Romance

"I realize that I quite like this girl. It’s not just that she’s so pretty the words fly out of my mind before they can leave my mouth—it’s that when we’re chatting, I feel like I’ve known her all my life."

"Isn’t that what true romance is supposed to be about? Finding the person who’s your soul mate. Someone you dream about at night. Someone whose name is on your lips when you wake up in the morning."

"I can't be yours forever, Mab," I told her, the words flying into my mouth as if by magic. "I already belong to someone else. I belong to Alice!"

"So how did you do it? What makes the cold-hearted princeling mortal like the rest of us?"

"Don't get me wrong. I'm happy to be your morning lollipop, but I need to eat, too."

"I couldn't have gotten through any of this without you. Through all of it, you've been my support, my anchor. I don't know how one man's shoulders can possibly be so strong."... He tilted her face up to his. "With the love I feel for you, bella, I could lift up the world."

"But there’s a part of me that wonders what it would be like to be the most important person to someone else, to always feel like you were missing a piece of yourself when he wasn’t near you."

"I want to be able to love you, more than I fear losing you, and I don’t know how."

"Did it ever occur to you that I loved you as much as a man can love a woman? Loved you for years before I finally got you? During the war I'd go away and try to forget you, but I couldn't and I always had to come back. After the war I risked arrest, just to come back and find you. I cared so much I believe I would have killed Frank Kennedy if he hadn't died when he did. I loved you but I couldn't let you know it. You're so brutal to those who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like a whip."

"Love is one of those topics that plenty of people try to write about but not enough try to do."

"Well done, Darren!” Master Byron was full of praise for the prince. “What did you use to cast it?”Darren’s eyes found mine. “Something I don’t regret."

"EVERYONE MAKES MISTAKES, EVEN THE PERSONS WE LOVE."

"Keeping the box closed just keeps you in the dark, not the universe... but failing to open the box doesn't kill the cat."

"Love means never saying goodbye."

"Petey Samson gave the ladies an over-the-shoulder glance. He realized no doggie treat was forthcoming, even from Isabel who was usually the soft mark to hit up. He scratched his front claws to re-attack the sand."

"I believe that life always has a way of surprising you, for better or for worse," he looks at me once more, his eyes holding mine captive in its strong hold. "And that you always have a choice as to how the story ends..."

"Stanley forced a smile to his lips at the memory of the onesided romance; it was silly, after all, a stupid childhood crush. Who’d fall in love with a fictional character? That was the kind of thing you laughed about as an adult. Or at least Harriet had thought so. He couldn’t quite do it, though. Couldn’t quite see it as a joke. It had felt too real, too raw and wild and fierce, for him todismiss it even now. It was love, of a sort, stunted and unformed as it was. For a time, it had kept him sane."

"He did not want to go to his grave knowing he had risked nothing for the woman he wanted. He wasn’t an ass, though. Or if he was, he did not wish to give her incontrovertible evidence of the fact. What to say to her, then, when he knew he was likely to speak too gruffly?"

"Oxthorpe stood. He could do nothing else. Her hands stilled, and her smile faded away. She stood and dropped into a curtsy. What did one say in such situations, when one knew a lady disapproved? “Miss Clay,” he said. “Duke.” She’d given the field laborer a happier smile than she gave him. Most everyone else had stopped smiling, too. This was the effect he had on others. He was the Duke of Oxthorpe, and though he did his duty by his title and his estate, he was not beloved. He did not know how to be beloved the way Miss Clay was."

"...when he possessed her, they seemed to swoon together at the very borderland of life’s mystery."