Top 250 Deborah Harkness Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Matthew had been accumulating secrets... My life might be too brief to hear them all, never mind understand them.”

— Deborah Harkness

202. “Folks are always in favor of fairness, until they have to give up something they have to someone else.”

— Deborah Harkness

203. “No act of creation has ever been painless,” she continued. “Miracles should leave a mark, so that we can remember how precious they are.”

— Deborah Harkness

204. “For us to be together, we needed to decide which secrets to share and then let the others go.”

— Deborah Harkness

205. “As for this darkness we all feel, you will tell me about it one day. I will not take the knowledge from you.”

— Deborah Harkness

206. “Here’s your pen,” Marcus said politely, “and your form. See?” He leaned closer. “I did exactly what you asked me to. I’m really very well behaved. My father made sure of it.”

— Deborah Harkness

207. “So that’s it?” I asked when I could manage it. “We’re going to abide by an ancient, narrow-minded agreement made almost a thousand years ago. Case closed.”

— Deborah Harkness

208. “You have a lot to learn about witches.”

— Deborah Harkness

209. “Here’s Fernando,” Sarah said in a tone suggesting that deliverance had come at last.”

— Deborah Harkness

210. “In labor we blame absolutely everything on the husband. It keeps the mother from developing homicidal fantasies and reminds the men they aren’t the center of attention,’ Sarah explained.”

— Deborah Harkness

211. “Even for Philadelphia, it had been a prodigiously warm summer. “Why hasn’t Dr. Franklin invented a way to stop it?”

— Deborah Harkness

212. “He walks through your future, but he’s in the past as well. He’s always in shadows, never in the light. And though he’s dangerous, the shadowed man doesn’t pose a threat to you.”

— Deborah Harkness

213. “I take it that witches aren’t supposed to hang out with vampires?’ ‘Or with daemons. It makes humans uncomfortable,’ Matthew said. ‘Uncomfortable?’ Chris looked dubious. ‘So did blacks sitting on buses next to white people. Segregation isn’t the answer.”

— Deborah Harkness

214. “The next morning was grey and much more typical of early autumn. All I wanted to do was cocoon myself in layers of sweaters and stay in my room.”

— Deborah Harkness

215. “Diana’s eyes were the blue and gold of a summer sky, and Matthew wanted nothing more than to fall headlong into their bright depths, not to lose himself but to be found.”

— Deborah Harkness

216. “When creatures refused to use proper names, it was a way of denying that those who were not like you were your equals.”

— Deborah Harkness

217. “According to human accounts, Dracula lived on for centuries – he may still be living. Are you sure he’s really dead?’ I asked. ‘I watched Baldwin rip his head off and bury it thirty miles away from the rest of his body. He was really dead then, and he’s really dead now.’ Gallowglass looked at me reprovingly. ‘You should know better than to believe these human stories, Auntie. They’ve never got more than a speck of truth in them.”

— Deborah Harkness

218. “That will save me from me breaking the window or picking her lock, he thought.”

— Deborah Harkness

219. “The house was winning, thanks to its chief weapon: Fleetwood Mac.”

— Deborah Harkness

220. “Einstein said that all physicists were aware that the distinctions between past, present, and future were only what he called ‘a stubbornly persistent illusion.’ Not only did he believe in marvels and wonders, he also believed in the elasticity of time.”

— Deborah Harkness

221. “Am I dreaming?” “You’re not dreaming,” Matthew said. “And, Diana?” He hesitated. “I love you.” It was what I most wanted to hear. The forgotten chain inside me started to sing, quietly, in the dark.”

— Deborah Harkness

222. “I could still feel the chain that anchored me to Matthew, witch to vampire.”

— Deborah Harkness

223. “I know. You were nervous before you opened your eyes.”

— Deborah Harkness

224. “You should be a diplomat, Ysabeau. You’re very good with a quick non-answer.”

— Deborah Harkness

225. “Stand down, Matthew,” Philippe growled. The sound was as leonine as the rest of him. The de Clermont family was a menagerie of formidable beasts. In Matthew’s presence I was always reminded of wolves. With Ysabeau it was falcons. Gallowglass had made me think of a bear. Philippe was akin to yet another deadly predator.”

— Deborah Harkness

226. “But you don’t need words to tell me what you feel,” Matthew said. “I see you, even when you hide from the rest of the world. I hear you, even when you’re silent.”

