Deborah Harkness famous quotes

If the butterfly wings its way to the sweet light that attracts it, it's only because it doesn't know that the fire can consume it.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Sweet #Butterfly #Fire

All that children need is love, a grown-up to take responsibility for them, and a soft place to land.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Children #Responsibility #Land

You persist in this romantic vision of what it is to be a vampire, but despite my best efforts to curb it I have a taste for blood.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Blood #Effort #Vision

Yes, I see that you are behaving like a prince but that doesn't mean you won't behave like a devil at the first opportunity.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Mean #Opportunity #Devil

Se Souvenir du passe, et qu'il ya un avenir: Remember the past, and that there is a future.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Past #Remember #Souvenirs

It is a blessing as well as a burden to love so much that you can hurt so badly when love is gone.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Hurt #Love Is #Blessing

Memories were short and history unkind. It was the way of the world.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Memories #World #Way

She was like a camera that had been chronically out of focus until someone came by and twisted the lenses into alignment.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Focus #Cameras #Lenses

These days vampires gravitated toward particle accelerators, projects to decode the genome, and molecular biology. Once they had flocked to alchemy, anatomy, and electricity. If it went bang, involved blood, or promised to unlock the secrets of the universe, there was sure to be a vampire around.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Blood #Secret #Vampire

Scholars do one of two things when they discover information that doesn't fit what they already know. Either they sweep it aside so it doesn't bring their cherished theories into question or they focus on it with laserlike intensity and try to get to the bottom of the mystery.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Two #Focus #Trying

Just because something seems impossible doesn’t make it untrue,
-- Deborah Harkness

#Impossible

I wanted to know how humans came up with a view of the world that had so little magic in it. I needed to understand how they convinced themselves that magic wasn’t important.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Views #Magic #Important

His full name is Matthew Gabriel Philippe Bertrand Sebastien de Clermont. He was also a very good Sebastien, and a passable Gabriel. He hates Bertrand and will not answer to Philippe.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Hate #Names #Gabriel

It begins with absence and desire. It begins with blood and fear. It begins with a discovery of witches.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Discovery #Blood #Desire

My ideas about vampires may by romantic, but your attitudes toward women need a major overhaul.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Attitude #Ideas #Vampire

Ni muer ni viu ni no guaris, Ni mal no·m sent e si l’ai gran, Quar de s’amor no suy devis, Ni no sai si ja n’aurai ni quan, Qu’en lieys es tota le mercés Que·m pot sorzer o decazer.” “Not dying nor living nor healing, there is no pain in my sickness, for I am not kept from her love. I don’t know if I will ever have it, for all the mercy that makes me flourish or decay is in her power.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Pain #Healing #Dying

Occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile."..' Opportunity is fleeting, experiment dangerous, and judgement difficult.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Opportunity #Judgement #Fleeting

Her bark is worse than her bite.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Bark

I was planning on starting a new file on my computer with the title "Phrases That Sound One Way to Witches but Mean Something Else to Vampires.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Mean #Vampire #Sound

I'd studied 16th century science and magic. I thought it was strange that people were interested in the same kinds of things my research was about. The more I thought about it, the more intriguing it became and pretty soon I was writing a novel about a reluctant witch and a 1500-year-old vampire.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Writing #Years #People

Sir. My lord. Master Roydon." The young man blurted out most available titles except for "Your Majesty" and "Prince of Darkness." These were implied nonetheless.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Men #Darkness #Titles

Desire urges me on as fear bridles me" Bruno.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Desire

The plain truth is that the period I study is the 16th century, and they were absolutely obsessed with witches and spiritual beings.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Spiritual #Study #Witch

And happiness is always louder than sadness.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Sadness

Within days they'd formed an unholy alliance with a foppish young French vampire in the Garden District who had implausibly golden hair and a streak of ruthlessness as wide as the Mississippi
-- Deborah Harkness

#Garden #Hair #Vampire

English vampires may not be as well behaved around witches as the American ones are.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Vampire #May #Witch

