Rose Lerner > Quotes

“Love wasn’t selfless, and it wasn’t selfish either. Love was equality. It was saying that another person’s self was just as important as yours, and expecting them to feel the same way.”
― Rose Lerner, Sweet Disorder

“It’s the worst sort of snobbery to condemn a book without reading it, merely because it’s popular.”
― Rose Lerner, Sweet Disorder

“People liked to imagine their feelings were obvious, that their emotions were written all over their face. But generally, no one looked carefully enough to notice anything, or knew you well enough to understand what they noticed.”
― Rose Lerner, True Pretenses

“People say things die in winter, but it isn't true, mostly. They just gather their strength.”
― Rose Lerner, True Pretenses

“Drek. He was definitely in love with her now.”
― Rose Lerner, True Pretenses

“The human heart is like a big mess of embroidery silks, and the more you pull, the more they tangle. The thing is, the threads have only got one end, if that. You can't sort them all out into colors. You just pick the ones you want and hold one to them as best you can.”
― Rose Lerner, True Pretenses

“Secrets are my profession. I know them inside and out. What separates me from someone I'm lying to isn't the lie. It's that I know I'm lying. It's a pane of glass---they can't see it, but I don't forget it's there.”
― Rose Lerner, True Pretenses

“I don’t mean to sound puffed up, but I think—I believe, anyway, that there were boys who might have wanted to court me if I’d given them any encouragement. But I was shy, and none of them seemed to have so great an advantage over books as to be worth the effort.”
― Rose Lerner, Sweet Disorder

“I like that Jewishness is about what you do, and not how much you say you believe in God in your heart.”
― Rose Lerner, Hamilton's Battalion: A Trio of Romances

“The people in this town are a regular Greek chorus, only with less Christian charity.”
― Rose Lerner, Sweet Disorder

“You might forget,' he said. 'You can't hold on to a person when they're gone. You can't even hold on to people who are alive sometimes. I don't remember my mother's face. Not really. But I tell myself -- I'm still here. So much of who I am and what I do comes from her, I'm remembering her just by living. Every time I tilt my head or pick up a teacup the way she used to, that's a little bit of her still in the world.”
― Rose Lerner, True Pretenses

“Learning that he was a professional swindler should have made her shame a hundred times worse. Instead, it took the sting out of it. The whole affair was disgusting, and she was unwise to have trusted him, but she had been one of many victims. She wouldn't stand out in his mind as more foolish than other women.

What a strange, vain thing the mind was.”
― Rose Lerner, True Pretenses

“No,” he agreed. “You’re not. You’re one of the somebodiest somebodies I ever met.”
― Rose Lerner, Sweet Disorder

“She was the kind of art that was so valuable it wasn't even for sale, and she smiled when she saw Ash. His pulse jumped.”
― Rose Lerner, True Pretenses

“Do you think it will really come?” she asked. “A time when no one will be ashamed?”
― Rose Lerner, Sweet Disorder

“She set aside the Lively St. Lemeston Intelligencer with a sigh and picked up the Times. “No murders in Sussex this week.” Every Tuesday, when the town newspaper came out, they met at the Makepeaces’ coffeehouse to go through all the week’s papers for interesting crimes.”
― Rose Lerner, A Taste of Honey

“She nodded without conviction, wishing she could be so carefree, and not the sort of person for whom an unanswered letter gnawed away at the back of her mind. Nobody liked a stick-in-the-mud...but they liked all the things sticks-in-the-mud did for them, didn't they? They liked not having to worry because someone else, someone who couldn't sleep when she had left a duty unperformed, would make sure that nothing too terrible happened.”
― Rose Lerner, True Pretenses

“You’re one of the somebodiest somebodies I ever met.”
― Rose Lerner, Sweet Disorder