Top 140 K.J. Charles Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “I hope you find some of these as snugly up your alley as I find you up mine.”

— K.J. Charles

52. “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

53. “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

54. “When I have you, sweet boy, it will be because you want me to. Not against your better judgement, not in spite of my surname, and definitely not to annoy your aunt.”

— K.J. Charles

55. “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

56. “Marry me.” “What? No! Go away.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

60. “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

61. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

63. “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

64. “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

65. “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

66. “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

67. “It is my aim, and would be my privilege, to ruin you for all others for a very long time to come.”

— K.J. Charles

68. “I give him the truth. I don’t ask for his; I give him mine. The shames the fears, the desires. I have made myself vulnerable to him, I have put my soul in his hands, and he has cherished it.”

— K.J. Charles

69. “It does seem unfair that one should have to rethink one’s beliefs at the advanced age of thirty-seven.”

— K.J. Charles

70. “She’d forgotten how overwhelming he could be in his desires, and not just physical ones. When James wanted, he did so powerfully. It was overpowering to be wanted this much.”

— K.J. Charles

71. “One of Miss Marianne Loxleigh’s most admired features, at least by the kind of people who catalogued beauty rather than reacting to it, was her noble and lofty forehead. She usually emphasised it in the way she dressed her hair. Currently she was emphasising it by banging it on the breakfast table.”

— K.J. Charles

72. “Cyprian didn’t shrug – a servant of his calibre would never do such a thing – but his entire demeanor implied a shrug.”

— K.J. Charles

73. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

75. “It’s one of your most attractive qualities, you know, you never snore. Rare ad precious and – his voice dropped, though they were alone on the platform – sadly underrated in a bed partner.”

— K.J. Charles

76. “But evidently something in the line of his mouth and the set of his shoulders made him seem the sort of man who hurt people, and there were men who liked to be hurt.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

78. “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

79. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

82. “Firstly, because it’s his, just as all I am and all I have are his.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

84. “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

85. “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

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

— K.J. Charles

87. “He had no idea if he was being served or mastered now. Both, or neither, it didn’t matter.”

— K.J. Charles

88. “Kim was starlight and privilege; Will had his feet firmly fixed in the mud. They didn’t belong together. Except they did.”

— K.J. Charles

89. “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

90. “The silky dressing gown was open, revealing his smooth, bare chest and, Curtis couldn’t but notice, dark nipples, one of which – oh, good God – was pierced with a silver ring.”

— K.J. Charles

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

— K.J. Charles

92. “I have no quarrel with democrats in principle, except that they are as much frauds and liars as the rest. It is often said that mankind will not be free till the last king is strangled with the guts of the last priest; if you ask me, the man who ordered the strangling would promptly step forth to proclaim himself Lord Protector, and it would all begin again.”

— K.J. Charles

93. “Nobody would believe that Richard left evening pleasures promptly because it gave him longer in his valet’s company, that he took such care over his clothing because it made two hours’ dressing with Cyprian unexceptional. That he would rather talk to a liveried servant than to any of the gentlemen who were his closest friends.”

— K.J. Charles

94. “Such an easy thing, to be liked. All you had to do was make sure people didn’t know you.”

— K.J. Charles

95. “Did anyone wonder if someone hit his head for him?”

— K.J. Charles

96. “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

97. “I love you,” Julius observed at last. “To a degree that frankly startles me.”

— K.J. Charles

98. “I see no reason the duties of Second Villain shouldn’t include being First Villain’s helpless sexual plaything. It would make the melodramas a great deal more entertaining.”

— K.J. Charles

99. “He’d been apprenticed to a joiner before the war, but that felt like decades ago: all he was good at now was killing people, which was discouraged.”

— K.J. Charles

100. “If Guy had been asked at any point in his entire adult life prior to this week how he might envisage himself speaking to Sir Philip Rookwood, “planning illicit amours” would have been the least likely answer imaginable, matched only in its implausibility by “up a tree”.”

— K.J. Charles