Top 70 Meredith Duran Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “How could any woman’s skin be so soft? It was as if the world had never touched her.”

— Meredith Duran

2. “Shocking you? No. But here’s a promise: if I get you beneath me again, you’ll enjoy it even more. It’ll only get better, Kitty. Why, the fifth or sixth time, I expect I’ll make you come just by kissing your sweet little nipples. I’ll suck them slow and soft, and then hard. And when I use my teeth on you, the slightest scrape – ” “Stop.”

— Meredith Duran

3. “Here, inside her rooms, as she stood naked before him, an enchanted silence enclosed them, profound and.”

— Meredith Duran

4. “Better to say – we’ll find you a man of discerning tastes, who knows brilliance when he sees it, and knows to treasure it, too.” She hesitated. “Gentlemen don’t want a lady who knows more than them.” “Your mother told you that?” When she nodded, he pulled a face. “Well, that isn’t quite true. Some men reckon it a very fine thing, to have a wife with a brain.”

— Meredith Duran

5. “I’m here,” he said into her ear, as the tears came faster. “Emma, I’m here with you now. Listen to me: I will always be here.“Always, she thought. He said “always,” but he had forgotten to say finally. Finally you are here. Thank God, finally at last.”

— Meredith Duran

6. “He was a bloody genius with these people, slicker than any confidence artist, more popular than whisky in a room full of Irishmen.”

— Meredith Duran

7. “And now I should kiss you again, I think. Isn’t that how it’s done?” Startled, she put her hand to her lips. But their rough, cracked surfaces made the very prospect seem ludicrous. “Yes, I suppose – in a gothic romance. But if you kissed me now, no doubt my lip would split open, and I’d bleed on you.” His shout of laughter was quickly restrained. “Well, all right. Since you put it so romantically. Someplace else. Shall I be adventurous?”

— Meredith Duran

8. “Only the tips of her stockings showed, quick flashes of white lace. She wore lace stockings to bed. Now, why should that be the best news he’d had all day? Should.”

— Meredith Duran

9. “She had that kind of power, though thank God she didn’t know it. She had no idea that she could light up a room like a lamp at midnight. He.”

— Meredith Duran

10. “Her smile gutted him. He had forgotten the trick of that smile – how it could spark a light inside a man that made him feel untethered from the earth, or gut him more deeply than a blade.”

— Meredith Duran

11. “Well. You must admit, you do need a haircut.” A faint smile ghosted over his mouth. His fingers loosened; they slipped over hers as they withdrew. “Is there anyone in this house whom I could trust to wield the scissors? I have given them all cause to aim for my throat.” Was that a joke? Miracle of miracles! “Come now,” she said hoarsely. “Be sensible. Dead men pay no salaries.”

— Meredith Duran

12. “I trust only you and the dark always to look at me so honestly.”

— Meredith Duran

13. “She knew his secret: for all his wandering, his independence and his unorthodox ways, he took his responsibilities very seriously. He even borrowed others’ responsibilities, making them his own simply because he thought this sort of service was owed to those whom he loved.”

— Meredith Duran

14. “Villainy was not simply the red raging glory of inflicting well-deserved pain; it was also the curdling knowledge of having inflicted injustice. A villain simply did not care. Only the victims did.”

— Meredith Duran

15. “Kinship is the work of coincidence, sweetheart. The only thing it truly engenders is proximity. And sometimes not even that, as plenty of the world’s bastards will be glad to tell you.” “What a cold sentiment! To whom do you owe loyalty, then, if not the man who fathered you?” He shrugged. “To those who have earned it. Friends of long standing, etcetera.”

— Meredith Duran

16. “I think you would have answered the question very cuttingly, if you felt comfortable with your reply.” Her audacity should not be able to surprise him any longer. But he still did not understand how she did this: how she shifted the balance of power between them so suddenly that he felt compelled to reply, to prove himself, to be accountable to her.”

— Meredith Duran

17. “This was banter, all right – pointed and spiky, the kind he’d expect from a bloke. A blunt tongue in an angel’s body: it was the devil’s own recipe to enamor him.”

— Meredith Duran

18. “You don’t beg for anyone. For it never comes to good. Nothing’s worth that price. And I don’t mean the price is honor or pride. I mean, it’s got to do with knowing your own worth.”

— Meredith Duran

19. “I am as much a villain in my nature as a common thief on the high road,” he said. “Did you not know it?” His words framed a confession but he spoke it shamelessly. He did not sound sorry at all. “Here is what makes me a criminal, Nora. Righteous men conceive of an end and pray for righteous means to obtain it. But criminals do not look to prayer for their hopes. They place no faith in chance. When they see an end, they risk everything to obtain it – no matter whether it is theirs to risk or no.”

— Meredith Duran

20. “I think it a moral duty,” she said. “If one inherits the privilege of wealth, or of education or good family, one must use that privilege wisely. Men speak of progress like a machine, an engine that rolls forward without human direction, pulling everyone with it. But that isn’t true. If you read the newspapers” – the critical, adventurous, daring newspapers, not the conservative rags that her uncle favored – “it’s easy to see that many get left behind. Many, in fact, get crushed.”

— Meredith Duran

21. “Kindness never cost me a penny,” he said. “I see no need to hoard it.” She.”

— Meredith Duran

22. “His smile faded a little, growing softer, more intimate, like the look he’d showed her in bed this morning. ‘You haven’t learned yet when to lie.’ Slowly, as if the words were being dragged from him, he added: ‘I confess, Nell, I hope you never learn.’ She found herself staring at him. Unsteadying thought: there was something hot in his eyes that wasn’t purely want. It was too tender, too... affectionate.”

