Top 120 Stuart Turton Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Seeing me, he grins broadly, the boy in the man appearing as if through a window.”

— Stuart Turton

52. “But there seems no way to change things without making them worse.”

— Stuart Turton

53. “We’re trading devils,” says the shaggy lawyer eventually. “Perhaps,” says Hardcastle, “but I’ve read my Dante, Philip. Not all hells are created equal. Now, what do you say?”

— Stuart Turton

54. “That mark on the sail is how it starts. It’s meant to scare us, because scared people will do anything to stop being scared and they’ll do it to almost anybody else.”

— Stuart Turton

55. “Too tired to hold on, I slip back into the dark.”

— Stuart Turton

56. “A face is a mask of another sort.”

— Stuart Turton

57. “Chairs and chaise longues have been gathered around the fire, young women draped over them like wilted orchids, smoking cigarettes and clinging to their drinks.”

— Stuart Turton

58. “I have the sense of having stumbled upon something sleeping, that uncertain light the heartbeat of a creature vast and dangerous and still.”

— Stuart Turton

59. “The Banda Islands are a wretched hovel,’ said her husband contemptuously. ‘What use is wealth if they waste it buying beads from the English? They have no art, they have no culture, no debate. They exist as we must have first existed when God brought us forth from clay.”

— Stuart Turton

60. “I grew up with the dirt for a pillow and the wind for a blanket.”

— Stuart Turton

61. “Guilt was like dirt. It got under the skin and didn’t come clean. It made people second guess everything that was done, find fault where there was none and imagine mistakes that weren’t made. Soon enough, worries were worming out of them, growing fat on their doubt. Before long they were on their hands and knees at the crime.”

— Stuart Turton

62. “To even attempt it, liars must believe themselves to be cleverer than the person they’re lying to, an assumption he finds grotesquely insulting.”

— Stuart Turton

63. “Strong is strong and weak is weak, and it doesn’t matter if you wear breeches or skirts if you’re the latter. Life will hammer you flat.”

— Stuart Turton

64. “I forget everything between footsteps.”

— Stuart Turton

65. “Whatever darkness lurks inside Jonathan Derby, Millicent tucked it in at night.”

— Stuart Turton

66. “I meet his gaze, my host’s too. Dance is slipping apologies onto my tongue, urging me to flee the room. It’s a bloody nuisance. Every time I open my mouth to speak, I have to force aside another man’s embarrassment first.”

— Stuart Turton

67. “Despite my best efforts, everything’s happening exactly as I remember it.”

— Stuart Turton

68. “If this is hell, then it’s one of our making.”

— Stuart Turton

69. “I don’t have time. The hunt begins in half an hour and I can’t miss it. I have too many questions and most of the answers will be carrying shotguns.”

— Stuart Turton

70. “Mama says she’d rather be free than wealthy in a cage.’ ‘An argument we frequently enjoy,’ Creesjie snorted. ‘Unlike your mother, I don’t believe women can be free, not while men are stronger. What use is the freedom to be assaulted in the first dark alley we come across? We can’t fight, so we sing, we dance – and we survive. Cornelius Vos adores me, and, if he becomes wealthy, he would make for a fine marriage.”

— Stuart Turton

71. “The nobility was like that. They gorged on scandal, but quickly forgot what they’d eaten. After all, there was always more coming.”

— Stuart Turton

72. “Uncertainty is a crack through the center of him, undermining any suggestion of solidity or strength. This man’s been broken in two and put back together crooked, and if I had to guess, I’d say there was a child-shaped hole right in the middle.”

— Stuart Turton

73. “How long have you been with Pipps?” “Five years,” said Arent, taking another gulp of the terrible wine. “He heard the songs about me and decided he needed somebody like that standing in front of him when he accused people of murder.” Drecht laughed. “You never put that in your stories.” “Good sense sometimes sounds like cowardice when you write it down.” He shrugged his massive shoulders.”

— Stuart Turton

74. “Fear was too brittle a material to make good decisions from.”

