Top 140 K.J. Charles Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “This was her family, chosen by love rather than bound by birth, and infinitely stronger for it.”

— K.J. Charles

2. “I’m tired of being the villain in the story. I never meant to be, and I don’t want to do it any more.”

— K.J. Charles

3. “Everyone can do evil. Some people can be forced to it, and some fight against it, and some don’t even need an invitation.”

— K.J. Charles

4. “I almost never respond to literary criticism with homicide.”

— K.J. Charles

5. “They say Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, but it’s not true. Hell hath no fury like the one who did the scorning, especially when they’re made to face up to their actions.”

— K.J. Charles

6. “Why do we count the cost of change, but not the cost of the world staying the same?”

— K.J. Charles

7. “The more love you give, the more you are capable of giving. It’s only when you shut off the source that it dries up.”

— K.J. Charles

8. “Some people had strong views on attacking a man from behind. Well, Will did himself, those views being that it was an excellent idea, best done with a blade. He missed the Messer.”

— K.J. Charles

9. “When people are obliged to keep an eye out for threats, their eyes tend to be sharp. That’s what women’s intuition means, if you ask me: being unconsciously alert for dangerous men.”

— K.J. Charles

10. “It was hard to keep up the fight for the freedom of your fellow man when your fellow man was a bastard.”

— K.J. Charles

11. “You don’t get what you want by not asking for it.”

— K.J. Charles

12. “Miles was well aware that “yes” meant nothing when you couldn’t say “no”. If Toby wasn’t in a position to refuse, he wasn’t in a position to consent, and there was no more to be said on the subject.”

— K.J. Charles

13. “Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach.”

— K.J. Charles

14. “Men could rant and rave all they chose; if a woman did the same, she showed herself a slave to her emotions.”

— K.J. Charles

15. “Scars are always beautiful. They’re proof we lived.”

— K.J. Charles

16. “There’s no good doing the right thing unless you stop people doing the wrong thing.”

— K.J. Charles

17. “My dear chap, this is a bookshop. There’s never anywhere better to be.”

— K.J. Charles

18. “Our will and fates do so contrary run.”

— K.J. Charles

19. “You cannot protect her from failure, so you might as well give her the best chance to succeed.”

— K.J. Charles

20. “She had a fire and a good book; what more did a woman need?”

— K.J. Charles

21. “If you’re going to be insolent, at least pour me coffee.” “It’s brewing. Like trouble.”

— K.J. Charles

22. “Something difficult for you isn’t less difficult because other people have different problems.”

— K.J. Charles

23. “But I do feel writ in water, and I understand wanting something real, that you’re sure of, and striving for it. I think that’s marvellous, actually.”

— K.J. Charles

24. “I have been coming to love you for a long time, you damned seditious brute, as I almost found the courage to tell you earlier. Wednesday by Wednesday, week by week, I have loved you.”

— K.J. Charles

25. “Wednesday by Wednesday, week by week, I have become yours for the taking.”

— K.J. Charles

26. “I can’t love you again,” Ben said, his heart aching on the words. “How can I, when I never stopped? I couldn’t stop loving you when I hated you so much it made me sick to think about you. I used to dream about killing you and wake up crying because I thought you were dead. I can’t not love you. I don’t know how.”

— K.J. Charles

27. “I like the way he says ‘furthermore’,” Merrick observed quietly. “Cos you can tell he means ‘wankers’.”

— K.J. Charles

28. “Arrogant, beautiful, domineering Lord Crane, with the caring that made Stephen’s heart break, and the vicious streak that made his knees bend, had chosen him among all the men’s men of London, and treated him with a loyalty, generosity and almost painful honesty that made Stephen’s heart hurt. And his reward was a few doled-out crumbs of Stephen’s time in a country he hated.”

— K.J. Charles

29. “Rowley had thought at first the beast had no name; it had taken him a while to understand that it had a perfectly good, descriptive name to which it was as likely to answer as any other, and that name was Cat. There was something terribly Clem about that.”

