Top 70 Cat Sebastian Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “I just wish you cared for yourself as much as I do. I wish you cared for anything as much as I cared for you.”

— Cat Sebastian

2. “My head is a mess.” Page stepped closer. “That’s all of us, mate.”

— Cat Sebastian

3. “She’s not a peaceable woman, my mother. She wrote that book because she didn’t think the world needed another generation of peaceable women, or complacent adults of any gender. I do wish she could see Leontine.”

— Cat Sebastian

4. “Missing you is profoundly inconvenient, I’ll have you know. I have things to do and places to be, and all the while I’ll feel like I’ve mislaid a piece of my soul and I won’t get it back until I see you again. That can’t be normal.”

— Cat Sebastian

5. “That had made him very cross indeed, because all James wanted to do was keep his head down and avert his eyes from any unpleasantness, and here she was practically forcing him into action.”

— Cat Sebastian

6. “What I mean is that if we try to mend this” – oh, God help him, he was about to launch into an extended engineering metaphor – “we need to make sure it’s, um, structurally sound. Better than before. No gaps in knowledge or intent.”

— Cat Sebastian

7. “Imagine Sir Walter Scott, but if every woman in English history dabbled in witchcraft or murder.”

— Cat Sebastian

8. “All this fuss about a couple of small explosions.”

— Cat Sebastian

9. “Hear me now, Oliver Rivington. You will not use gestures with me.”

— Cat Sebastian

10. “They were still standing too close. Turner tipped his head against the wall and looked up at Lawrence with lazy indifference. Most unsecretarial. But Turner didn’t seem afraid, and Lawrence didn’t know how to feel about that. He was so accustomed to fear that the absence of it was unsettling.”

— Cat Sebastian

11. “He couldn’t be serious and stern with a man who had ducklings in his hair, or who talked to baby birds like they were guests at a tea party, or who seemed to dearly want Phillip to smile.”

— Cat Sebastian

12. “That was how it was when your soul was in pieces and somebody else had one of them. Only when you were together would the pieces fit into place and become whole.”

— Cat Sebastian

13. “Falling in love wasn’t like a bird hatching from an egg, for all both events were rather messy and fraught with vulnerability.”

— Cat Sebastian

14. “He smelled of carbolic soap and tea, which Leo thought was the most honest thing in the world for a man to smell like, and he was never going to have tea or wash his hands without thinking of this man.”

— Cat Sebastian

15. “He tended to think that when the Bible condemned something practically everyone did, whether it be tossing oneself off or eating pork, there was likely some nuance that had been lost either to history or to translation. And then he didn’t think about it anymore.”

— Cat Sebastian

16. “A stone in the prettiest, best-kept garden hid things one was better off not knowing – best for everyone not to lift that stone at all.”

— Cat Sebastian

17. “It looks like a gingerbread house assembled by a thoroughly mad child,” Page said. He took a puff from his cigarette and stepped a few paces to the side as if to survey the house from a different angle. “I love it.”

— Cat Sebastian

18. “It was his professional opinion that all you had to do was scratch a snoop and find a blackmailer, and blackmail complicated matters dreadfully.”

— Cat Sebastian

19. “Yes, that was how it was when your soul was in pieces and somebody else had one of them.”

— Cat Sebastian

20. “In any event,” Percy went on, “what I had thought were principles were merely manners, and they’re utterly insufficient for my present circumstances.”

— Cat Sebastian

21. “Percy realized he had had it all wrong when he told Kit that honor is just spite dressed up; spite was honor when it was the only weapon you had against someone more powerful.”

— Cat Sebastian

22. “Perhaps Mr. Goddard does not understand that people can amuse themselves by hurling polite insults at one another and accusing one another of sloppy research and utter illogic.”

— Cat Sebastian

23. “Nobody ever thinks I’m up to no good. I let them think whatever they want and they fill in the gaps themselves.”

— Cat Sebastian

24. “Honor was a luxury item, like hair pomade and snuff. Its only purpose was to show the world that you could afford to be impractical, that you had enough money to behave in a way that was compatible with some ludicrous code instead of acting out of self-preservation like the rest of humanity.”

— Cat Sebastian

25. “Lawrence had a hard time attending to the man’s words. Turner himself was as much an intrusion as his stacks. Lawrence’s gaze drifted unwillingly to the secretary’s face, taking in the sweep of dark lashes, the dimple that appeared on one cheek as he smiled – oh, damn it.”

— Cat Sebastian

26. “The man meant to stay here, to meddle and talk and distract; he planned to smell good and be handsome and obviously Lawrence should never have agreed to any of this.”

