Top 140 K.J. Charles Quotes (2024 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. “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

5. “Let me be frank. I find you intriguing, and extremely appealing, and delightful company, and very much a man who deserves more pleasure in his life. If you’d like to take that pleasure with me, I’d be honoured. If you aren’t so minded, don’t take offence at the offer, and I shan’t at the refusal. And if you decide you’d prefer Corvin, for example, I shall bow out like a gentleman, although I shall probably kick him in the shins at some point from pure envy.”

— K.J. Charles

6. “He had always found hope harder to deal with than despair. Despair didn’t get disappointed.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

8. “I don’t understand it. Why can’t people let everyone else get on with their lives? What possible reason is there for seeing someone not doing any harm, taking a bit of pleasure, and deciding to ruin it, for nothing?”

— K.J. Charles

9. “I don’t believe in demons and pitchforks. But I think, if you had to define hell, you could take a good man and deny him the rites he believed in, and condemn his soul to a slow process of corruption until it was nothing but a mass of rage and hate and seething evil that his true self would have loathed. I think that would be hell.”

— K.J. Charles

10. “Society is a consequential fool, and I am tired of rules and strictures that do no good and bring nobody happiness.”

— K.J. Charles

11. “It’s not useless, it’s the future. Tell them Bonaparte’s growing sugar beet.” “I’d rather not, Sir Philip. It wouldn’t help.” “Then tell them I’m a violent eccentric and their very lives depend on doing this properly.” “Mmm,” Lovett said. “Perhaps there’s a middle way?”

— K.J. Charles

12. “The question was never whether I loved you,” Alec whispered. “It was, How brave am I? or maybe How afraid am I? And it turns out I’m slightly braver than I am afraid when it comes to you. Tell me what I need to do so we can be together and neither of us gets arrested for anything, and I’ll do it.”

— K.J. Charles

13. “I love you dearly, my friend. I always will, but even without my tastes, I think we would not have grown well together. The fact is, you want an ally. I prefer a challenge. You want agreement; I want contraries. I want Silas.”

— K.J. Charles

14. “Most people think that nobody should make a fuss until it’s their own comfort at stake, at which point they will bring the roof down shrieking about it.”

— K.J. Charles

15. “I should rather be a loyal liar than an honest traitor.”

— K.J. Charles

16. “If you trust someone, that means letting them into a position where they can really hurt you, and believing they won’t. And if you’re afraid to do that, either you aren’t sure of them, or you aren’t sure of yourself.”

— K.J. Charles

17. “Thank God they were British. He took a deep breath. “Cup of tea?”

— K.J. Charles

18. “Red is the hue of royalty in Ruritania: as the old saying has it, “If he’s red, he’s right!” I invite you to consider what this means. For a family to remain red-headed and blue-eyed down two centuries, in a land not filled with redheads or aristocrats, requires either careful breeding or a failure to grasp simple principles of stock management.”

— K.J. Charles

19. “There really were no chains like the ones in your head.”

— K.J. Charles

20. “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

21. “You do know that bad people aren’t generally redeemed by the love of a good woman, or man, don’t you? Most people don’t change, and if they do, it’s not because of someone else.”

— K.J. Charles

22. “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

23. “Saul sighed. “I swear, no jury would convict me.”

— K.J. Charles

24. “It didn’t have quite the melancholy feel of lost hopes and the futility of human endeavour that would have suited his mood, but it was still moderately picturesque.”

— K.J. Charles

25. “He’d always wanted to stand alone ; he’d always thought of reliance on others as a house of cards, a fragile structure that could be pushed over at any time. And that was true : people betrayed, and left, and died. He hadn’t been wrong. Only, he hadn’t considered that a card on its own couldn’t stand at all.”

— K.J. Charles

26. “He doesn’t remember her birthday or bring her silks, or ever do thoughtful things like that. He just works to make her safe and happy, because that’s how he loves people.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

28. “I don’t see any advantage in reaching the age of fifty without pain if you’ve also reached it without pleasure,” Corvin said. “And really, a broken heart is a great deal less than a broken leg. ‘Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”

— K.J. Charles

29. “Not much. I’ve very little imagination. It’s the imaginative chaps who suffer.” “’The coward dies a thousand deaths.”

— K.J. Charles

30. “Well, God knows what you used to be, then, because you’re built like a brick shithouse and hung like a horse.”

— K.J. Charles

31. “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

32. “Marry me.” “What? No! Go away.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

34. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

36. “He had no idea what civilians, or civilised people, would say in these circumstances. Thanks for that, old chap, much obliged, perhaps? Ought he apologise for coming in his mouth? Would this be a good moment to restart the conversation about where Kim had learned to use a knife? Thank God they were British. He took a deep breath. “Cup of tea?”

— K.J. Charles

37. “The question was never whether I loved you,” Alec whispered. “It was, How brave am I? or maybe How afraid am I? And it turns out I’m slightly braver than I am afraid when it comes to you.”

— K.J. Charles

38. “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

39. “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

40. “You said what you wanted, that’s all, and since it was very easy for me to get what I wanted while giving you what you wanted –.”

— K.J. Charles

41. “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

42. “Dear fellow, he may rip the balls off anyone he sees fit,” Julius said. “Cry havoc, Cyprian, and consider me your dog of war.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

45. “Your friends arrived like a pair of very badly cast fairy godmothers and pulled my feet out of the fire on your behalf.”

— K.J. Charles

46. “I don’t need fidelity, or adoration, or extravagant vows. Those are all will-o’-the-wisps. Whereas good manners require effort.” And so we rode on, talking for all the world as though we were not two murderers in the process of committing treason at a funeral, and I can only say, that is what Ruritania and Rupert Hentzau do to a man.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

49. “And he owned a lot of books, although just now and then, when it got dark and the shelves loomed over him, he got the feeling that they owned him.”

— K.J. Charles

50. “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