Top 160 Kate Quinn Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Or was it not change, but becoming what she already was? She felt like she was being burned, sloughing away every extraneous layer, every scrap of ballast from mind or body that could possibly weigh her down. Each morning she woke with alacrity, tossing the covers aside and springing from bed, her mind one long hungry scream for what the day had to offer.”

— Kate Quinn

52. “Welcome to real spy work. Mostly tedious, occasionally exhilarating.”

— Kate Quinn

53. “You get in trouble no matter what you do, so you might as well do everything you can.”

— Kate Quinn

54. “Or was it not change, but becoming what she already was?”

— Kate Quinn

55. “It was the first thing I noticed about him. He could admire a lady as though he were admiring a beautiful porcelain vase, without making her feel he was affixing a price tag.”

— Kate Quinn

56. “Is it just the war, turning our heads inside out?”

— Kate Quinn

57. “I will not tell you one single solitary fact about my work, my friends, or the woman I was arested with. But I will tell you this, Rene Bordelon. You’re a gullible fool. You’re a terribly lover. And I hate Baudelaire.”

— Kate Quinn

58. “We’re standing in the ashes of a war like no other – if we don’t try harder to see the shades of gray involved, we’ll find ourselves in the thick of a new one.”

— Kate Quinn

59. “Even if we lose, what of it? We have made a song of freedom that will ring for a thousand years. No one will forget the Iceni or their red-haired queen.”

— Kate Quinn

60. “What’s broken does not have to stay that way.”

— Kate Quinn

61. “The anticipation was so sweet it cut the mouth, like winter-cold water from the icy shore of the Old Man.”

— Kate Quinn

62. “A man who takes a virgin for a mistress will either wish to train her to his standards, or wish her to remain passive and innocent as he does the work. You will have to pay close attention and follow his lead.”

— Kate Quinn

63. “No, just him, but he eats enough for five.”

— Kate Quinn

64. “I love you, Vix,” she said frankly. “But whatever made you think I want to follow your stars, and not my own?”

— Kate Quinn

65. “Be patient, and tough, he’d said with his gentle expression. Someday this pain will be useful to you.”

— Kate Quinn

66. “He doesn’t need to tend her, because she hunts her own prey. He doesn’t need to shield her, because she kills her own enemies. He doesn’t need to look for her, because she’s always at his side.”

— Kate Quinn

67. “One college sophomore minus one small encumbrance, divided by six months’ passage of time, multiplied by ten Paris frocks and a new haircut will not magically equal one restored reputation.”

— Kate Quinn

68. “What kind of moron wants to be a gladiator?”

— Kate Quinn

69. “The sight of iniquity, immorality, pure evil, perhaps the world’s end; a kitchen in disorder.”

— Kate Quinn

70. “Even when she was just a flutter inside me, I loved her. Because she is ours.”

— Kate Quinn

71. “Buck up, I told myself fiercely as a bellboy brushed past. Just buck up. Don’t be sorry for yourself, Charlie St. Clair, because that is just so goddamn boring.”

— Kate Quinn

72. “Arius in his injured ankle; he drew a breath through his teeth. “Why her? Why not me?” He regarded her briefly. “Because you look like a ferret.”

— Kate Quinn

73. “He never is coming off the leash,” Ian said evenly. “Because I happen to believe that principle should be stronger than the need for vengeance.”

— Kate Quinn

74. “Eve wondered how much it was possible to change in two weeks. Or was it not change, but becoming what she already was?”

— Kate Quinn

75. “Cameras didn’t lie, but they could certainly mislead.”

— Kate Quinn

76. “Make this m-more interesting, or I’m going to drink a lot faster.”

— Kate Quinn

77. “Oh, Hell’s gates!” Annia cried, borrowing Vix’s favorite curse.”

— Kate Quinn

78. “Fate and fortune grant us health,” I quoted my mother. “For everything else, we wait in line.”

— Kate Quinn

79. “Goodness,” Marcella said at last. “I know you’d do anything to avoid Tullia’s dinner party, but suicide seems a little extreme.”

— Kate Quinn

80. “Are not there little chapters in everybody’s life, Beth had read in Vanity Fair only that morning, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of history?”

— Kate Quinn

81. “We have nightmares and complexions like ashtrays...”

— Kate Quinn

82. “She’d looked like a worn-out knight lowering her visor for one last charge, haggard, gaunt, composed, serene.”

— Kate Quinn

83. “Why and if. The two most painful words in existence.”

— Kate Quinn

84. “Facing a pistol-wielding murderer does tend to put parents further down the list of things to be intimidated by.”

— Kate Quinn

85. “It isn’t enough to believe in equality and peace and human rights – one must work at it.”

— Kate Quinn

86. “I stood... poisoned in it’s presence.”

— Kate Quinn

87. “To the world – because if I get to spend my life seeing it, I should spend my life improving it too, in whatever way I can. I push my limits as far as I can, get away with as much adventure as I dare, but there’s still always duty waiting.”

— Kate Quinn

88. “I can just see you standing over a font with a screaming armful of lace!”

— Kate Quinn

89. “But I’d far rather live without souls or morals than Parmesan.”

— Kate Quinn

90. “The petty small things Eve saw every day drove her far closer to the brink than the large.”

— Kate Quinn

91. “I’m a man of Rome, with all that entails – a citizen, a soldier, a paterfamilias – and all men of Rome think they stride the earth and make it tremble. We make the laws and then punish the lawless; we make the borders and then punish the border-breakers; we record our own glory and then demand our names be remembered – all over the Empire we stride and we bellow, we make and we break. But if men are the makers and breakers of empires, then women are the makers and breakers of men. This.”

— Kate Quinn

92. “A nightmare was a needle plunging through the net of human memory; it slipped past one strand and caught up another on its point, stitching up dark dreams out of the unlikeliest recollections.”

— Kate Quinn

93. “Pin all your impatience on growing up, she thought, and then you learn it gets no better when you’re grown.”

— Kate Quinn

94. “Time is a wheel, vast and indifferent, and when time rolls on and men forget, we face the risk of circling back.”

— Kate Quinn

95. “Jordan considered. “He knows how to look. Really look, when a woman is talking.” “Ah.” Her stepmother sighed. “Some men ogle, some men look. The first makes us bristle, and the second makes us melt, and men are at an utter loss knowing the difference. But we do, and we know it at once.”

— Kate Quinn

96. “Listen to an enemy rant and you can learn much about him.”

— Kate Quinn

97. “She lied and evaded as easily as she breathed; it was what she’d had to do all her life. Lying, lying, lying, with a face like a daisy. Eve couldn’t remember the last time she’d been completely straight with anyone. Lies were easier than the hard and turbulent truth.”

— Kate Quinn

98. “She knew something else as well. If she put enough steps in line, one after the other, she would get there – to the ticket booth, to Bletchley, to the rest of her life – without crumbling into pieces. In the grand scheme of things, losing Philip wasn’t remotely important. Not in a world where there were invasions of Europe being planned, where millions around the globe were dying. It didn’t matter at all that she felt like she was being torn apart inside by white-hot pincers.”

— Kate Quinn

99. “She’s a hunter at heart. The past thirty years, she’s been standing still. Dying slowly with nothing to pursue. Maybe it’s not a bad thing if this hunt lasts awhile.”

— Kate Quinn

100. “There is no time for fear, she told herself. It is an indulgence.”

— Kate Quinn