Top 120 Stuart Turton Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 2 of 3

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

— Stuart Turton

52. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

55. “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

56. “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

57. “Not all hells are created equal.”

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

60. “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

61. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

63. “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

64. “Beautiful heiresses commit suicide at balls.”

— Stuart Turton

65. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

68. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

70. “Your frustration is understandable, but what use is rearranging the furniture if you burn the house down doing it?”

— Stuart Turton

71. “She doesn’t take kindly to young men who think too much. She believes it’s a sign of idleness.”

— Stuart Turton

72. “Mercy, he believed, was the gravest wound you could inflict, for it was the only one that wouldn’t heal.”

— Stuart Turton

73. “His next words are offerings, carefully chosen and even more carefully placed before me.”

— Stuart Turton

74. “He’s as stooping and sly as I remember, his gaze running its hands through my pockets before taking in my face.”

— Stuart Turton

75. “All that was of value has been taken.”

— Stuart Turton

76. “Until now, the horrors in my future had always been vague, insubstantial things, dark shapes lurking in a fog. But this is me, my fate.”

— Stuart Turton

77. “You know what men are when there’s nobody ordering them to be better.”

— Stuart Turton

78. “Murder in the morning and costumes at night, cryptic notes and burned butlers; whatever’s happening here, I will not be yanked around like some puppet on a string. I must escape this house.”

— Stuart Turton

79. “Pity’s a fog to become lost within.”

— Stuart Turton

80. “This time the past will hold her hand and squeeze. Memory will murder her.”

— Stuart Turton

81. “The children I knew have shed their skins and slithered into society.”

— Stuart Turton

82. “I watch him squirm for a second or two, balancing the veracity of his story against the pain on his face. Content that the two are of equal weight, I lift my cane, allowing him to stumble away, clutching his aching hand.”

— Stuart Turton

83. “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

84. “That’s the beauty of corrupt men, you can always rely on them to be corrupt.”

— Stuart Turton

85. “Call it a healthy skepticism of any wisdom delivered through a mask.”

— Stuart Turton

86. “Sammy was what Arent hoped the entire world could be. If an old woman was wronged, she should have her recompense, whether she was rich or poor, strong or weak. The weak shouldn’t have to fear the powerful, and the powerful shouldn’t simply be allowed to take what they wanted without consequence. 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

87. “Then it would be foolish for you to go alone, besides I brought some help.’ From her handbag, she pulls out a black revolver.”

— Stuart Turton

88. “My attempts to paddle away from the disaster may only hurry us toward it.”

— Stuart Turton

89. “I was promised eight hosts to solve this mystery, and I’ve been given them, except that Bell was a coward, the butler was beaten half to death, Donald Davies fled, Ravencourt could barely move, and Derby can’t hold a thought. It’s like I’ve been asked to dig a hole with a shovel made of sparrows.”

— Stuart Turton

90. “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

91. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

93. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

97. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

99. “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

100. “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