Top 160 Courtney Milan Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 4

51. “I think that’s 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.”

— Courtney Milan

52. “If he were another person entirely, he might burst into flowery speech. If he did, she’d probably laugh at him. Besides, he didn’t believe in pretending to be anyone other than who he was. Even if she swooned at whatever poetic nonsense he managed to spout, she would only be disappointed once they grew comfortable with each other and he went back to making jokes about death and gonorrhea.”

— Courtney Milan

53. “Her kiss didn’t sweep away the dark anguish he felt in his heart. Instead, it embraced it. It acknowledged it.”

— Courtney Milan

54. “Defiance. He swallowed. It wasn’t enough for him – not anymore. He wanted to be more than her defiance. He wanted to be her strength, her amusement. He wanted to be her lover. He wanted to be her every wicked desire and her safe haven, all at once.”

— Courtney Milan

55. “She received his note not two minutes later. She opened it, her heart pounding. But there were only two words on the paper. Marry me.”

— Courtney Milan

56. “He was ‘susceptible’ to her. If he wasn’t careful, he might end up nursing a full-blown interest.”

— Courtney Milan

57. “Don’t feel embarrassed,” she said. “It’s acceptable to lose the flow of conversation. Not everyone is clever enough to think of something to say immediately.” Bradenton’s lips thinned. “And you’re a marquess,” she added. “Maybe there are deficiencies in your understanding, but nobody will ever notice them so long as you make absolutely certain to introduce yourself as a marquess first.”

— Courtney Milan

58. “The road to hell was surely paved with cacao.”

— Courtney Milan

59. “My nerves are neither over- nor underwrought. They are wrought to the precise degree demanded by this situation.”

— Courtney Milan

60. “He could have been married last year, but for his fascination with Lydia Charingford. The mornings when he tipped his hat to her on the street were always the brightest. He smiled when he saw her. He saw so little hope in the world, and she saw far too much. There were days he wanted to sit and watch her, to figure out where all that good cheer came from.”

— Courtney Milan

61. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that we know next to nothing. Disease is a mystery. Health is inscrutable. The body itself is scarcely understood; we can only examine the secrets of the dead. And in all that dark ignorance, we’re sometimes granted a rare moment of illumination. The truth is a gift.”

— Courtney Milan

62. “Have you ever seen a cat attempt to pounce on a target, and miss? And what does the cat do? It acts as if it intended to miss. ‘Yes,’ it says. ‘I let that one go as a warning to all the others. Now I shall lick my paws for the next five minutes, precisely as I had planned.”

— Courtney Milan

63. “I’m feeling generous. I shall answer one question for every month you spent in my company as a child.” He looked over at her. Her lips thinned. Her fingers tapped an angry rhythm against her saucer. Robert stood up. “As you are no doubt aware,” he said, “that leaves you with no questions at all. This interview is done.”

— Courtney Milan

64. “There were no knights, no castles, no magic. But there was laughter, and there was love, and while Judith still had breath in her body, she would make sure they had enough. Her life was already its own once upon a time. There was enough joy in the story, enough sorrow mixed in. It might not be the sort of tale that mothers told their children but it was still a good one. Not everything hurt. It would all turn out.”

— Courtney Milan

65. “Truths designed to mislead are just as bad as lies.”

— Courtney Milan

66. “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.”

— Courtney Milan

67. “Do Chinese dragons even eat people?” “She lives in the Bay Area,” I say severely. “She eats a Westernized diet.”

— Courtney Milan

68. “Violet,” he said. “How could I say I loved you and expect you to do something you didn’t want?”

— Courtney Milan

69. “What can I say? I have a thing for women who carry heavy books and know how to use them.”

— Courtney Milan

70. “Ash.” Margaret knew her voice was trembling. “Why are you doing this?” “Because I adore you. Because you looked so stricken when I saw you and I couldn’t bear not to comfort you.” His voice was warm breath against her skin. “Did you know, when you left that room, you took all the light with you?”

— Courtney Milan

71. “If you’re going to throw the girl to the wolves, it’s only appropriate to outfit her with a red cloak.”

— Courtney Milan

72. “Distressed sighs!” Robert protested. “Not once did I stoop to distressed sighs! I might have emitted a manly huff of oppression.”

— Courtney Milan

73. “Margaret had always thought a man seduced a woman by making her aware of his charms: his body, his wealth, his kisses. How naive she had been. Ash Turner seduced her with the promise of her own self.”

— Courtney Milan

74. “Miss Fairfield had a gift for taking a beautiful concept and then marring it beyond all recognition.”