— K.J. Charles

30. “I like to make you know your master,” Crane said. “It’s only fair. The rest of the time you’ve got me so thoroughly enslaved, I might as well be wearing a collar with your name on it.”

— K.J. Charles

31. “Nothing had changed, nothing to remedy his pain and anger and hate. Jonah was a thief, a liar, an accessory to murder. But he had said ‘Score me a try’, and the words had stabbed Ben’s heart with sweetness.”

— K.J. Charles

32. “No strings, Justin. I want you on your feet, not your knees, and I’d rather see you presiding at the seance table than hungry or desperate. I don’t want you to capitulate. I never want you to do that. Merely, I would take it as a very great favour if you’d please, please let me give you back your freedom to choose.”

— K.J. Charles

33. “I am in the process of nailing Mr. Humphrey Griffin to the wall so thoroughly that future generations will mistake him for a tapestry,...”

— K.J. Charles

34. “You’re remarkably uninteresting for a flying trollop.”

— K.J. Charles

35. “Ben looked up, and the foundations of his life began to crumble.”

— K.J. Charles

36. “He glanced at the book in his hand and added, “I think I’d need to be a bit further away to grasp it, mind you. Manchester, perhaps.” Da Silva looked startled for a second, then his face lit with a smile.”

— K.J. Charles

37. “He was a member of the Diogenes Club, to which he had been nominated by one of his more peculiar acquaintances, a Government man whose intellectual capacity was matched only by his physical corpulence.”

— K.J. Charles

38. “Someone wanted to choke me to death on my own hair?”

— K.J. Charles

39. “Of course I’ve got a conscience,” Jonah said. “He’s sitting right here next to me.”

— K.J. Charles

40. “This was the torment and insanity, the enjoyment of angels, when he was helpless in Silas’s hands. “Frighten me,” Dominic whispered.”

— K.J. Charles

41. “You’re a fool, and I’m another. Between us, we barely make a village idiot.”

— K.J. Charles

42. “They don’t make spectacles for you, do they?” Clem.”

— K.J. Charles

43. “Stephen can, of course, use my power, for two reasons. Firstly, because it’s his, just as all I am and all I have are his. Not that he ever asks, of course. I’m not sure that he quite believes it.” He looked round at Stephen, a rueful smile dawning, ignoring Fairley’s loud noises of disgust. “But I do hope you are aware, my sweet, somewhere in that absurd heart, that I am ever, entirely, and quite pathetically yours.”

— K.J. Charles

44. “But I do hope you are aware, my sweet, somewhere in that absurd heart, that I am ever, entirely, and quite pathetically yours.”

— K.J. Charles

45. “Come to bed with me, you blasted radical. Bring me your revolution.”

— K.J. Charles

46. “It’s a bright shadow,” Clem said with fierce intensity, and Rowley’s throat closed. For the words, and their meaning, and for Clem’s open look, without the nervous apprehension and the hint of a stammer. For the trust that allowed him in moments like this to drop his ever-present guard. Hell.”

— K.J. Charles

47. “You like ’em dangerous, that’s your trouble. If they ain’t leaving a trail of dead, you ain’t interested.”

— K.J. Charles

48. “The house is decaying, the furnishings are museum pieces, half the staff are consumed with loathing of me out of loyalty to my father, or because I remind them of my brother. In any case, they’re people who lived in the same house as Hector when there are perfectly good ditches to die in, which tells you as much as you need to know.”

— K.J. Charles

49. “I’m well aware of my good fortune. I’m well aware I ought to be happy, we all ought to be happy as the day is long, and dance the night away on the bodies of starving workers. Well, I’m not bloody happy.” He knocked back his gin. It rasped down his throat like a rusty blade. Silas watched him as he tried not to cough it back up. “If you can’t be happy, then be something else. Be useful, that would be good. Decorative, if you like. Selfish, if you must. But don’t whine about it.”

— K.J. Charles

50. “Clem didn’t seem to have whatever ability it was that let other people “just tell,” and it felt as if there was an entire world of communication going on at a pitch he couldn’t hear. Not.”

— K.J. Charles