Are you smelling me?” After yesterday I suspected that my body was giving him all kinds of information I didn't want him to have. “Don't tempt me,” he murmured.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Yesterday #Giving #Body

there’s nothing more powerful than human fear—not magic, not vampire strength. Nothing.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Powerful #Magic #Vampire

Matthew kept hinting that his desire - for blood, chiefly- was so strong that it put everything else at risk. But vampires weren’t the only creatures who had to manage such strong impulses. Much of what qualified as magic was simply desire in action. Witchcraft was different- that took spells and rituals. But magic? A wish, a need, a hunger too strong to be denied- these could turn into deeds when they cross a witch’s mind.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Strong #Blood #Risk

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed (Albert Einstein)
-- Deborah Harkness

#Beautiful #Art #Eye

Be yourself-- Matthew Clairmont. Complete with your sharp vampire teeth and your scary mother, your test tubes full of blood and your DNA, your infuriating bossiness and your maddening sense of smell.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Mother #Being Yourself #Dna

We kissed each other, long and deep, while my legs opened like the covers of a book.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Book #Long #Legs

Sorry, we've got ghosts.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Sorry #Ghost

I saw the logic that they used, and the death of a thousand cuts as experimental scientists slowly chipped away at the belief that the world was an inexplicably powerful, magical place. Ultimately they failed, though. The magic never really went away. It waited, quietly, for people to return to it when they found the science wanting.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Powerful #Cutting #People

I know,I can smell it, too,
-- Deborah Harkness

#Smell

As fast as I can tell there are only two emotions that keep the world spinning year after year...One is fear. The other is desire.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Years #Two #Desire

In this room we understand why this war might be fought...it's about our common belief that no one has the right to tell two creatures that they cannot love each other--no matter what their species.
-- Deborah Harkness

#War #Two #Might

the first requirement of war: allies must not kill each other.
-- Deborah Harkness

#War #Allies #Requirements

It was a brutal picture, a tug-of-war between two equal but opposing impulses. It had the ring of truth, however,
-- Deborah Harkness

#War #Two #Impulse

Somewhere in the center of my soul, a rusty chain began to unwind. It freed itself, link by link, from where it had rested, unobserved, waiting for him. My hands, which had been balled up and pressed against his chest, unfurled with it. The chain continued to drop, to an unfathomable depth where there was nothing but darkness and Matthew. At last it snapped to its full length, anchoring me to a vampire. Despite the manuscript, despite the fact that my hands contained enough voltage to run a microwave, and despite the photograph, as long as I was connected to him, I was safe.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Running #Hands #Long

The king just sits there, moving one square at a time. The queen can move so freely. I suppose I’d rather lose the game than forfeit her freedom.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Kings #Queens #Moving

Remember the past - and await the future.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Past #Remember #Remembering The Past

Pamela Smith and Benjamin Schmidt have gathered together a wide-ranging and provocative set of original essays that successfully demonstrate how contingent the process of making knowledge was during a period of fundamental epistemological change. This is a finely crafted and conceptualized collection.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Together #Fundamentals #Provocative

Be still,” he said, voice harsh. “I might not be able to control myself if you step away.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Voice #Might #Able

With knot of one, the spell's begun. With knot of two, the spell be true. With knot of three, the spell is free. With knot of four, the power is stored. With knot of five, the spell with thrive. With knot of six, this spell I fix.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Two #Three #Four

You do angry. I just saw it. And you left at least one hole in my carpet to prove it.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Saws #Holes #Carpet

Gallowglass returned to Sporrengasse with two vampires and a pretzel.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Two #Vampire #Pretzels

Wordlessly I looked back at him, astonished that a kiss on the palm could be so intimate.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Kissing #Intimate #Palms

I want a simple, ordinary life . . . like humans enjoy.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Simple #Ordinary #Want

My experiences thus far had me planning to throttle the first Tudor historian I met upon my return for gross dereliction of duty.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Tudors #Firsts #Return

That evening, rowing on the quiet river as sunset turned to dusk, I saw an occasional smoky smudge on the towpath, always slightly ahead of me, like a dark star guiding me home.
-- Deborah Harkness

#Stars #Home #Sunset