Top 160 Courtney Milan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I am small,” she said, “but mighty.”

— Courtney Milan

2. “No man is broken because bad things happen to him. He’s broken because he doesn’t keep going after those things happen.”

— Courtney Milan

3. “Happiness is not just an act of optimism – it is an act of defiance.”

— Courtney Milan

4. “When someone else’s safety and acceptance in society is on the line, your personal discomfort comes in a very distant second.”

— Courtney Milan

5. “You see, I’m not some shiny bauble to be strung onto a necklace and displayed for all the world to see. I’m too proud to ever be anyone’s conquest.”

— Courtney Milan

6. “You’re perfectly right. There’s no two ways about it. When you leave, it will slay me.”

— Courtney Milan

7. “Love is never safe,” Tina repeats. “It’s weird. It’s magical. It’s the moment when you break through the dark shell that protects your heart and say, this, this person. I’m going to let this person in, let him come so close that he can hurt me more than I can possibly imagine. I’m going to let him hurt me.” She inhales. “Love is never safe.” “And yet,” I say, “we do it anyway.” “We do it anyway.” Her voice is a quiet echo of mine, but her hands close on mine.”

— Courtney Milan

8. “A ninnyhammer,” Jane said, “sounds like a magic hammer. One that I can use to smite ninnies. I have a great need for one of those.”

— Courtney Milan

9. “I will not be browbeaten, however nicely you do it. I am done with things happening to me. From here on out, I am going to happen to things.”

— Courtney Milan

10. “The way he looked at her made her heart thump, her breath catch. For a second, those dark eyes seemed to have no end to them, as if she were looking into a hall of mirrors and seeing reflection upon reflection echoing into infinity.”

— Courtney Milan

11. “For everyone who has carried water in thimbles and teaspoons throughout the centuries. And for all those who continue to do so. For as many centuries as it takes.”

— Courtney Milan

12. “It’s called basic human decency, and I deserve no credit for doing what every man should.”

— Courtney Milan

13. “It’s one thing to flirt with someone you’ve never met. But these? These are actual feelings. I’m not sure what they mean or what to do with them.”

— Courtney Milan

14. “I am constantly amazed by you,” he said. “To say that you view the world through rose-colored glasses would be the greatest of understatements. You don’t just see things tinted in pink; you see a world that is pink all the way through.”

— Courtney Milan

15. “If it must be done, it’s best done bravely.”

— Courtney Milan

16. “Libraries are the future of reading.”

— Courtney Milan

17. “Damn you, knowledge! Ruining everything good, once again. Learning things is most inconvenient.”

— Courtney Milan

18. “Sir Mark Turner,” he said. “I speak with the tongues of a thousand angels. Butterflies follow me wherever I go. Birds sing when I take a breath.”

— Courtney Milan

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19. “Don’t feel sorry for me. Most people can’t change their past. I change mine every day.”

— Courtney Milan

20. “Anjan was Batty because Bhattacharya had too many syllables. He’d told one man his first name; the fellow had blinked, and then had immediately dubbed him John. That’s who they thought he was: John Batty. These well-meaning English boys had taken his name as easily, and with as much jovial friendship, as their fathers had taken his country.”

— Courtney Milan

21. “We’re friends... And what that means is this: I won’t let anyone hurt you. Not if I can stop it.”

— Courtney Milan

22. “You’re annoying. You always act as if everything is so easy. ‘Well, Oliver, it seems to me that your choice is either to quit or continue,’” he mimicked, remembering his father’s advice when he’d been on the verge of leaving school. The other man only smiled. “I’m your father. It’s my job to annoy you.”

— Courtney Milan

23. “Only lawlessness and chaos can be born out of lawlessness and chaos.”

— Courtney Milan

24. “The vicar gave him permission and he kissed her – not hard, for lust, nor long, for love, but a light brush of his lips for the brief space of time that she would stay in his life.”

— Courtney Milan

25. “Family isn’t a matter of history. Or biology,” he said softly. “It’s a matter of choice.”

— Courtney Milan

26. “He’d started caring more about becoming the kind of person who could make a change than he cared about the change itself.”

— Courtney Milan

27. “If a rock never moves,” her sister finally said, “the water wears it away all the same. I am being hurt, Jane, and if I stay still, Titus will wear me away. Sometimes I wonder that there’s anything left of me at all.”

— Courtney Milan

28. “I adhere to the law of chastity because I don’t believe in pushing women. That’s what it means to be a man. I don’t hurt others simply to make myself feel superior. Gossip can ruin a woman as surely as unchaste behavior. True men don’t indulge in either. We don’t need to.”

— Courtney Milan

29. “A life without risk is one where I tell myself I’m not worthy of taking a chance.”

— Courtney Milan

30. “He wasn’t good with this sort of thing – with the back-and-forth dance between man and woman. He wasn’t even sure if they were dancing, or if she was merely being polite.”

— Courtney Milan

31. “You’re a force of nature, Your Grace,” she said. “But so am I. So am I.”

— Courtney Milan

32. “I believe,” he said, “that there is a special place in hell for those who steal truth. And that man – whoever he is – I hope he is burning there.”

— Courtney Milan

33. “And I know, despite all the constellations placed in the sky as warning, why all those Greek maidens gave it up in the end. It’s because all the pain is worth it for this one moment.”

— Courtney Milan

34. “Forty-nine is extremely young. If forty-nine is not young, that would make me old, and I am not old. I have reached the age of maturity to which all humans must particularly aspire; to dismiss this pinnacle of perfection as old age is to demean all of humankind.”

— Courtney Milan

35. “Maybe he was cold, but sometimes ice burned.”

— Courtney Milan

36. “But here’s the thing about having been in love that first time: I always knew, every time after, that what I was faced with was a pale imitation. I never found someone else I could trust with my soul. After that first time, nothing else was acceptable.”

— Courtney Milan

37. “Experience tells me that fiction is fiction and that hope leads to disappointment.”

— Courtney Milan

38. “I have looked high.” Her voice was an urgent whisper. “And I have fallen farther than you can imagine. So don’t you lecture me. All I want is to pretend that this is enough – that I can be satisfied by the scraps that remain to me. ” He had.”

— Courtney Milan

39. “But none of that matters. When I see you, I remember that you made me want to drown rather than be myself.”

— Courtney Milan

40. “A lady always avoids the truth, when it happens to be gauche.”

— Courtney Milan

41. “I’ll not pretend that I want you for anything but mine.”

— Courtney Milan

42. “I believe that women are human beings. That belief is not diametrically opposed to thinking that men are human beings, and that if one human being has the opportunity to be kind to another, she should do so.”

— Courtney Milan

43. “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.”

— Courtney Milan

Featured in: Romance Quotes

44. “Money may not buy love, but it buys something like it. Not having any money makes love complicated.”

— Courtney Milan

45. “He was nothing but a deep abyss of want, and only she could fill him.”

— Courtney Milan

46. “I’m not stubborn,” Ash said. “I’m right. There’s a difference.”

— Courtney Milan

47. “If you were a shadowy, anonymous figure, it made sense to pretend everything had gone according to some diabolical plan. Never mind if it hadn’t.”

— Courtney Milan

48. “I’ve escaped from the dreadful clutches of a nap,” she announced to the road.”

— Courtney Milan

49. “She made her shoulder blades into steel, willing them to stay rigid against his onslaught. She was a thing of gears and metal, strong like clockwork, and she wouldn’t melt down into tears.”

— Courtney Milan

50. “That memory was a knife that kept on cutting.”

— Courtney Milan