Top 40 Olivia Atwater Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “It may be true that you have only half a soul, Dora,” he whispered, with a surprising abundance of empathy in his voice. “But that does not make you half a person.”

— Olivia Atwater

2. “There is such a thing as evil in this world,” Elias told her quietly. “It does not help to look away from it. It does not even help, necessarily, to look at it.” His fingers brushed through her hair, and she shivered. “But sometimes, when you cannot force the world to come to its senses, you must settle only for wiping away some of the small evils in front of you.”

— Olivia Atwater

3. “Every fish you throw back into the ocean is a triumph of the idea that human beings can be better. I do my best, every day, to throw at least one fish back into the ocean. I hope that you will join me.”

— Olivia Atwater

4. “I am going to fail again,” he said. “There is never anything that I can do. And the world will go on, just as it always has. There will be people at fine dinners, pretending... believing that nothing is wrong.”

— Olivia Atwater

5. “I have known many human beings with a full soul to their name who do not have half so much compassion or practicality as you.”

— Olivia Atwater

6. “I love your wit and cleverness. I love that you are kind but almost never nice. I love your eyes and your hair and your freckles, and the fact that you smell like some monstrous floral perfume all of the time.” He paused, now looking somewhat offended at himself. “And I love to dance with you. That is the worst of it by far.”

— Olivia Atwater

7. “Today, Theodora Eloisa Charity Ettings – who generally preferred the name Dora – was busily escaping her adult captors, with the goal of making her way to the wild woods behind Lockheed Manor.”

— Olivia Atwater

8. “It was a shame, she thought, that so many beautiful things were also so ugly on the inside.”

— Olivia Atwater

9. “He has asked me before how the world can be so heartless. It is this dastardly need to remain calm and composed and polite that has left us all feeling so alone.”

— Olivia Atwater

10. “There aren’t any facts when it comes to opinions,” she said. “There’s only people who like things an’ people who don’t.”

— Olivia Atwater

11. “Pleasant-mannered people are simply the worst sort of people. Decent people become properly angry when presented with miserable injustice, but pleasant-mannered people never do.”

— Olivia Atwater

12. “I cannot help but feel that if we had fewer pleasant-mannered people, then perhaps there would also be fewer of these hideous wars.”

— Olivia Atwater

13. “She had little effort to spare for making unpleasant men more comfortable.”

— Olivia Atwater

14. “There’s no use gettin’ angry,” Effie’s mother used to chide her. “It’ll just get you into trouble. You can think all of the angry thoughts you want, but they’ve got to stay inside your head!”

— Olivia Atwater

15. “And I love to dance with you. That is the worst of it by far.”

— Olivia Atwater

16. “Rather, Abigail is quite literally a stubborn, immortal lesbian – and she and her transgender faerie girlfriend will live together happily for ever and ever in perfect defiance of the Hays Code.”

— Olivia Atwater

17. “I did not come here only to dance. I came here only to dance with you. It is quite a different thing.”

— Olivia Atwater

18. “There are plenty of fish upon the beach who would be grateful for a bit of kindness – and if you take the time to rescue even one, then perhaps you may even convince a bystander to join you and rescue another.”

— Olivia Atwater

19. “This time, when his heat departed, Dora thought she must have felt the cold – because the absence of him made her feel as though something crucial was missing.”

— Olivia Atwater

20. “I would have you play my songs until your fingers bled,” he confessed hoarsely. “I would compose new music, just to hear you play it with such passion. I cannot bear it governess – how dare you love my music more than I do?”

— Olivia Atwater

21. “The soft atmosphere made her feel even more than usual that she was dreaming. But it was the sort of lovely dream that one dwelled purposely upon, unwilling to wake too soon.”

— Olivia Atwater

22. “But nothing has a point!” Lord Blackthorn protested incredulously. “All of life is absurd to some extent or other!”

— Olivia Atwater

23. “You have already grown, in fact. You simply haven’t noticed it because you are constantly looking at the sky and not back at your roots.”

— Olivia Atwater

24. “Dora thought, Oh dear. Because she was now quite sure that she was in love.”

— Olivia Atwater

25. “You can tell that I am important, for I am wearing many expensive jackets.”

— Olivia Atwater

26. “Dora shook her head clearly. “What good would it do to have all of my feelings again, if I must use them only to look on all this misery?”

— Olivia Atwater

27. “Albert is her favourite because he is broken. She feels she must make up for that with extra love, the same way that Vanessa feels for me.”

— Olivia Atwater

28. “Elias smiled at that. For once, it was not a bitter or sardonic smile, it was soft, and perhaps relieved. The expression utterly changed his mien, and Dora thought in that moment that he was really very beautiful.”

— Olivia Atwater

29. “Of course I am coming for you!” Elias told her hotly. His gold eyes burned at her. “I have tried everything, Dora. Everything. When I had no ideas left, I even prayed, for God’s sake. You have slept for a full day and a half since your cousin found you, and I have counted every awful second of it!”

— Olivia Atwater

30. “Men who thought they deserved things were always capable of the worst sorts of violence.”

— Olivia Atwater

31. “With one hand, they raise grain tariffs, muster soldiers and create the workhouses. With the other, they deign to save a few poor souls from the very hell they made. This country is mad. It’s rotten.”

— Olivia Atwater

32. “In the meantime, do at least try to keep all of your clothing on, Miss Ettings. My specialties lie within the sorcerous arts and not in extracting young ladies from scandal.”

— Olivia Atwater

33. “Quietly, Winnie thought that he should have paid a great deal of respect to the wicked silver pocket knife visible upon her chatelaine – but men rarely did notice the important details.”

— Olivia Atwater

34. “I cannot help but forgive such earnest grief, since it was caused by such earnest love.”

— Olivia Atwater

35. “No one gives what they could, Albert!” Elias hissed. “Everyone gives what they please – and certainly not without plenty of self-congratulations for their miserly gestures. With one hand, they raise grain tariffs, muster soldiers and create the workhouses. With the other, they deign to save a few poor souls from the very hell they made.”

— Olivia Atwater

36. “A faerie told me that true love’s kiss could wake Miss Buckley,” Effie told him. “I cannot think of any truer or more unconditional love than that of a dog.”

— Olivia Atwater

37. “I’m not certain what I did to insult you, my lord,” she said. “Have I offended you somehow, or am I simply conveniently placed while you are otherwise upset?”

— Olivia Atwater

38. “I think that Elias has been angry now for so long that he is scared to let it go – I think he is scared that it would make him too complacent, and he might become all of those things which he so despises in others.”

— Olivia Atwater

39. “For years, Dora had not bothered to wonder why it was she had been singled out – why she had been cursed instead of anyone else in the world. It had always seemed irrelevant, insubstantial, irreversible. But today, she felt the unfairness of it all like a corset laced too tightly.”

— Olivia Atwater

40. “I am in love with you. You deserve to hear that.”

— Olivia Atwater

41. “I think he is virtuous because he is kind to the powerless and cruel to the powerful.”

— Olivia Atwater