Top 160 K.J. Charles Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “That was the sort of thing people said and then it turned out they hadn’t meant that at all. Clem knew he didn’t recognise sarcasm because he had been told so, repeatedly. Even so, he was very nearly positive that Mr. Green meant every word.”

— K.J. Charles

52. “Aye, duty. You do yours and I do mine. Only, my duty, as I see it, is to tell people there’s a better way than tyranny and unjust law. And yours is to uphold the law when you ain’t too busy breaking it bent over in a whorehouse.”

— K.J. Charles

53. “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

54. “He had rid my inherited house of a lustful ghost, opened my eyes to a concealed world of strange forces and arcane knowledge, and buggered me twice.”

— K.J. Charles

55. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

60. “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

61. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

63. “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

64. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

66. “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

67. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

69. “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

70. “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

71. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

73. “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

74. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

76. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

78. “He was an aggressive, forceful, noisy man who thrived on conflict, for whom divergent opinions were airy-fairy nonsense or weakness, and anyone else’s expertise was a threat.”

— K.J. Charles

79. “Fine,” Will said. “I promise. I promise I’ll just bugger off whenever it seems like the easy way out for me, and leave you in this hundred-room hellhole with your family rubbing cheese-graters on your nerve endings. Is that what you want to hear?” “I detect a note of sarcasm.”

— K.J. Charles

80. “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

81. “If you couldn’t have a thing without hurting someone who didn’t deserve it, you shouldn’t have it.”

— K.J. Charles

82. “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

83. “Marry me.” “What? No! Go away.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

85. “Right. Put some coffee on while I think about this. I’m in dire need.” Merrick gave him a look. “You can’t work the stove, can you?” “I’m the eighth Earl Crane and the twelfth Viscount Fortunegate. I don’t have to work the stove.” “Two extra names and you can’t lift your arms any more. Bloody lucky they didn’t make you a duke too or you’d forget how to brush your own teeth.”

— K.J. Charles

86. “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

87. “What I say is, one can be as moral as one likes, but one should have the courtesy to do it in private, like any other bad habit.”

— K.J. Charles

88. “You need to dress for your own body, not pretend you’ve someone else’s, don’t you think?”

— K.J. Charles

89. “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

90. “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

91. “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

92. “We can all kill people. I could have put a pillow over your face while you slept at any time in the last twenty years, and I’m struggling to recall why I haven’t.”

— K.J. Charles

93. “Will shrugged. “I’ll be voting Labour if this election comes about, and higher taxes and redistribution of wealth sound like good things to me. But I don’t like bombs, or blowing up civilians.”

— K.J. Charles

94. “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

95. “He wore spiked knuckledusters that got you an extra year of gaol time right off, and looked purely murderous.”

— K.J. Charles

96. “I don’t, can’t bed men for whom I don’t care.”

— K.J. Charles

97. “A story without an ending is an unbearable itch to the reader.”

— K.J. Charles

98. “Richard couldn’t adorn David’s ears with jewels and doubted very much he’d want them. Even the plainest gifts would be attention-grabbing, inappropriate, dangerous. Richard would just have to give his valet the world instead.”

— K.J. Charles

99. “Is there anything more terrifying than getting what you hope for?”

— K.J. Charles

100. “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