Lisa Kleypas quotes

A well-read woman is a dangerous creature.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Women #Dangerous #Wells

I had learned that there were substitutes for a mother who couldn't be a mother. You could find love with other people. You could find it in places you weren't even looking. But the original wound would never heal. I would carry it with me forever, and so would Tara. That was the trick . . . accepting it, going on with your life, knowing it was part of you.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Mother #Knowing #People

I want to fill every part of you, breathe the air from your lungs and leave my handprints on your soul. I want to give you more pleasure than you can bear.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Air #Giving #Soul

If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Country #Past #Forever

Sometimes a woman needs a man for company, no matter how useless he is.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Men #Needs #Useless

You are your own worst enemy. If you can learn to stop expecting impossible perfection, in yourself and others, you may find the happiness that has always eluded you.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Expectations #Perfection #Enemy

Most lives are not distinguished by great achievements. They are measured by an infinite number of small ones. Each time you do a kindness for someone or bring a smile to his face, it gives your life meaning. Never doubt your value, little friend. The world would be a dismal place without you in it. (tweaked version of a passage from Scandal in Spring)
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Kindness #Spring #Numbers

Shock is a merciful condition. It allows you to get through disaster with a necessary distance between you and your feelings.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Distance #Grief #Feelings

Dating is like trying to make a meal out of leftovers. Some leftovers actually get better when they've had a little time to mature. But others should be thrown out right away, No matter how you try to warm them up, they're never as good as when they were new.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Dating #Trying #Get Better

I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Love #Believe #Ideas

Bad divorce?" Hardy asked, his gaze falling to my hands. I realized I was clutching my purse in a death grip. “No, the divorce was great,” I said. “It was the marriage that sucked.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Fall #Divorce #Hands

There are some experiences in life they haven't invented the right words for.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Forgiveness #Im Sorry #Sorry

The next time you face a room full of strangers . . . you might tell yourself that some of them are just friends waiting to be found.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Waiting #Just Friends #Rooms

...whether he stayed or left, whether they walked the same path or not. They could live on opposite sides of the world, and she would still be his.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Opposites #World #Path

But the absence of tears wasn't the same as an absence of feeling.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Life #Feelings #Tears

There were times in life when you had to take a risk that might end in failure. Because otherwise you would be haunted by what you hadn’t done... the paths you hadn’t taken, the things you hadn’t experienced.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Taken #Risk #Path

The question, love, is whether you want me enough to take the risk.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Love Is #Risk #Want

You have to rely on whatever sparks you have inside.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Strength #Beauty #Sparks

Getting to a higher spiritual level is like increasing your credit score. You get a lot more points for sinning and repenting than if you have no credit history at all.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Spiritual #Credit #Levels

I think in a moment of weakness, you might surprise yourself.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Thinking #Weakness #Might

I wondered how many times in my life I had done something just because I wanted to without weighing the consequences.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Done #Wanted #Weighing

Opening up to the wrong person is like putting ammo in their hands.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Hands #Opening Up #Ammo

He never knew what hit him, and that would have comforted me, except . . . just for one second, he would have had to know, wouldn't he? There must have been a blur, a sense of the world exploding, a flashpoint of receiving more damage than a human body could endure.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Damage #Receiving #World

Daisy had known the novel was silly even as she had read it, but that had not detracted one bit from her enjoyment.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Silly #Daisies #Novel

A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Mistake #Men #Thinking

... I discovered life sometimes has a way of giving you what you need, but not in the form you expect.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Life #Giving #Needs

A good conversation always involves a certain amount of complaining. I like to bond over mutual hatreds and petty grievances.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Hatred #Complaining #Certain

The Rom believe you should take the road that calls to you, and never turn back. Because you never know what adventures await." ... "So we're going to take this road," he murmured, "and see where it leads.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Believe #Adventure #Should

Hunt looked like a man who had visited many woman's beds and knew exactly what to do in them.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Men #Bed #Hunts

She smiled at him, though her hazel-green eyes were wary beneath the brim of a sodden hat. Right at that moment, staring at her across the hall, Gideon Shaw, cynic, hedonist, drunkard, libertine, fell hopelessly in love.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Eye #Green #Hats

