Top 200 Cynthia Hand Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “There was only one conclusion Jane could draw from the style and design of the dress and it was this: it had to be thought up by men. Then women could in no way outrun them, and with the lack of oxygen to the brain due to a rib cage the size of a fist, they could not outthink them. And with the bright colors, they couldn’t hide. No running, no thinking, no hiding.”

— Cynthia Hand

152. “I know Jane is dear to you,” Bess said. “I also know that she’s in danger. But Jane is one person, Edward. There are thousands of lives at stake. There’s a kingdom on the edge of a knife. We must tread carefully.”

— Cynthia Hand

153. “Without stories, we’re all just lonely islands.”

— Cynthia Hand

154. “Only morons smoke.”

— Cynthia Hand

155. “I have a thing for Rochester,” confessed Jane. “It’s not healthy.”

— Cynthia Hand

156. “Great,” I answer. It’s fruitless to argue with Dave; he’s so freaking calm. “I’ll get right on that.”

— Cynthia Hand

157. “The corner of his mouth lifts, and then I kiss him. Not so gently this time. His hand drops from my face and grab at my waist and pull me to him. A small soft groan escapes him, and that noise makes me absolutely crazy. I lose it. I wind my hands around his neck and kiss him without holding anything back. I can feel his heart thundering like mine, his breath coming faster, his arms tightening around me.”

— Cynthia Hand

158. “Because I’m like the opposite of Cinderella. My ball only starts after midnight.”

— Cynthia Hand

159. “It was 1538 and John Lambert had been outed as an Edian when, after hearing Frederic Clarence had written a pamphlet denouncing Edian magic, he turned into a dog and ate the papers, prompting Clarence to cry out, “That dog ate my scriptwork!”

— Cynthia Hand

160. “It’s all me, the human part, the angel part. I love Tucker Avery.”

— Cynthia Hand

161. “He would have found the whole thing wildly exciting if he wasn’t so tired of things being so wildly exciting.”

— Cynthia Hand

162. “This meant that Alexander’s side business was actually the revenge business. Though to be completely honest, he had just the one customer, himself.”

— Cynthia Hand

163. “You aren’t being sent on a mission that you don’t have the power to accomplish. You have to find that power inside you somewhere, and you have to refine it. You were made for this purpose...”

— Cynthia Hand

164. “Through books she could see the world.”

— Cynthia Hand

165. “Chicks dig historians.”

— Cynthia Hand

166. “I try to smile, but my heart’s breaking all over again. Because I know that I can’t stay here.”

— Cynthia Hand

167. “There are two ways to respond when life hands you something unpleasant,” the grandmother said, smiling down at the infant in her lap. “You can get soft or you can get tough. Our Ethan has just decided to get tough, it seems. But he’ll come around eventually, I think. He’s got a good heart under there somewhere. And he has time – God knows, he’s, what, seventeen now? He has time to get himself on the right path again.”

— Cynthia Hand

168. “I was born with numbers on the brain. I think in equations. What I would do, if I could really put this pen to paper and produce something useful, is take my memories, these fleeting, painful moments of my life, and find some way to add and subtract and divide them, insert variables and move them, try to isolate them, to discover their elusive meanings, to translate them from possibilities to certainties.”

— Cynthia Hand

169. “The pen feels unnatural in my hand. It’s so much weightier than pencil. Permanent. There are no erasers, in life.”

— Cynthia Hand

170. “Ah, hello.” He gathered his courage. This was just like reading poetry, but subtract poems and add people casually placing hunting knives and daggers on their tables. One of the women was filing her fingernails into sharp points, like claws. Just like reading poetry.”

— Cynthia Hand

171. “Don’t do that,” he says. “Don’t regret us. I don’t. I won’t, ever.”

— Cynthia Hand

172. “So he was her husband, Edward might eat her, and no one’s hair could rival his.”

— Cynthia Hand

173. “She would imagine a different life. She would seek it.”