— Courtney Milan

75. “Does anyone ever get the best of you?” “Yes,” she returned, “but only when I choose to give it to them.”

— Courtney Milan

76. “He was her brother by history. By love. By choice.”

— Courtney Milan

77. “The Countess of Cambury is like a deep, dark hole – secrets go in, but none of them ever come out.” “Sebastian,” Violet replied, calmly looping the yarn about one of her needles, “it is neither proper nor respectful to let a woman know that you think of her as nothing more than a hole.”

— Courtney Milan

78. “I’m going to explode,” she muttered. “Into a cloud of dust and despair.”

— Courtney Milan

79. “She wanted him to be right. She needed him to be wrong. And while that sounded as if she were confused, confusion implied uncertainty. And Margaret was dead certain that he was both the last man on earth that she should kiss, and the only one she dreamed of holding.”

— Courtney Milan

80. “Wallflowers may not be the prettiest of blooms, but at least they don’t get trampled. So.”

— Courtney Milan

81. “Of course; a nurse wouldn’t have been quite so bold in her speech. Not to a duke’s heir. Not even to a wealthy tradesman who held the power of her employment in his too-large hands.”

— Courtney Milan

82. “So,” he said, “you think that I’m charming. You didn’t list that among my assets before.” “Of course you’re charming.” She didn’t look up. “I’m charmed. I’m charmed to my teeth.” There was a note in her voice that sounded so bitter that it almost tasted sweet. “You’re a force of nature, Your Grace,” she said. “But so am I. So am I.”

— Courtney Milan

83. “They said that hell had no fury like a woman scorned, but they were wrong. Women were scorned again and again and again. It was only after the seventieth scorning that they let loose a fraction of their righteous anger. Frankly, men had no idea how lucky they were that any woman was rational at all.”

— Courtney Milan

84. “Ah, the rule that says that women aren’t allowed to be intelligent.” He brushed a kiss against her forehead. “Burn that one to the ground, Violet, and dance on the ashes. And damn anyone who tells you it’s selfish to do so.”

— Courtney Milan

85. “Gray! No, anything but gray. Gray is nothing but a white that can’t make up its mind.”

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

87. “Lucky you that you can plan and think and plot without pretense. That you can want openly, that you don’t have to stuff it all inside yourself to molder. Lucky you that you can lift your eyes to the sky without singeing your wings. Lucky you that you can consider the future without terror.”

— Courtney Milan

88. “It turns out, Newton is correct: Objects at rest tend to remain at rest, and twelve-year-old-boys are even more resistant to motion than regular matter.”

— Courtney Milan

89. “This time, his gaze fixed on her and stayed. The wind blew, whipping her skirts about her ankles, as if he’d called up a gale with the intensity of his stare.”

— Courtney Milan

90. “You anchor me without holding me down. You frighten me without threatening my future. You’re unflinchingly devoted. I love you.”

— Courtney Milan

91. “Jonas had never been able to manage that sort of small conversation. The labyrinthine rules attached to kind words usually left him bemused. And Miss Charingford was so good at it. He could have watched her make people smile for hours.”

— Courtney Milan

92. “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.”

— Courtney Milan

93. “Ash’s smile grew darker, and he looked at the woman. “I knew the instant Margaret spoke that she intended to use me as a weapon. What you fail to understand is this: I am her weapon to use.” Margaret’s lungs burned. So much for not occasioning gossip. But she couldn’t fault him. She couldn’t reprimand him. She couldn’t even stop her own smile from spilling out, stupidly, over her face, the truth writ large for anyone to see.”

— Courtney Milan

94. “Do you suppose I would learn you the way a scholar learns a book? That you are nothing to me but a collection of suppositions, to be stored in my memory and written down for verification? No, Margaret. I know you.”

— Courtney Milan

95. “I fear that one day I will no longer understand desperation, and with that, I will slowly stop listening to what others have to say.”

— Courtney Milan

96. “I’d tell you to fetch a match, but you have always had your own spark.”

— Courtney Milan

97. “The beautiful thing about marriage is the right it gives me to monogamy. One man intent on dictating my whereabouts is enough, wouldn’t you think?”

— Courtney Milan

98. “Perhaps God gave one sisters to teach one to love the inexplicable.”

— Courtney Milan

99. “I only said I would stop talking to you, he’d written. I never promised to stop loving you.”

— Courtney Milan

100. “But to call it looking was like calling an eighteen-course feast a snack.”

— Courtney Milan