— Meredith Duran

23. “But she had been born with a talent for smiling: with the mere curve of her mouth, she could make men stumble and gape, or quail in momentary fear, for reasons they would never manage to explain to themselves.”

— Meredith Duran

24. “He found himself staring at her, abruptly transfixed. Transformed, brain evacuated by a fierce, full-bodied, singular pulse of hunger. Christ. He had forgotten what desire felt like.”

— Meredith Duran

25. “If something frightens you,” he said, “that means it’s the best place to start.”

— Meredith Duran

26. “This current between them had once seemed born of a perfect match between souls. That it had survived so many years’ separation might indicate that it was inborn: the product of the stars’ configuration at their respective births.”

— Meredith Duran

27. “After a moment, he murmured, “Emmaline. I am sorry. I am... overwrought.” His laughter was unsteady. “And there’s a phrase I’ve never used before. At least not in reference to myself.” An unwilling smile curved her mouth. “I hope you won’t swoon. I don’t carry smelling salts.” “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t have imagined you did.”

— Meredith Duran

28. “On the rare occasions she checked her thoughts before speaking them, it was a grave loss to the world, and a wasted opportunity to marvel at her.”

— Meredith Duran

29. “His easy smile looked genuine. It made a dimple pop out in his right cheek, proof that preachers lied when they said God was just. Wasn’t any fairness in giving a man with money the sort of face this one was sporting.”

— Meredith Duran

30. “Miss Masters was not content with threatening to hire away his staff, oh no. First, she had to perfume it.”

— Meredith Duran

Featured in: Romance Quotes

31. “Boneless with relief, she let him pull her forward, into the open air, into his lap. And in this wild darkness, in the middle of an empty earth, she grieved for both of them – indeed, for every human in this wretched world, who must face the trials life offered, negotiate the changes wrought by time. There was so little joy to cling to, so few certainties. Yet humans continued to endure. Continued to hope. The undeniable compulsion to survive powered them onward, like Sisyphus on his mountain.”

— Meredith Duran

32. “A body, he thought, was like a complex and complicated clock. Each one unique in its parts. Through study, one might discover the tricks of its mechanisms. Through trial and error, one might calibrate one’s touches on the gears and learn to make the clock tick. He drew his knuckles down her nape, along her spine. She shuddered.”

— Meredith Duran

33. “It was needlepoint, Mr. Burke. Tapestries are woven, you see, and I find it far more satisfying to stab than to weave.”

— Meredith Duran

34. “She had a girlish fullness to her face, which made a provocative contrast to the self-possession of her bearing as she opened her eyes and smiled at him. She’d known he was looking at her. She’d let the moment draw out, for some private feminine reason. The knowledge brushed over him like fingertips – stealing away his breath.”

— Meredith Duran

35. “She had told herself she should be reassured by his squeamishness; a man who balked at scars would not give her new ones. Now she suddenly wondered if she’d had it wrong. A man without scars would always underestimate their value. He would not see them as marks of courage.”

— Meredith Duran

36. “If a woman could win love with her body, the world would have no bastards.”

— Meredith Duran

37. “Butterflies emerged in her stomach. She promptly willed them dead.”

— Meredith Duran

38. “It’s a strange kind of torture,” he said quietly. “To be caged by the lowest expectations. A humiliation of the soul.”

— Meredith Duran

39. “And really, was there anything so demoralizing as meeting a former lover? Never did a woman have more cause to doubt her judgment than when confronted with the pathetic evidence of what she had once somehow found appealing.”

— Meredith Duran

40. “A woman did not only wish to be wooed. Sometimes, God be praised, she wanted to be taken.”

— Meredith Duran

41. “Alex understood such discipline. He knew the rarity of it, and the cost. And on the rare occasions when he happened to touch her, he did wonder what else she might have been, if she had not been so determined to be typical.”

— Meredith Duran

42. “The desire that moved him to it was not simply concerned with satisfaction. This hunger in him wanted to break her open so completely that she would never recover her reserve; that she would forget, for eternity, that once her body had been aught else but his. It was not an innocent craving. It was too near to violence for him to trust.”

— Meredith Duran

43. “He was a mad creature, who no doubt said up when everyone else said down, just to be contrary.”

— Meredith Duran

44. “Here was a new lesson for her, then: it was possible to behave like an utter goose in front of a man, and then to take his arm again and stroll companionably onward, without feeling any awkwardness.”

— Meredith Duran

45. “This was reckless.” “Extremely. The best decisions generally are.”

— Meredith Duran

46. “They’re diplomats, Mr. Godwin. Their livelihood depends on trouble. When they find none, they must invent it, lest they be thrown out of a job.”

— Meredith Duran

47. “We ladies are very devious, and could not speak plainly even if we had to spell every word.”

— Meredith Duran

48. “Modesty, if you consider it, is the most unforgivable sort of falsehood: it’s a lie that does damage to no one but yourself.”

— Meredith Duran

49. “He would invent a way. Like a scientist, he would devise a way to take her apart. He would own her by the end. No one else would get the chance.”

— Meredith Duran

50. “English was so heavy, so desiccated and hardened by meaning, by pain and anger and even the jests and the petty quibbles, everything under the sun that obscured the basic truth. But the sound of his voice as he spoke to her now, she heard the wind in it, the stillness of the night. Stars above. The things that had kept her going. Always in her memory they had been there.”

— Meredith Duran