Top 120 Stuart Turton Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

— Stuart Turton

2. “The Plague Doctor claimed Blackheath was meant to rehabilitate us, but bars can’t build better men and misery can only break what goodness remains. This place pinches out the hope in people, and without that hope, what use is love or compassion or kindness?”

— Stuart Turton

3. “I’m caught between the devil and the deep, blue sea, aren’t I?”

— Stuart Turton

4. “We are never more ourselves than when we think people aren’t watching.”

— Stuart Turton

5. “How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home?”

— Stuart Turton

6. “Too little information and you’re blind, too much and you’re blinded.”

— Stuart Turton

7. “Power should be a burden, not a shield. It should be used to everybody’s betterment, not merely for the person who wielded it.”

— Stuart Turton

8. “She’s soulless, conscienceless. I can barely believe she’s a person.”

— Stuart Turton

9. “Questions are swords and answers are shields,” persisted Sammy, still staring at Sara. “I’m begging you, armor yourself.”

— Stuart Turton

10. “Reason deserts me, rage pouring into the void. Every betrayal, every pain and sorrow, every regret, every disappointment, every humiliation, every anguish, every hurt... all of them, they’re filling me up.”

— Stuart Turton

11. “It was impossible to set fire to the blight that had ruined your crops, but a blight was easily summoned by a witch, at which point any poor woman would do.”

— Stuart Turton

12. “The downtrodden yearned for stories to explain their misfortunes, though what they really wanted was somebody to blame for their misery.”

— Stuart Turton

13. “People didn’t matter to the Company. They were commodities like everything else: free to produce and cheap to replace. Only what they dug out of the ground had value.”

— Stuart Turton

14. “What use is rearranging the furniture if you burn the house down doing it?”

— Stuart Turton

15. “I’ve been asked to dig a hole with a shovel made of sparrows.”

— Stuart Turton

16. “How lost do you have to be to let the devil lead you home? This lost, I decide. Precisely this lost.”

— Stuart Turton

17. “So this is how men go to the devil, he thought bitterly. Cap in hand and short of hope, all their prayers gone unanswered.”

— Stuart Turton

18. “To Ada, Right now, you’re two years old, asleep in your cot. You’re very strange and you make us laugh a lot. By the time you read this, you’ll be somebody else entirely. I hope we’re still pals. I hope I’m a good dad. I hope I don’t make too many mistakes and you forgive the ones I do. Truth is, I have no idea what I’m doing. But I’m always trying hard. I love you, kid. This is for you. Whoever you’ve become.”

— Stuart Turton

19. “And you know, amid all this brocade, it doesn’t even have pockets. Not one.” She tugged at the material where the pockets should have been.”

— Stuart Turton

20. “There’s a needle in every exchange, the air prickly and dangerous. Perhaps it’s nerves, or the hollow wisdom of foresight, but Blackheath seems fertile ground for tragedy.”

— Stuart Turton

21. “Wrecks have been raised from the ocean bed with less effort, but I hobble toward the cascade of costumes shrouding my quarry.”

— Stuart Turton

22. “The air is heavy, sweet with perfume, stirred only by a scratchy music that soars and glides and stuns itself against the walls.”

— Stuart Turton

23. “You’re as dense as the mountains you were carved out of.”

— Stuart Turton

24. “Can’t you see, these masks we wear betray us. They reveal us.”

— Stuart Turton

25. “My brother was murdered nineteen years ago tomorrow, Sebastian. I don’t know why, but my parents have decided to mark the occasion by reopening the house where it happened and inviting back the very same guests who were here that day.”

— Stuart Turton

26. “He’s in awe of you. He said you’re remarkable because you choose to do good, rather than because you’re afraid of what’s waiting if you don’t, like most people.”

— Stuart Turton

27. “Anger’s solid, it has weight. You can beat your fists against it. Pity’s a fog to become lost within.”

— Stuart Turton

28. “The world’s shrivelling beyond the windows, darkening at the edges and blackening at the centre.”

— Stuart Turton

29. “Every word out of his mouth felt like it was being etched into history; every glance contained a subtle rebuke, an invitation for others to measure themselves against him and discover the ways in which they were wanting.”

— Stuart Turton

30. “Se Arent Hayes era un demone, si era camuffato talmente bene da essere accidentalmente diventato un brav’uomo.”

— Stuart Turton

31. “Wealth is poisonous to the soul, and my parents have been wealthy a very long time – as have most of the guests who will be at this party. Their manners are a mask; you’d do well to remember that.”

— Stuart Turton

32. “I’m no longer a man, I’m a chorus.”

— Stuart Turton

33. “Anger makes good men stubborn and stubborn men petty.”

— Stuart Turton

34. “Was his offer just another torment, a sliver of hope to go mad chasing?”

— Stuart Turton

35. “My rage can’t make sense of anything but itself.”

— Stuart Turton

36. “Everything seems to be a very great effort for them, as though the pale flush of youth were a burden, their energy exhausting.”

— Stuart Turton

37. “Not all hells are created equal.”

— Stuart Turton

38. “Such terror I hope never to see again.”

— Stuart Turton

39. “Some songs weren’t mere songs. They were memories curled tight and set alight. They made you heartsick.”

— Stuart Turton

40. “There’s no glory except what the minstrels make up so the nobles can feel good about the slaughter they paid for. A soldier’s job is to end up dead far from home, fighting for a king who wouldn’t give them the crumbs from his table.”

— Stuart Turton

41. “I can sense my memories just out of reach. They have weight and shape, like shrouded furniture in a darkened room. I’ve simply misplaced the light to see them by.”

— Stuart Turton

42. “Don’t you understand yet?” I say. “I don’t care about your rules, because I’m not going to play.”

— Stuart Turton

43. “Oh, you truly are your mother’s daughter,’ said Creesjie, watching her affectionately. ‘Love can be feigned, dear heart. You can even convince yourself of it, if you try hard enough, but it’s impossible to spend an imaginary fortune. Marriage is an inconvenient convenience. It’s the shackle we accept for our safety.”

— Stuart Turton

44. “Beautiful heiresses commit suicide at balls.”

— Stuart Turton

45. “I intend to say more, but I choke on my sorrow.”

— Stuart Turton

46. “Like a child, I close my eyes in the hope that when I open them again, the natural order will be overturned, the impossible made plausible by desire alone.”

— Stuart Turton

47. “I’m saying you should be careful which knots you unpick,” he says.”

— Stuart Turton

48. “A rotund fellow in green hunting tweeds has set himself up on the pianoforte in the corrner and is playing a bawdy tune that causes offense only for the ineptness of its delivery. Nobody is paying much attention to him, though he’s doing his best to rectify that.”

— Stuart Turton

49. “Poverty is the most dangerous thing for a woman. We’re not well suited to a life on the streets.”

— Stuart Turton

50. “Life doesn’t always leave you a choice in how you live it.”

— Stuart Turton