— Cynthia Hand

174. “Because obviously she was the most qualified for the position. At long last Edward had arrived at the enlightened state of knowing that a woman could do a job just as well as a man. Yep. That’s how it happened. Edward abdicated his throne. Elizabeth would be crowned queen at Westminster Abbey that same week, and we all know she’d be the best ruler of England ever. And now history can more or less pick up along the same path where we left it.”

— Cynthia Hand

175. “Everything changes. That’s the only constant.”

— Cynthia Hand

176. “Where are you?” I wheeze into the floor. “Where did you go?”

— Cynthia Hand

177. “Before I moved here, I never got the whole love-triangle thing. You know, in movies or romance novels or whatnot, where there’s one chick that all the guys are drooling over, even though you can’t see anything particularly special about her. But oh, no, they both must have her. And she’s like, oh dear, however will I choose? William is so sensitive, he understands me, he swept me off my feet, oh misery, blubber, blubber, but how can I go on living without Rafe and his devil-may-care ways and his dark and only-a-little-abusive love? Upchuck.”

— Cynthia Hand

178. “Everyone’s caught up in their own thing. We’re all the stars of our own movies. Anyways, that’s my big superpower. Mister Invisibility.”

— Cynthia Hand

179. “But right now, at the wedding supper, a bigger problem was emerging. Every time G thought about how to break the news to her, he gulped down a cup of ale. And he thought about it a lot. Every time he looked at his new bride. And he looked at her a lot.”

— Cynthia Hand

180. “Everyone started sniffling at that point. Everyone, that is, except me. I never did the crying thing. It would have ruined my makeup.”

— Cynthia Hand

181. “Everybody dies, and everybody loses people they love.”

— Cynthia Hand

182. “It’s just high school, man. Those guys are just high school guys, and in ten years they’re going to be working for people like me. I know that. I just have to make it through two more years.”

— Cynthia Hand

183. “We’ve all got our weaknesses.”

— Cynthia Hand

184. “Because he was English and that’s what the English do under stress: they drink tea.”

— Cynthia Hand

185. “Dominance leads to tyranny.”

— Cynthia Hand

186. “He quickly pulled back and shook out his mane, in what he hoped was a very dignified manner. Yes, he was a horse, but he was still a man. Except anatomically. And he would be treated accordingly, with the utmost respect.”

— Cynthia Hand

187. “Brave isn’t something you are. It’s something you do. It comes from action. I appreciate that.”

— Cynthia Hand

188. “The worst part about her new chambers was that all these wardrobes and vanities and drapes meant there was no space – none at all – for a bookcase. Who on earth could feel comfortable enough to sleep in a room with no books?”

— Cynthia Hand

189. “Anything’s possible, I suppose. It’s a wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

— Cynthia Hand

190. “I’m not worth it. But I want you to know, in case I ever do give you this letter and you read it first before you burn it or something, that for just a little while, you made me feel like I was really alive. Like I was special.”

— Cynthia Hand

191. “I’ll never forget the way he tastes. It’s not anything I can describe, a little sweet and a whole lot of spice, and it feels, in that moment, absolutely right.”

— Cynthia Hand

192. “This is isn’t going to become one of those creepy situations where you show up at all hours of the night to watch me sleep, is it?” he asks playfully.”

— Cynthia Hand

193. “I don’t need a man. I have a gun.”

— Cynthia Hand

194. “Jane’s face could have taught those torches to burn bright. Last night, she was the sun, and all of the flowers in all of the counties turned toward her for warmth.”

— Cynthia Hand

195. “Everything changes, I think. That is the only constant. We all grow up.”

— Cynthia Hand

196. “If it is a gift, I do not deserve it. If it is a curse, I do not deserve it.”

— Cynthia Hand

197. “She’d have married Jane to a tree stump if it had been allowed.”

— Cynthia Hand

198. “Maybe you could write to a future version of yourself. Many people write their journals to future selves, I think. It demonstrates a kind of hopefulness.”

— Cynthia Hand

199. “The person who possesses the creative gift owns something of which she is not always the master – something that at times strangely wills and works for itself.”

— Cynthia Hand

200. “It’s your mind you have to train, like your mom said that one time, you have to separate yourself from all the crap, get down to the core, focus.”

— Cynthia Hand