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c67d4a6
|
Patience is only a virtue when there is something worth waiting for.
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|
historical
|
Lauren Willig |
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c20dcd8
|
They were close enough that he could feel the hurried beat of her heart. He could feel Charlotte's indecision in every word she didn't say and every move she didn't make. She was tense with uncertainty, quivering with irresolution. She might not be leaning into him, but she wasn't pulling away, either.
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night-jasmine
uncertainty
|
Lauren Willig |
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037f8b1
|
Tell them I have the headache--no, the plague! I need something nice and contagious.
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|
humorous-quotations
mystery
|
Lauren Willig |
|
5370126
|
There's nothing so attractive as a blank slate. Take one attractive man, slap on a thick coat of daydream, and voila, the perfect man. With absolutely no resemblance to reality.
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|
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Lauren Willig |
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9fd5ad3
|
It was lovely to see cynicism in one so young. It positively restored his faith in human nature.
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|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
f0808e5
|
There is, I have heard, a little thing called sunrise, in which the sun reverses the process we all viewed the night before. You might assume such a thing as mythical as those beasts that guard the corners of the earth, but I have it on the finest authority, and have, indeed, from time to time, regarded it with my own eyes.
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|
mornings
sunrise
|
Lauren Willig |
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93b213f
|
When you think about it, everything has been said before, in one way or another. It's only our experience of it that makes it new.
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|
words
writing
life
|
Lauren Willig |
|
893a67d
|
Miles was still mourning the loss of his Romantic Plan. 'There was going to be champagne, and oysters, and you' -- he held out both hands as though shifting a piece of furniture -- 'were going to be sitting there, and I was going to get down on one knee, and...and...
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|
relationships
romance
miles-is-awesome
|
Lauren Willig |
|
4b597cb
|
For a long moment, he held her gaze without speaking, simply letting the impact of words sink in, before adding rapidly, as though he wished to get it over with as quickly as possible, "I won't deny that you're beautiful. No mirror could tell you otherwise. But there are beautiful women for the buying in any brothel in London. Oh yes, and the ballrooms, too, if one has the proper price. It wasn't your appearance that caught me. It was the w..
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|
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Lauren Willig |
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fcc10af
|
LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women.
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|
humor
romance-novels
mystery
|
Lauren Willig |
|
9b69e66
|
Amazing what the application of a knitting needle could do for one's manners.
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|
|
Lauren Willig |
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d280377
|
Quite definitely a Bingley
|
|
turnip
pride-and-prejudice
|
Lauren Willig |
|
e3bdb30
|
Love doesn't attack; it infiltrates.
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|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
9111a40
|
Turning to Turnip, Miss Dempsey said, 'Do you think?'. 'As little as I can,' Turnip replied honestly.
|
|
humor
funny-quotes
|
Lauren Willig |
|
953b571
|
It is a truth universally acknowledged that time moves differently for men.
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|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
d11964f
|
It would be, like all of Pammy's parties, hot and crowded and filled with impossibly glamorous people with hip bones so sharp they could qualify as concealed weapons.
|
|
romance
humor
mystery
|
Lauren Willig |
|
5d6354b
|
There was nothing the least bit radical about her. In fact, she was the most conventional creature alive. She believed in true love, and loyalty to one's monarch, and death before dishonor. It was just that, sometimes, things didn't quite turn out as one would have wished. In those cases, there was nothing to do but carry on. And on and on and on.
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|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
c3d1e7a
|
Good Gad! It looks like the last act of Hamlet in here. Turnip banged his head against his clenched fists, making inarticulate moaning noises. Pinchingdale gave him an odd look. 'I had no idea you felt so strongly about the play, Fitzhugh.
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|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
e5203d0
|
Mr. Alsworthy!" exclaimed Letty's mother. "How can you laugh at such a matter! Although, I must say, I would have thought if a pirate were to kidnap anyone, he would kidnap Mary. She looks quite as I did in my youth, and I'm sure a pirate would have wanted to kidnap me." "Don't taunt me with lost opportunities, my dear."