— Cat Sebastian

27. “He wanted to memorize every inch of her, every curve and angle, the strong length of her thigh and the delicate bones of her wrist, storing up memories against a bleak and empty tomorrow. But that wasn’t how love worked. Love wasn’t a sum safely invested in the five percents. One couldn’t prevent future sorrow by capitalizing on present bliss. All he could do was have this moment, wring all the joy out of it, and then somehow continue after it was over.”

— Cat Sebastian

28. “The rules as we know them might work wonderfully for most people, but they’re absolute rubbish for anyone who’s a little different.”

— Cat Sebastian

29. “Nobody dies in Austen,” Page said, as if that were reason enough to read and enjoy something. “Nobody who appears on page, that is. She keeps all her tragedy off page,” he said approvingly. “On page, it’s all very much like this,” he said, gesturing out the window once again at the rolling hills of the Cotswolds.”

— Cat Sebastian

30. “Nobody had been more surprised than Jack to discover that when he was happy, he wanted to make others happy. What a soggy lot of rubbish, but there you had it.”

— Cat Sebastian

31. “And then – oh, his kingdom for a pair of field glasses. The earl dropped the ax long enough to strip down to his shirtsleeves. That couldn’t be necessary, given the chill in the November air. But on another, purely aesthetic level, it was quite, quite necessary for this man to take off his clothes whenever the spirit moved him. Perhaps he ought to go the full distance and take his shirt off too. No sense in doing things by halves.”

— Cat Sebastian

32. “Ash understood that he and Verity could never be together, and he accepted as the logical and reasonable conclusion that she would seek the company of other people. Indeed, he wished her well, in a theoretical sort of way.”

— Cat Sebastian

33. “He took Page’s face in between his still-cold hands and stroked his thumbs over the man’s cheekbones. Too tenderly for a man this dangerous, too slow for people with no future.”

— Cat Sebastian

34. “But finding out the truth wasn’t the goal – the truth was just another weapon, a knife to put in the right person’s hand, a grenade waiting to explode.”

— Cat Sebastian

35. “Then tell me.” He’d fix it. Whatever it was, he’d move heaven and earth to make things right for her. Here he was sending her sweets and haberdashery, servants and barnyard fowl. Did she not understand that he would do more, if she would let him?”

— Cat Sebastian

36. “There had been a time when he thought of himself as an arm of justice, but now he knew he was more like a cat bringing home a mouse to leave on his owner’s pillow.”

— Cat Sebastian

37. “She pulled a wad of knitting out of her work basket and began stitching as if the wool had done her a gross injustice and being made up into a muffler was a proper revenge.”

— Cat Sebastian

38. “I used to think that revenge was about defending one’s honor, but it turns out that honor is just spite dressed up for Sunday.”

— Cat Sebastian

39. “Without the people who thought the best of him, he had forgotten how to think the best of himself.”

— Cat Sebastian

40. “Do you think I could write an advice column?” Ash strove to find a diplomatic way to say No, definitely not. “Well, perhaps of the more bracing sort. Some people do like being flogged. Specialized interest, you know.”

— Cat Sebastian

41. “The Chicken Basket,” Peter announced. “The sheep bucket,” Caleb declared promptly. “What game is this?”

— Cat Sebastian

42. “He didn’t have the imagination to orchestrate illicit liaisons, nor the cunning to do anything sly. He had all the subtlety of a puppy, all the capacity for guile of a newborn baby.”

— Cat Sebastian

43. “One knows things are bad when one’s blackmailer sympathizes.”

— Cat Sebastian

44. “Cora, you’re going to give the poor man a fit,” Edith remonstrated. “He’s gone as white as a sheet. I’m too old to dig graves in the frozen ground.”

— Cat Sebastian

45. “Edith Pickering had the sort of austere features and fine bones that changed little with age.”

— Cat Sebastian

46. “He had come to England as a child and had never really thought of himself as a Catholic, but it still struck him as vaguely debased that the churches here tended not to use incense.”

— Cat Sebastian

47. “He took hold of Jack’s collar and bent down for a kiss. With each stroke of his tongue he thought, This is ours. It wasn’t something he was doing to Jack, or Jack was doing to him. Neither of them owned it. It was theirs. This was what he had wanted; as much as the physical pleasure he wanted the sense of shared desire, mutual longing.”

— Cat Sebastian

48. “I’d be delighted to turn traitor to my class,” Percy said easily. “Honestly, I’ve been wondering when you’d ask.”

— Cat Sebastian

49. “James was quite confident that nobody had ever enjoyed a conversation with Colonel Armstrong as much as Leo Page was pretending to.”

— Cat Sebastian

50. “Leo had read this detective story and he had seen this film and knew that when you made the heirs gather together, they immediately started putting exotic poisons into one another’s tea. They simply couldn’t help themselves.”

— Cat Sebastian