You say the gentleman I knew has been replaced. How I wish I could offer better comfort than to say that no matter how you have changed, you wil be welcomed when you return. Do what you must. If it helps you to endure, put the feelings away for now, and lock the door. Perhaps someday we'll air them out together.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Doors #Air #Feelings

Once he had taken hold, he did not let go. It was not a handshake, it was a possession.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Letting Go #Taken #Possession

We are hidiously rich Annabelle-- and I've got three older brothers, all unmarried. Would you consider one of them? If you like, I'll have one shipped across the Atlantic for your inspection." -Lillian Bowman
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Brother #Three #Rich

A lack of desire is something I've never experienced. I'd have to be on my deathbed before I stopped wanting-- no, never mind, I was on my deathbed in the not-too-distant past, and even then I had the devil's own itch for my wife." -Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Past #Wife #Mind

I don't think Harry cares about being forgiven," Poppy said glumly. "Of course he does. Men love to be forgiven. It makes us feel better about our inability to learn from our mistakes.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Mistake #Feel Better #Men

Matthew wanted hours, days, weeks alone with her... he wanted all her thoughts and smiles and secrets. The freedom to lay his soul bare before her.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Soul #Secret #Week

I stand by my opinions when I know I'm right, Captain Phelan. Whereas you stand by yours merely because you're stubborn.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Stubborn #Captains #Opinion

Scorpions are quite ruthless, you know. That is why Artemis bid one of them to kill her foe Orion. And as a reward she set the scorpion on up in the sky. I'm not ruthless. I merely do whatever it takes to achive my goals That's not ruthless?
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Sky #Goal #Rewards

Don't ever trust men with good intentions. They'll always disappoint you." Leo
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Men #Good Intentions #Intention

The baby woke up before you did. I took him to the other room to let you get a little more sleep. We've been watching a game." "Did he cry?" "Only when he realized the Astros were having another first-round play-off flame out. But I told him there's no shame in crying over the Astros. It's how we Houston guys bond.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Baby #Sleep #Games

I’ve never heard that the sexual act requires any particular intelligence. From what I’ve observed, many stupid people are easily able to produce children.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Children #Stupid #People

Fear you?" she said without thinking. "Good God, I would never do that." Easing her head back, Westcliff looked at her while a slow smile spread across his face. "No, you wouldn't," he agreed. "You'd spit in the devil's eye if it suited you.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Eye #Thinking #Devil

Marriage would change hardly anything between us, except that we would end our arguments in a much more satisfying way. And of course I would have extensive legal rights over your body, your property, and all your individual freedoms, but I don't see what's so alarming about that.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Rights #Body #Way

It was finally becoming clear to her that love wasn't about finding someone perfect to marry. Love was about seeing through to the truth of a person, and accepting all their shades of light and dark. Love was an ability.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Dark #Light #Perfect

You deserve someone better than me. Someone young and idealistic…someone who can experience things for the first time along with you. I'm not always kind, and I have more faults than I'd care to name. All I can promise is that I'll want you until my last breath.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Names #Promise #Lasts

I'm not the marrying kind -" St. Vincent snorted. "No man is. Marriage is a female invention.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Men #Female #Kind

Love me?” Madeline asked with a faint smile. “It used to be love.” He brushed his lips over her closed eyelids. “Now there's no word for it.” “You once told me that you thought love was a weakness.” “I was wrong,” he whispered, kissing the corners of her mouth. “I've discovered it's my only strength.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Kissing #Lips #Weakness

My peer would have to be dark-haired and handsome, a wonderful dancer... and he would never ask permission before he kissed me." -Lillian Bowman
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Dark #Dancer #Peers

And then another letter had come from Christopher, so devastating that Amelia wondered how mere scratches of ink on paper could rip someone's soul to shreds. She had wondered how she could feel so much pain and still survive.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Pain #Rip #Soul

I'm coming to believe that there are two kinds of people... those who choose to be masters of their own fate and those who wait in chairs while other dance. I would rather be one of the former than the latter.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Believe #Fate #Two

