Top 140 K.J. Charles Quotes (2026 Update)

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

3. “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

4. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

6. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

10. “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

11. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

13. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

15. “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

16. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

22. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

25. “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

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. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

29. “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

30. “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

31. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

33. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

35. “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

36. “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

37. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

41. “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

42. “I had to let someone know who I was: not merely Simon’s assistant, his chronicler, his poor scribbling friend, but the great love of a great life. That I may have lived in his shadow, but I was always by his side. That I was as needful to him as air.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

44. “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

45. “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

46. “In writing Simon’s stories, I have written myself out of my own life.”

— K.J. Charles

47. “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

48. “He feared in his bones that he’d give in if Dom asked, and Dom knew it and didn’t ask. Silas loved him more for that, with a heart so poorly suited and so unaccustomed to love that he felt it might burst its banks like one of London’s choked, fetid rivers.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

50. “This is what I keep telling you, Saint. You have to think,” Stephen said. “If you’d put a knee in his groin first, you could probably have punched him in the face as well when he went over.”

— K.J. Charles