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|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
f20d1f1
|
Gentlemen do so appreciate a nicely trimmed decolletage.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
11de1a1
|
Things turn up in strange places all the time. For example library books, which possess a disconcerting ability to move from place to place, seemingly of their own volition.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
dd35785
|
It's the exile's dilemma. The home they yearn for is never the home to which they return. If they return.
|
|
home
|
Lauren Willig |
|
1038774
|
I didn't know there could be an almost kiss. It seems like the sort of thing that either happens or it doesn't. Oh no... There's an entire universe of near misses out there, kisses that almost were, but weren't.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
bd89c05
|
They were a strange and mercantile people, these Americans. One never knew what they might come up with next.
|
|
ingenuity
invention
|
Lauren Willig |
|
63f7475
|
The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
2305011
|
It wasn't the big decisions that set the course of one's life; it was the slow accretion of all the little ones.
|
|
life
path-of-life
|
Lauren Willig |
|
92c1f5f
|
Hard to believe that so nearby, just across the Channel, such atrocities could still occur in their supposedly civilized world, that one could wake up one morning and find oneself bereft of brothers, parents, friends, all with the slice of an ax.
|
|
family
revolution
|
Lauren Willig |
|
753d46a
|
Colin mustered a perfunctory leer, but his mind was obviously elsewhere. 'Do you know...' he began. I knew many things, but I didn't think he needed to hear the entirety of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales right at just this moment.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
1b6fa27
|
Why was it that cheering expressions were invariably so infuriating?
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
a685156
|
My dear Mrs. Grimstone, sometimes cowardice is merely another word for common sense.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
6fd2eef
|
Some things worked far better in imagination than reality. In imagination, she was intrepid and resourceful; in reality she wished she were home, wrapped in a quilt.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
1b1bb7d
|
with the complete lack of shame of the extremely deaf and the complete lack of grammar of the extremely inbred.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
e487e62
|
Take a deep breath, people suggested. Count to ten. Count sheep. Oh, wait, that was for sleeping. Even in her own head, her tongue ran ahead of her brain. It propelled her into all sorts of absurd situations. Elopements. Scandals. This.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
ff14331
|
She responded to Letty's well-meaning suggestions with the unblinking disdain perfected by cats in their dealings with their humans.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
c9abe03
|
Its nice to know that your common sense stands between me and the grave.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
333c475
|
Right now, I couldn't have cared less if someone had waltzed across the room in a large flower costume with a sign saying GET YOUR BLACK TULIPS HERE. Every nerve in my body was on man-alert, screaming, "incoming!"
|
|
spies
lauren-willig
funny-and-random
spy
|
Lauren Willig |
|
762d2fb
|
He] had insisted that inanimate objects couldn't have malignant motivations, but Emma had extensive proof to the contrary.
|
|
inanimate-objects
|
Lauren Willig |
|
c3ab52e
|
That was the problem with snide comments; they invariably lost all their punch on repetition. Besides, when facing impending death, what did the odd witticism matter?
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
f9aae65
|
I know historians aren't supposed to fall in love with their own theories, but I was head over heels about the notion of an entire band of female French agents, like a nineteenth-century Charlie's Angels. Only better. It made the Pink Carnation's organization look positively humdrum.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
fc8cb6b
|
It was the usual sort of academic battle: footnotes at ten paces, bolstered by snide articles in academic journals and lots of sniping about methodology, a thrust and parry of source and countersource. My sources had to be better.
|
|
|
Lauren Willig |
|
871c53f
|
Inside, the festivities would continue, probably well into the night, with flirtation and merriment and gratuitous use of mistletoe. It was an inexpressibly wearying thought.
|
|
merriment
holidays
|
Lauren Willig |
|
d62e556
|
The use of charm as a tool made her hackles rise. She respected a more direct approach. A battering ram approach. At least one knew where one stood with the battering ram, none of this butter-wouldn't-melt nonsense that could mean yes, no, or maybe.
|
|
humor
directness
|
Lauren Willig |
|
8da532c
|
Amy wondered if Bonaparte could declare war on Miss Gwen alone without breaking his peace with England
|
|
lauren-willig
historical-fiction
spy
|
Lauren Willig |
|
d3d4258
|
If a man took a lover it would be accounted commonplace. Why shouldn't you? Your virtue lies in your mind, not in what lies between your legs.
|
|
virtue
|
Lauren Willig |