All things in Fiji are paid for in blood.

Never bet your money on another man’s game.

It seemed to me that Mr. Forrester would approve of a woman who could follow him in conversation and not be baffled by ledgers and currency conversions. I had grossly overestimated him.

The urge to draw near to the female silhouette resided deep in the ancient center of a man…

Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret...

Yet, the quest for knowledge will overcome us and we must know. And, at last, we must see where the road ends, even if it be the cliff.

A prince may be seen happy today and ruined tomorrow without having shown any chance in his character. For the prince who relies entirely on fortune is lost when it changes…

Sonetimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself.

The oaks along the ridge were writhing like tortured epileptics in the winds, and she could make out through the thick rain a cascade of water like a cataract come roiling down the inside slope...

Once more, I am watching the most powerful men in the kingdom bring their power to bear on a woman who has done nothing worse than live to the beat of her own heart, see...

And I tell her about his description because I want her to know what I now know, which is that the place where the pepper grows is not a place to be afraid of…I tell...

Six wives the King’s had now.’ Barak’s words dragged me from my reverie. ‘We can’t even get one between us.

That was the wonderful thing about historical novels, one met so many famous people. It was like reading a very old copy of Hello! magazine.

Over time, this unspoken attration continued to blossom, refusing to dwindle or fade, though they had little opportunity to foster or nourish it. Slowly and patiently, Robert’s sheer persistence in the chase had revealed his...

I have come to think that’s where Heaven is, a place in the memories of other where our best selves live

The defenders retreated, but in good order. A musket flamed and a ball shattered a marine’s collar bone, spinning him around. The soldiers screamed terrible battle-cries as they began their grim job of clearing the...

Nobody hates us as ourselves. In their minds we’re not human… They don’t hate us because we did something or said something. They make us stand for an evil they invent and then they want...

Jennings is too tough and honest a writer to let anyone off her moral hook, even her hero.

He (her son) is just like his father, doesn’t listen to a word I say!

The pages that follow will be our journey of the life we built together here in Concord, North Carolina. These pages will reveal fragments from the past and events that occurred along the way.

Anybody can make history; only a great man can write it.

He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot.We were about to become cigarettes.

Of all God’s creatures, only man kills with malice. Only man kills out of vengeance.

Conformity is deformity

Fairy tales only happen in movies.” -George Meliesfrom The Invention of Hugo Cabret

I studied how to use the clothes washer. The handy instructions on the lid helped; so did the box of suds. It instructed me to separate the whites from the coloreds. Laundry will be the...

But the living must fear death, or they would not struggle to stay alive. from ‘The Fallen Kings.

A story is a wondrous invention.

Why else do we write and write except to move our readers?

Why write about the past? Well, there’s more of it.

Her entire life, she’d been told sin was wrong, a black and white interpretation of what is evil and what is holy in the world—colored like a priest’s robe and collar—but she never believed it...

Oh, she’s still here;she’s just not as pretty… anymore.

Perhaps you have visited my grave and flowers left, but did you hear me cry out to you!

So when I saw you lying in the shed there, I thought that even God couldn’t be that cruel. You were everything I ever asked for – so maybe you could also be the love...

Outwardly, I hope, I wear my usual mask of detachment, even irony, for there has never been a situation,however dire, even this one, that did not strike me as containing at least some element of...

Riding a bull must be a bit like flying an ultralight. You get up there and have an exhilarating ride, but then you still have to get down.

I am not a twenty-two-year-old boy; I am not a besotted fool. If you think to jilt me, think again. For I will not turn tail and run the other way as he did, oh...

No man as godly as George, the only fault he finds with God is that he made folk with too few orifices. If George could meet a woman with a quinny under her armpit, he...

He nodded, looking across the room at the sea of photographers and journalists. The microphones spread around him like birds waiting to be fed.

Even still, it wasn’t over. For if a battle could be won so easily, men would soon forget its horrors and clamor for it all the more. War would come more than once or twice...

Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast...

I’ve never met anyone as kind as you are, except me Mum, o’ course.” –Benjamin Trimmel to Lady Alexandra.

LIPID (Last Idiot Person I Dated) syndrome: a largely undiagnosed but pervasive disease that afflicts single women.

Like the magnolia tree, She bends with the wind,Trials and tribulation may weather her, Yet, after the storm her beauty blooms, See her standing there, like steel, With her roots forever buried,Deep in her Southern...

Mankind in the aggregate I have found to be brutish, ignorant and unkind, whether those qualities were covered by the coarse tunic of the peasant of the white and purple toga of a senator. And...

Long ago she’d clamped an iron shell around her heart and nothing and no one could pry it lose, but deep inside the tender flesh still beat.

Lightening flashed again and again but above the shriek of the wind and the pounding hail they never heard the thunder.

Think ere you speak

I know not by what power I am drawn to you, but it is as a moth is drawn to the flame, and I cannot fight it, I must be consumed.

In my end lies my beginning” Who said that? Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots (1542-1587).