Top 50 India Holton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Half of what I’m wearing is unmentionable. Suffice it to say, if you were dressed as a woman, you would understand the impossibility of going to bed in your clothes.”

— India Holton

2. “Reading is not a hobby,” she said. “It is a way of life.”

— India Holton

3. “You are a scoundrel,” she whispered furiously. “Yes,” he agreed. “I’m thinking of starting a Society of Gentlemen Scoundrels.” “You’re millennia too late. It already exists and is called the patriarchy.”

— India Holton

4. “Italian,” Cecilia said, disappointment withering each syllable. “You need to be a bit older before you can attract a proper assassin, my dear,” Miss Darlington advised from the interior.”

— India Holton

5. “It is violence that best overcomes hate, vengeance that most certainly heals injury, and a good cup of tea that soothes the most anguished soul”; thus ran the motto of the Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels.”

— India Holton

6. “But alas! Alas! She must confess to herself that she did not want to be wise yet.”

— India Holton

7. “No one would help steal the houses of their fellow Society members,” Cecilia insisted. He gave her an amused frown. “Why not? Half of you are trying to assassinate the other half.” “That’s different.”

— India Holton

8. “A real assassin would hire a sensible tailor. And a barber. And would not attempt to murder someone five minutes before luncheon.”

— India Holton

9. “When she had her own house, she would fill every room with books.”

— India Holton

10. “I’m thinking of starting a Society of Gentlemen Scoundrels.” “You’re millennia too late. It already exists and is called the patriarchy.”

— India Holton

11. “Men these days. Albert was the same. “Don’t ride in an open carriage for fear of assassins.” “Don’t have parties.” “Don’t hit me with the furniture.” They need to develop more spine.”

— India Holton

12. “Do not look so concerned on my behalf, Captain. It is a common enough statement. For example, I myself love that house there with the wooden shutters. I love tea. I love you, and your smile, and the way you sigh in your sleep. See, common. Unconcerning. We are still enemies.”

— India Holton

13. “My dear,” she whispered. “Some advice from a long-married woman: every time he speaks, close your eyes and think of England.”

— India Holton

14. “We have only three laws in our Society, Cecilia. No killing civilians. Pour the tea before the milk. And no stealing each other’s houses.”

— India Holton

15. “She’d heard those words over and again throughout her childhood, words that felt like a rap on the knuckles or a prod against the heart. You’re so sensitive, Charlotte. You feel too much, you are too much. It’s messy. A witch must be more restrained. She’d built a hundred layers of calm and coolness over the years in response. She’d worked hard to become something other than her altogether wrong self.”

— India Holton

16. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man and woman in possession of a false marriage license must be in want of separate beds. Unfortunately, when Daniel and Alice entered their suite in Starkthorn Manor, they found only one – which quite frankly would not have come as a surprise had they read more exciting literature than was their habit.”

— India Holton

17. “She felt all-peopled-out after the morning and wanted to go home, close the curtains, and hug a book until her nerves settled.”

— India Holton

18. “Ghosts aren’t real,” Olivia Etterly had assured her with the authority of a woman who had killed enough people to know.”

— India Holton

19. “He had kissed her twice now. Outrageous! Indefensible! Would he kiss her in the sunlight next time? My goodness, she hoped not! Would he hold her close, his hand stroking her back as if she was something to be handled with care, cherished? Heaven forbid!”

— India Holton

20. “Cecilia remained calm, impassive, undisturbed by fears for her aunt or disgust for her dinner companion. Some other woman in the room kept laughing, then weeping, dropping cutlery, then almost falling out of the chair trying to retrieve it, and at one point flinging a piece of duck off her fork halfway across the room while arguing a point about Hiawatha. Cecilia paid her no attention. It would be unladylike to stare.”

— India Holton

21. “Everyone knew about Morvath’s hatred of the Darlington clan, which was equaled only by his hatred of the Bassingthwaite clan, his adopted family the Morvath clan, the Hanoverian clan currently represented by Queen Victoria, the Chapman and Hall publishing clan, and the company that made those caramel cream profiteroles that ended up tasting like fish.”

— India Holton

22. “But they were pirates. Used to shaping the world however they decided it.”

— India Holton

23. “The whole universe tilted on its axis, pouring starlit silence into the small, shy distance between their eyes.”

