Top 120 Stuart Turton Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

104. “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

105. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

111. “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

112. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

115. “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

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

— Stuart Turton

117. “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

118. “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

119. “Oh, don’t mind me,” she says. “I loathe getting to know people, so whenever I meet somebody I like, I just assume a friendship immediately. It saves a great deal of time in the long run.”

— Stuart Turton

120. “Are you keeping Sara out of trouble?” “I’m trying, but she seems terribly fond of it.”

— Stuart Turton

121. “Thirty seconds,” I mutter. That’s how long I hesitated when I first spotted her, and that’s how far away I was when she was murdered.”

— Stuart Turton

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

— Stuart Turton

123. “His hatred is viscous, it has texture. I could wring it out of the air and bottle it.”

— Stuart Turton

124. “On a normal day, these people would be buying from the bakers, tailors, cordwainers, binders and candlemakers lining the boulevard. They’d be smiling and laughing, grumbling about the infernal heat, but manacle a man and offer him up to torment, and even the meekest soul surrendered itself to the devil.”

— Stuart Turton

125. “I find the room smothered in sleepy conversation. Most of the guests are only halfway out of their beds, and they reek of the prior evening, sweat and cigar smoke baked into their skin, spirits curled around every breath. They’re talking quietly and moving slowly, porcelain people riddled with cracks.”

— Stuart Turton

126. “Mementos of his victories, no different to Vos and I.”

— Stuart Turton

127. “My mind is a stuffed trunk that needs unpacking.”

— Stuart Turton

128. “The last time I entered this forest, my mind never made it back.”

— Stuart Turton

129. “His proposal had been thorough, listing the benefits of their union to her father. In short, she’d have a beautiful cage and all the time in the world to admire herself in the bars.”

— Stuart Turton

130. “Deference was something she was supposed to put on every morning, along with her cap and bodice.”

— Stuart Turton

131. “I neither hear, nor feel. My grief is a bottomless well. All I can do is fall and hope to hit the bottom.”

— Stuart Turton