— Deborah Harkness

227. “Art and music must come from the heart,” Matthew said, gripping his great-grandson by the shoulder. “Even the darkest places need to be brought into the light of day, or else they’ll grow until they swallow a man whole.”

— Deborah Harkness

228. “You know that I’m not going to let the Holy Roman Emperor – or anybody else, for that matter – seduce me.”

— Deborah Harkness

229. “Daemons are brilliant, but we’re not vicious – not like the vampires.”

— Deborah Harkness

230. “Vampires reckon time differently than warmbloods do,” he said, still unwilling to release me. “How long is a vampire minute, then?” I asked, snuggling under his chin. “It’s hard to say,” Matthew murmured. “Some length of time between an ordinary minute and forever.”

— Deborah Harkness

231. “The touch we feel as a restraint when we are younger has a way of bringing us comfort later in our lives.”

— Deborah Harkness

232. “Blue had always struck her as such a serene, soothing color, yet all social media offered was endless agitation and posturing. It was worse than the court of Versailles.”

— Deborah Harkness

233. “Are you always like this? All dressed up in adrenaline and no place to go?”

— Deborah Harkness

234. “Feisty, am I? My husband is a member of the Congregation. A posse of men is coming on horseback to accuse me of harming a friendless old woman. I’m in a strange place and keep getting lost on my way to the bedroom. I still have no shoes. And I’m living in a dormitory full of adolescent boys who never stop talking!” I fumed. “But you needn’t trouble yourself on my account. I can take care of myself!”

— Deborah Harkness

235. “We’re witches – of course the house is haunted.”

— Deborah Harkness

236. “You travel safely too, Auntie Diana. And bring that uncle of mine with you,” Gallowglass said to the sea and the sky before he climbed back onto his bike and headed into a future he could no longer imagine nor postpone.”

— Deborah Harkness

237. “They’ll figure it out if we’re not careful. Humans like power – secrets, too.”

— Deborah Harkness

238. “The forest has eyes, and the woods have ears; therefore I will see, be silent, and hear.”

— Deborah Harkness

239. “There was an avocado green slow cooker, a venerable coffeemaker, two coffee grinders, and a blender. These were the tools of the modern witch, though Sarah kept a big black cauldron by the fireplace for old times’ sake.”

— Deborah Harkness

240. “I had been in 1590 for less than twenty-four hours, but I was already heartily sick of Christopher Marlowe.”

— Deborah Harkness

241. “Wars are fought on computers. This isn’t the thirteenth century. Hand-to-hand combat isn’t required.”

— Deborah Harkness

242. “It begins with absence and desire, it begins with blood and fear,’” I whispered. “‘It began with a discovery of witches,’” time responded, in a primeval echo that set alight the blue and amber threads that flickered against the room’s stone walls.”

— Deborah Harkness

243. “Baldwin Montclair, as he was known in the financial markets, strode down the hall of the ground floor. His copper-colored hair gleamed in the electric light, and his muscles twitched with the quick reflexes of a born athlete. Trained to wield a sword from childhood, he had been imposing before becoming a vampire, and after his rebirth few dared to cross him.”

— Deborah Harkness

244. “The middle son in Philippe de Clermont’s brood of three male children, Baldwin had been made a vampire in Roman times and had been Philippe’s favorite. They were cut from the same cloth – fond of war, women, and wine, in that order. Despite these amiable characteristics, those who faced him in combat seldom lived to recount the experience.”

— Deborah Harkness

245. “After all my searching, I discover that I am who I always was: Matthew de Clermont. Husband. Father. Vampire. And I am here for only one reason: To make a difference.”

— Deborah Harkness

246. “Racial identity has no biological basis – at least none accepted by most scientists.”

— Deborah Harkness

247. “To Baldwin fell the battle strategies, his sharp mind quick to analyze every plan for flaws and weaknesses.”

— Deborah Harkness

248. “Like sun and moon, we were unconcerned at this moment with time, distance, and differences. All that mattered was our position relative to each other.”

— Deborah Harkness

249. “Living in the sixteenth century, in households rather than simply in houses, I had grown accustomed to being surrounded by other people. My fear of being discovered had receded, and in its place had grown a wish to belong.”

— Deborah Harkness

250. “And so I discovered that the practice of magic was not unlike the practice of history. The trick to both wasn’t finding the correct answers but formulating better questions.”

— Deborah Harkness