Top 50 Linda Howard Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The lessons learned hardest were the lessons learned best.”

— Linda Howard

2. “Life’s too short to waste it on someone you can’t trust. You should be able to depend on the man you love not to lie to you or cheat on you. If you have that as a base, you can work on the other stuff.”

— Linda Howard

3. “A thousand thoughts ran through my mind. Well, at least six or seven, anyway, because a thousand thoughts are a lot. Try counting your own thoughts and see how long it takes you to get to a thousand.”

— Linda Howard

4. “Hormones were as potent as whiskey, and twice as sneaky.”

— Linda Howard

5. “Pleasure was a siren, luring her to experience more.”

— Linda Howard

6. “You can’t miss what you’ve never had.”

— Linda Howard

7. “She hadn’t been broken; she’d been furious and hurt, but never broken...”

— Linda Howard

8. “Love by itself isn’t enough; it’s never enough. There had to be other things, such as liking and respect, or love would get worn away by the realities of everyday life.”

— Linda Howard

9. “She should have remembered her past experiences in the relationship wars and not let herself get so excited. Evidently her hormones had overruled her common sense and she had become drunk on ovarian wine, the most potent, sanity- destroying substance in the universe.”

— Linda Howard

10. “A village somewhere was missing it’s idiot.”

— Linda Howard

11. “The bad thing about living in a small town was that everything became a personal issue. The good thing about living in a small town was that everything became a personal issue. During times of trouble, the support system was massive.”

— Linda Howard

12. “Honey, the only experts in PMS are men. That’s why men are so good at fighting wars; they learned Escape and Evade at home.”

— Linda Howard

13. “I have a real low tolerance for parasites, and you’re so close to the limit that I’m already reaching for the flea powder.”

— Linda Howard

14. “If your hero is a firefighter, your heroine better be an arsonist.”

— Linda Howard

15. “By morning, she was raw and sore, and knew walking would be an effort. By morning, she could barely remember what it had been like to not know his body, not to have felt him inside her and held him in her arms and absorbed the power of his thrusts as he came. By morning, she was his.”

— Linda Howard

16. “She had always enjoyed her sense of being alone, envisioning herself as a ball that rolled through life, bumping into other lives but not stopping.”

— Linda Howard

17. “I have brain damage, remember? I’m not responsible for my actions – or for the actions of my hand, which acted of its own volition and without my knowledge.′ Cam to Bailey.”

— Linda Howard

18. “The world was divided into two groups: those who showered at night, and those who showered in the morning.”

— Linda Howard

19. “When we’re married and he looks at me sitting beside him at the table, he should feel as if he’s fought a great battle and accomplished something – namely, winning me. He’ll treasure me more. I like being treasured.”

— Linda Howard

20. “And if you do anything to hurt my mom’s cat, I’ll take you apart cell by cell. I’ll mutilate your DNA so it can never reproduce, which would probably be a good thing for the world.”

— Linda Howard

21. “Sweeney: I can just see all you tough young soldiers cuddling together. Richard: Not cuddling, huddling. There’s a difference.”

— Linda Howard

22. “Cows are the Devil’s handmaidens.”

— Linda Howard

23. “I have a rule: Walk out, crawl back. If a man does the first, then he has to do the second to get back on good terms with me.”

— Linda Howard

24. “Death isn’t peaceful; it is just nothing. Everything is gone. No more sunrises, no more hopes, no more fears. Nothing.”

— Linda Howard

25. “There couldn’t be anything more perfect, she thought, than slow dancing, barefoot, on a balcony in New Orleans, while the rain poured down and twilight wrapped around them.”

— Linda Howard

26. “Was the period of happiness worth the unhappiness that followed a breakup? Most people seemed to think so, because they got on the love train time and time again.”

— Linda Howard

27. “He supposed he knew, rationally, that she wasn’t the prettiest woman in the world, but if his eyes saw any imperfections, his heart didn’t care.”

— Linda Howard

28. “Not so wide that a woman would feel as if she might fall in, and not so small it looked as if he’d just sucked a lemon like Ronald Trump’s, or whatever his name was. All in all, Richard’s lips looked just right.”

— Linda Howard

29. “His face was terrifying in its stillness, with only his eyes alive, glittering with rage. She could feel the force of his anger in the coiled strength of his body, hear it in the almost inaudible softness of his tone. He wasn’t a man who lost control in his anger; he gained it to an even greater degree.”

— Linda Howard

30. “Women were always complications, bless their perverse little hearts.”

— Linda Howard

31. “If death turned out to be a lack of being rather than a lack of consciousness, well, then, that sucked.”

— Linda Howard

32. “One morning just after Joe had left to drive to his class, Mary walked out to the barn and reflected on her state of hussiness. All in all, she was satisfied with it. Being a hussy had its advantages.”

— Linda Howard

33. “I was raised by a woman who knows her own worth, and her daughters firmly believe that life is much better for a woman when a man has to work really hard to get her. It’s human nature to take better care of something you’ve worked for, whether it’s a car or a wife.”

— Linda Howard

34. “His mouth was hot and hungry, and he kissed the way no man should kiss and still be allowed to run free.”

— Linda Howard

35. “He was a man who evidently felt very little; she was a woman who felt, perhaps, too much.”

— Linda Howard

36. “The only choice you have right now is the color you want the house painted, and your choices are white and white.” She was yelling by the time she finished, her face flushed.”

— Linda Howard

37. “He needed a woman. Bad.”

— Linda Howard

38. “Everything feels like the end of the world, and you can’t reason with someone who can’t see tomorrow.”

— Linda Howard

39. “He had destroyed her, so why couldn’t she destroy him in return?”

— Linda Howard

40. “It takes strength to participate in life.”

— Linda Howard

41. “Oh, is that what’s in the box? You threw my engagement ring at me?”

— Linda Howard

42. “I don’t argue, waste of time and effort. I listen to opinions, though.”

— Linda Howard

43. “C’mon! Anything over eight inches is strictly for show-and-tell. It’s there, but you can’t use it. It might look good in a locker room, but let’s face it – those extra two inches are leftovers.” “Leftovers,” Luna gasped, holding her stomach and shrieking with laughter. “Let’s hear it for l-leftovers!”

— Linda Howard

44. “She’d wanted love, a husband and children, a home filled with laughter and security, the things she’d never had as a child. She’d stopped even dreaming about them, she realized, and that was the saddest thing of all. But then she’d never really had a chance; she’d fallen in love with the one man she couldn’t have, and it appeared that she was one of those women who loved on once in their lifetime.”

— Linda Howard

45. “It was amazing how flowers could grow in the damnedest places.”

— Linda Howard

46. “Jason is one of those people who is like a Slinky; you always smile when you think of watching him fall down the stairs.”

— Linda Howard

47. “I’m not holding you against your will; I’m holding you against your car.”

— Linda Howard

48. “This life wasn’t all there was; there was more, much more, and when people spoke of death as “passing” they were exactly right, because the spirit passed on to that other level of existence. Knowing that was the most comforting thing she could imagine.”

— Linda Howard

49. “I personally don’t think a woman should ever live with a man unless they’re married. I guess there are some really great guys out there who wouldn’t take advantage of having a live-in cook and maid, but guess how those arrangements usually turn out?”

— Linda Howard

50. “Jumping from a high altitude required oxygen. Jumping at night required night-vision goggles. Jumping at all required either nerves of steel or the brain of a hamster. Her nerves definitely weren’t steel, so Jina figured her brain was rodentlike.”

— Linda Howard