— Stuart Turton

75. “I don’t, and there’s a further cause for concern.” “Of course there is,” she sighed. “Why would concern want to travel alone?”

— Stuart Turton

76. “Daniel?” I ask, just about holding onto the back of the conversation as it streaks away from me.”

— Stuart Turton

77. “You strike me as a man who’d much rather be somewhere else, a feeling I can wholeheartedly sympathize with.”

— Stuart Turton

78. “It almost bought Lia and I an entirely new life.”

— Stuart Turton

79. “Good mysteries so rarely come along, but if you’ve got a little imagination, you can invent as many as you want.”

— Stuart Turton

80. “One by one I knit these new memories together until I’ve got five minutes of past to wrap myself in.”

— Stuart Turton

81. “Her husband’s damnable horse snorted, kicking the ground angrily as she approached. She’d never got along with this beast. Unlike her, it enjoyed being underneath him.”

— Stuart Turton

82. “Courage isn’t an absence of fear’, cried out Sara. ‘It’s the light we find when fear is all there is. You’re needed now, so find your courage.”

— Stuart Turton

83. “Tempting people with fripperies: sugar, tobacco, alcohol; things that distracted them, that disappeared too quickly, that always needed replacing, things to go mad chasing. In the United East India Company, he saw the devil’s hands at work, caging humanity with want, persuading them to buy their manacles new every month.”

— Stuart Turton

84. “I tell you, Cecil, it was worth coming for the scandal alone.”

— Stuart Turton

85. “The entries were written in English – a clumsy language stitched together fro too many disparate parts to be elegant.”

— Stuart Turton

86. “It hadn’t made any difference. The dowry was too large. Unbeknown to her, she’d been bred for sale and fattened like a calf with manners and education. She’d felt betrayed, but she’d been young. She understood the world better now. Meat didn’t get a say on whose hook it hung from.”

— Stuart Turton

87. “God no, terrible things, hospitals,” he says, aghast. “Sickness and death swept into corners, diseases curled up in the beds with the patients.”

— Stuart Turton

88. “Age is coiling around me, its fangs in my neck, drawing my strength when I need it most.”

— Stuart Turton

89. “Lies only come two ways. Too sharp or too soft.”

— Stuart Turton

90. “Wealth was a key and poverty was a prison, and they’d been born shackled through no fault of their own.”

— Stuart Turton

91. “I suddenly have the sense of taking part in a play in which everybody knows their lines but me.”

— Stuart Turton

92. “Ghosts are God’s problem. The living must deal with me,′ declared Sammy.”

— Stuart Turton

93. “I’m not the man I’d hoped to be.”

— Stuart Turton

94. “Stanwin breathes through his nose, staring at Daniel out of narrowed eyes. It shouldn’t be a contest. Stanwin is squat and solid and spitting venom. Yet there’s something in the way Daniel stands there, hands in his pockets, head tilted, that gives Stanwin pause. Perhaps he’s wary of being hit by the train Daniel appears to be waiting for.”

— Stuart Turton

95. “Hardcastle’s on his feet, warming his hands by the heat of the fire. Lit by the flames, it’s clear the years have taken more from him than they’ve given. Uncertainty is a crack through the center of him, undermining any suggestion of solidity or strength. This man’s been broken in two and put back together crooked, and if I had to guess, I’d say there was a child-shaped hole right in the middle.”

— Stuart Turton

96. “Cleverness is a type of strength, and they won’t accept a woman who’s stronger than they are. Their pride won’t allow it, and their pride is the thing they hold dearest.”

— Stuart Turton

97. “It’s the curse of powerful men to heed only their own voices.”

— Stuart Turton

98. “Evelyn was right, the truth isn’t always a kindness, but no man should discover himself this way, like an abandoned house stumbled upon in the darkness.”

— Stuart Turton

99. “And yet, simply winning isn’t enough. He needs me to know it. He needs me to be afraid. For some reason, he needs me to suffer.”

— Stuart Turton

100. “For the beautifully attired Crauwels, there could be no greater act of self-harm than dressing like a peasant.”

— Stuart Turton