Top 400 Gail Carriger Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Alexia found herself surrounded and embraced by a room of such unmitigated welcome and personality that it was akin to being yelled at by plum pudding.”

— Gail Carriger

352. “Miss Tarabotti felt such rules did not entirely apply to her, as she was a spinster. Had been a spinster for as long as she could remember. In her more acerbic moments, she felt she had been born a spinster.”

— Gail Carriger

353. “In for the boil, might as well steam.”

— Gail Carriger

354. “Very well, Lord Maccon. If we are going to play this particular hand, would you be interested in becoming my... ” “Mistress?”

— Gail Carriger

355. “It was typical of her character that she simply assumed she would, eventually, gain control over the situation.”

— Gail Carriger

356. “No, miss, friendship would be a finish.”

— Gail Carriger

357. “The man was dead after all. But not powerless. Formerly Floote was many things, but powerless wasn’t one of them. He had knowledge.”

— Gail Carriger

358. “The sofa clattered back into motion and came after her but was confined to the shed. It stopped in the doorway, glaring at her and shaking threatening tassels – if an object without eyes can be said to glare. Sophronia felt sorry for the chaise longue, but she wasn’t going to risk being caught in order to mollify a gaudy piece of furniture.”

— Gail Carriger

359. “I hate missing everything. That’s why I want to marry well and be a grand lady. Then I can host all the parties, all the time, and see everything that is going on always. How can you stand not knowing?”

— Gail Carriger

360. “Footnote, tail high, led the way in that manner of cats which is one part banner-waving herald and one part attempted murder by tripping. Cats in hallways – escort meets assassination attempt.”

— Gail Carriger

361. “She was no closer to determining who might want her dead. There were just too many possibilities.”

— Gail Carriger

362. “Even if she’d known what to do with a man, how did one tempt another woman?”

— Gail Carriger

363. “The mechanimal sat back on his haunches and sent a puff of smoke at her, tail wagging back and forth hopefully.”

— Gail Carriger

364. “The monkeys, she explained, were considered reincarnated politicians, which made Rue laugh and the stick entirely understandable.”

— Gail Carriger

365. “The stars were vast and twinkling with savage cheer above them, and the sea was a vast and satin-rich bed of cruelty below. Primrose shivered at her own fancy, but there was something about the wide emptiness that terrorised. I suppose I am nothing if not a creature of cities with bustling streets and cosy hearths. This vastness is not for me. And I am not for it.”

— Gail Carriger

366. “Torture?” Primrose’s tone was thoughtful. “Cold tea?” “German poetry.” Percy reached to a shelf and offered up an unpleasantly fat leather-bound volume. Rue was arrested. “There’s such a thing as German poetry?” Primrose nodded seriously. “Yes. Save yourself.”

— Gail Carriger

367. “Rue bounced in happily. Everything was so pretty and colourful. She and Prim were dressed to confuse. Tea espionage was afoot. This was going to be fun.”

— Gail Carriger

368. “He also seemed to speak predominantly in italics.”

— Gail Carriger

369. “She’d never judge. She wasn’t remotely like that. She’d judge a man’s throw pillows, but not his family.”

— Gail Carriger

370. “I am rather fond of ladybugs. They are so delightfully hemispherical.”

— Gail Carriger

371. “Many was the lady whose belief in another’s sound judgment was based solely upon that other judging her favorably.”

— Gail Carriger

372. “Later on Lady Maccon was to describe that particular day as the worst of her life. She had neither the soul nor the romanticism to consider childbirth magical or emotionally transporting. So far as she could gather it mostly involved pain indignity and mess. There was nothing engaging or appealing about the process. And as she told her husband firmly she intended never to go through it again.”

— Gail Carriger

373. “What if I want him to throw me up against the wall and press against me with his whole body, as if he needed me to breathe?”

— Gail Carriger

374. “While her own taste was, frankly, pedestrian, Lady Maccon did enjoy seeing what all the peacocks had arranged to drape themselves with. In the better parts of London, one could run into almost anything: the latest evening gowns from Paris, floating dresses to the extremes of practicality from the Americas, and the fullest, most complex cravat ties imaginable. One could witness a veritable cornucopia of visual delights merely by driving through the crowded streets. If.”

