Top 160 Courtney Milan Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

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

— Courtney Milan

53. “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

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

— Courtney Milan

55. “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

56. “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

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

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

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

67. “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

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

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

71. “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

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

— Courtney Milan

73. “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

74. “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

75. “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

76. “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

77. “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

78. “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

79. “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

80. “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

81. “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

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

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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

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

— Courtney Milan

88. “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

89. “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

90. “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

91. “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

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

— Courtney Milan

93. “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

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

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

96. “There is no point getting angry at a bad hand, he had used to say. Especially if the dealer cheated when distributing the cards. Anger leads to mistakes. Don’t get angry; that’s what they want. Get calm. They’ll never expect you to do that. Don’t get angry; get creative. Take the hand you have and see whether you might not be holding something your enemy has overlooked. Don’t get angry at the cards; get the dealer out of the game.”

— Courtney Milan

97. “Hugo reached down and plucked a spare twig from the ground and set it on the bench between them. “This,” he said, “is a wall, and I will not cross it.”

— Courtney Milan

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

— Courtney Milan

99. “I would never interrupt you,” he told her. “I love it when you talk Sweetly to me.”

— Courtney Milan

100. “Here was life, gently reminding her that she could care again. That her grief was allowed, but so was her joy.”

— Courtney Milan