyone?'

'Philosophy, Lord Dryden? And yet it's daylight and everyone is still sober.”
― Julie Anne Long, How the Marquess Was Won

“He would ask nothing else from life if he would be allowed to protect and cherish her for the rest of his.”
― Julie Anne Long, What I Did for a Duke

“She was backing away from him now. Don’t go, was his first panicked thought. Followed by: Hurry up.”
― Julie Anne Long, What I Did for a Duke

“I love you so much i can hardly tell my own heart from yours anymore, and I've never said it to another woman in my life as it's never until now been true.”
― Julie Anne Long, How the Marquess Was Won

“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, What I Did for a Duke

“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, How the Marquess Was Won

“Everyone needed a reminder to simply look at things and enjoy them, without labeling them.”
― Julie Anne Long, What I Did for a Duke

“I don't know,' he said irritably. 'Is it meant to improve you?'

She swiveled toward him, eyes wide with shock.

'Because nothing could,' he added.
Her mouth dropped in astonishment. Blotchy scarlet rushed her complexion. One would have thought he'd shot her.

Oh dear God!

He realized belatedly how wrong it had sounded.

'No! God... that is to say.. nothing is necessary to improve you. Nothing could possibly make you better... than you already are.”
― Julie Anne Long, How the Marquess Was Won

“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, The Runaway Duke

“Your imagination has an impressive reach.”
“Or my boredom an impressive scope.”
― Julie Anne Long, How the Marquess Was Won

“And this is the potency a first kiss should have: it should be earned. The moments leading up to it should be as tense as a crossbow drawn back. The reader should want it as badly as the hero and heroine, and feel as satisfied and transported and transformed as the hero and heroine in the wake of it. There are different ways to use kisses in a romance, but that first kiss is so meaningful, a pinnacle, and can be more intimate than sex.”
― Julie Anne Long

“He’d meant to take her apart with a kiss. How, then, did he wind up in pieces?”
― Julie Anne Long, Like No Other Lover

“Why are you holding a knife?” he asked, mimicking her tone.
Shock blurred her vision.
The ease had gone out of his posture. Suddenly she knew he was a man poised to spring if he needed to. And this was what he’d been leading up to all along.
She cleared her throat. “Oh . . . this?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “That.”
She remained silent. She idly tested the tip of the knife with her fingertip. Very sharp. Perfectly deadly.
“Let me guess. It’s not what I think.”
Think, Tommy, think. “I’m carrying a knife,” she said slowly, “because . . . I don’t own a pistol.”
― Julie Anne Long, It Happened One Midnight

“It knew things, that smile.”
― Julie Anne Long, Beauty and the Spy

“Directness often disguised as much as it revealed, and was a marvelous defense.”
― Julie Anne Long, What I Did for a Duke

“He leaned in for a sniff. 'Smells like a horse's arse! I've got Ian!' -'No sniffing allowed! We never discussed sniffing! I cry foul!' Ian was outraged. 'I'm not giving you a shilling!' -'Give him a shilling! It's not his fault you smell like a horse's arse!”
― Julie Anne Long, What I Did for a Duke

“Oh, my goodness, Lord Dryden. You should have seen your face when you said the word work. It’s not counted among the deadly sins, you know.”
― Julie Anne Long, How the Marquess Was Won

“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, What I Did for a Duke

“We all have foibles, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And the beholder oftentimes gets it wrong.”
― Julie Anne Long, How the Marquess Was Won

“Her voice was a thread, but still she managed to sound acerbic. “I believe it’s the devil’s job to tempt me. Not yours.”
“And the difference between the devil and I would be . . . ?”
“None that I can detect.”
― Julie Anne Long, How the Marquess Was Won

“Poetry was a barrier against raw
emotions. It distilled them into bearable
music, allowed one to accommodate them
a little at a time.

Alexander Moncrieffe”
― Julie Anne Long, What I Did for a Duke

“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, How the Marquess Was Won

“He had one of those chins what…” One of the innkeeper’s hands went up to squeeze his chin into two little folds. “…a chin what looks like an arse.”
“A chin dimple? A cleft?”
“Not cleft so much as dented, Mr. Eversea. And blue eyes. Went nicely with his costume.”
Dumbstruck silence followed this observation.
The innkeeper sighed. “It’s me wife. If ye gets yerself a wife one day, Mr. Eversea, ye’ll come ou’ wi’ things like that, too, mark my words, mark my words. ‘This matches wi’ that or with this,’ and so on. They talk like that, women do. She makes me look a’ things and give opinions. She’ll turn me into a girl yet.”
This seemed unlikely, but all Colin said was, “Blue eyes and an arse chin. Thank you, that’s very helpful, Mr. Croker.”
― Julie Anne Long, The Perils of Pleasure