— Gail Carriger

375. “The fact that he’d become withdrawn and insular was no surprise to Percy. He’d few examples of affection to call upon. Aunt Alexia and Lord Maccon being the singular exception. Their marriage, to his outside eye, had always been combative but never lacking warmth. Percy could admit to himself, if not to Arsenic, that he was attracted by their model of a profound and loving relationship, if perhaps hoping for a little less rushing about and banging of heads together.”

— Gail Carriger

376. “I must say, like most daughters, I resent being accused of emulating my mother.”

— Gail Carriger

377. “Alexia Tarabotti would not be moved from the punch bowl. She had selected her station for the evening and would wallflower there with the best of them. She should be good at it by now; it was all she ever did at a party. And in this instance, as it was remarkably tasty punch, any relocation seemed fraught with fruitlessness.”

— Gail Carriger

378. “For the first time in her life, Primrose forgot entirely about her tea.”

— Gail Carriger

379. “Leap first, everything else later was her motto.”

— Gail Carriger

380. “She was all tall muscled power, full bloom and without guile. Lord Akeldama was composed entirely of guile.”

— Gail Carriger

381. “Under normal circumstances, Alexia would have been put off by the disreputable state of the sandwich, but it was meant so kindly and offered with such diffidence, she could do nothing but accept. It was actually rather tasty.”

— Gail Carriger

382. “If you’re staying, I’m staying,” insisted the best of all possible friends.”

— Gail Carriger

383. “This resembled hedgehog fur so precisely that Percy, who rarely noticed fashion, was struck momentarily speechless by the shocking similarity between this hat and his mother’s Erinaceinae nature.”

— Gail Carriger

384. “No wife ever cleared a man’s character, not without a great deal of trouble on the lower decks. So.”

— Gail Carriger

385. “Writers are the modern vanguards of narrative, and as such, we are in a dangerous position of power.”

— Gail Carriger

386. “Rearranging furniture was leagues better than seducing people.”

— Gail Carriger

387. “Well, you shouldn’t go around being nasty when the rest of us are armed with nibbly bits, should you?”

— Gail Carriger

388. “We are an institution of high learning and higher manners. We simply cannot shoot first; it isn’t done. Now, remember that, Miss Temminnick, do – a lady never shoots first. She asks questions, then she shoots.”

— Gail Carriger

389. “My eyelash fluttering is subpar.”

— Gail Carriger

390. “Dirigibles were all well and good if one wanted to waft about the countryside, taking in views. Gavin wanted his tea. And.”

— Gail Carriger

391. “Soap looked pale. Sophronia hadn’t thought that possible. Normally her Soap was dark as Christmas cake and just as full of nutty goodness. He seemed flat and empty now.”

— Gail Carriger

392. “Auribus teneo lupum.” “No Latin! You know I can’t abide Latin during unsustainable situations!”

— Gail Carriger

393. “The sun was near to rising. Percy downed the last of his drink and pondered the nature of love and manipulation and ghosts and souls, confident in his own superiority in needing none of these things to be content with his life.”

— Gail Carriger

394. “For x, as it turned out, equaled two.”

— Gail Carriger

395. “Cooked sausage, up and down, halfway between cat’s tail and cricket bat. With something to make it smooth, like oil or face cream.”

— Gail Carriger

396. “Pillover Plumleigh-Teignmott’s biggest problem was that he met the love of his life when he was twelve years of age and then spent the rest of that life misplacing her. Or more to the point, she kept intentionally misplacing herself.”

— Gail Carriger

397. “It was best to assume that a non-tea drinker might, at any moment, develop refinement.”

— Gail Carriger

398. “And Gavin never again forgot to shave of an evening.”

— Gail Carriger

399. “Was she ill? Or was she going to kill someone? He considered. It was late. Plenty of time to have killed someone already.”

— Gail Carriger

400. “Ivy waved her wet handkerchief, as much as to say ‘words cannot possibly articulate my profound distress’. Then, because Ivy never settled for meaningful gestures when verbal embellishments could compound the effect, she said, “Words cannot possibly articulate my profound distress.”

— Gail Carriger