— India Holton

24. “She had come to the end of the short queue in front of the counter and was waiting in much the same way a stick of dynamite wait.”

— India Holton

25. “Smashing pumpkins and throwing muses was all very entertaining, but of no real benefit when things took off, literally.”

— India Holton

26. “Granted, she did fly that bookshop into the Serpentine when they told her they didn’t stock any Dickens novels, but that only shows a praiseworthy enthusiasm for literature.”

— India Holton

27. “By the dim light of a lantern, they crossed the field toward the oak woods. Ned took the lead then, being more familiar with the nocturnal hazards of a meadow. With his guidance they avoided cow pats, thistles, sudden ditches, murky dark puddles, and an iron rake someone had left lying about just waiting for a comic moment.”

— India Holton

28. “The two lines of dancers moved apart, with hands connected and arms raised to make a steepled lane. Witch and pirate danced through like shadows in the lamplight, pretending night, leaving everyone blinking and enchanted.”

— India Holton

29. “I’m not sure what astonishes me most,” Cecilia replied, “that we didn’t think of it, or that a man on his own actually asked for directions.”

— India Holton

30. “Even reading Wuthering Heights had proven a trial – she’d kept wanting to edit it.”

— India Holton

31. “Either the patisserie across the street had exploded or a fashionable woman was walking in through the doorway.”

— India Holton

32. “The woman was going to annoy him into an orgasm before he even placed a hand on her.”

— India Holton

33. “He was, everyone else said, a pretentious idiot. A pretentious idiot with a whole lot of guns and the willingness to use them.”

— India Holton

34. “I’m Irish. Being both Catholic and a pirate are almost obligatory.”

— India Holton

35. “Pleasance did not dare to even think about it. Thoughts were not safe things. The mind was no sanctuary.”

— India Holton

36. “At that opportune moment, Bixby reappeared, tea towel and grenade in hand. “I beg your pardon, sir. There is a house following us.”

— India Holton

37. “The pirates trooped in like a sentence full of adjectives, adverbs, and exclamation marks, punctuated finally by the tiny black full stop of Verisimilitude Jones, who was generally called, or more precisely, screamed, “Millie the Monster”.”

— India Holton

38. “Charming man, shame she would have to assassinate him one day soon.”

— India Holton

39. “It was an imperfect moment, but she would remember it for the rest of her life.”

— India Holton

40. “Be careful,” he advised in a low voice. “Watch out for flying toast. And if she asks you to pull her finger, don’t. Just – really don’t.”

— India Holton

41. “Alex did not like bewilderment. He liked smug certainty and hitting things with his sword.”

— India Holton

42. “Don’t ever trust a man who flies a ridiculously large building. He’s obviously compensating.”

— India Holton

43. “What are you reading in that rag that could be more important than the willful self-ruin of independent women?”

— India Holton

44. “Crash! The two women looked over at the window as it shattered. A grenade tumbled onto the carpet. Cecilia expelled a sigh of tedium. She snapped the book shut, wended her way through the furnishings, pulled back the drapes, and deposited the grenade through the broken windowpane onto the terrace, where it exploded in a flash of burning light, brick shards, and fluttering lavender buds.”

— India Holton

45. “But her mind, well trained for messes like spilled tea, conservative governments, and tumbling toward one’s death, reacted calmly.”

— India Holton

46. “That was back in the good old days, down at the docks and along the golden shores, when the Wisteria Society still met regularly to discuss knitting patterns and the latest explosives catalog.”

— India Holton

47. “A lady stays tranquil and poised under all circumstances. Instead of panicking, she squares her jaw, protects her heart, and ensures that she has enough ammunition to gun down everyone in her path.”

— India Holton

48. “I am not drunk, sir. I am in full possession of my flaccidities.” He raised an eyebrow. “Your faculties?” “As I said. Come now, a gentleman would help.” “But not mention that he was helping?” “Essact – Ezast – Yes.”

— India Holton

49. “Nothing is easier than to admit the truth of the universal struggle to find a good parking space.”

— India Holton

50. “And she felt the same certainty she had all along. That despite calling himself an assassin, he wanted to make the world better. A little brighter, a little more amusing, if he could.”

— India Holton