I didn't mean to send love letters, but that is what they became. On their way to you, my words turned into heartbeats on the page.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Mean #Letters #Pages

You can keep a bunch of crabs in a shallow container, and none of them will escape. Because as soon as one of 'em tries to climb out, the others pull him back in." -Hardy
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Trying #Ems #Shallow

Evie," Lillian interupted impatiently, "men expect to be deceived in these matters. They're happiest that way. If one were straightforward with them the whole prospect of marriage would be too alarming, and none of them would ever do it.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Men #Would Be #Matter

...it was better to answer, no matter how ineptly, thank to withhold a reply. Because sometimes silence could wound someone nearly as badly as a bullet.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Silence #Answers #Bullets

She had discovered that the best remedy for heartache was trying to make herself useful to others.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Heartache #Trying #Remedy

I spent most of my youth hauling sides of beef and pork to my father's shop. Carrying you is far more enjoyable." "How sweet," Annabelle mumbled sickly, her eyes closed. "Every woman dreams of being told that she's preferable to a dead cow.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Dream #Sweet #Father

It seemed as if some subtle current of recognition had passed between them... not as if they had met before... but as if they had come close several times until finally an impatient Fate had forced their paths to intersect.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Fate #Path #Recognition

Some people there's no getting over.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#People #Sugar Daddy

Christopher heard a pair of women gossiping nearby, whispering in disapproving undertones. "... Ramsey was found flirting in a corner with a woman. They had to drag him away from her." "Who was it?" "His own wife." "Oh, dear.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Flirting #Wife #Pairs

It's fairly easy to break hearts, Miss Duvall. The more interesting challenge is how to keep someone's love, not to lose it.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Heart #Interesting #Missing

She shook her head as she confessed, "I want it so much, I'm afraid to hope." "Never be afraid to hope," Rohan said gently. "It's the only way to begin." -Rohan to Win
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Winning #Want #Way

I didn't know that, you take your coffee seriously, dont you?' 'Every morning, I run to the coffeemaker like a soldier returning to a lost love after the war.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Running #Morning #War

Did you fall in love with her?" "I care about her. A lot." "You're not supposed to marry someone if you don't fall in love with her." "Well, love is a choice, too." Holly shook her head. "I think it's something that happens to you." Mark smiled into her small, earnest face. "Maybe it's both," he said, and tucked her in.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Falling In Love #Love Is #Thinking

You sweet…beautiful…lunatic,” he heard himself mutter.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Beautiful #Sweet #Heard

I've always thought it was about finding the right person. But it's about choosing the right person, isn't it?
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Sugar Daddy #Persons #Findings

I realized I wasn't going to find a man until I was willing to expose myself to possible harm, to assume the risks of rejection and betrayal and heartbreak that came along with caring about someone. Someday, I promised myself, I would be ready for that kind of risk.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Betrayal #Caring #Men

If loneliness was a choice, what was the other option? To settle for second-best and try to be happy with that? And was that fair to the person you settled for?
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Loneliness #Choices #Trying

A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you know is that you need to know everything about him.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Couple #Needs #Stranger

I’ve never heard of a man being so eager to confess to the parent of a girl he’s just ruined
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Girl #Men #Parent

Where are we going?” Annabelle asked, resisting his hold on her wrist. “To the house. If they’re not willing to be witnesses, then it seems I’ll have to debauch you in front of someone else.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#House #Annabelle #Wrists

Over the years I’ve collected a thousand memories of you, every glimpse, every word you’ve ever said to me. All those visits to your family’s home, those dinners and holidays—I could hardly wait to walk through the front door and see you.” The corners of his mouth quirked with reminiscent amusement. “You, in the middle of that brash, bull-headed lot…I love watching you deal with your family. You’ve always been everything I thought a woman should be. And I have wanted you every second of my life since we first met.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Memories #Holiday #Home

A lifetime with such a woman was not nearly enough.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Lifetime #Enough

He looked like a fallen angel, replete with all the dangerous male beauty that Lucifer could devise.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Angel #Males #Lucifer

Nature had squandered an unreasonable quantity of male beauty on this undeserving creature.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Nature #Males #Undeserving

I'm not short," Daisy muttered. "Short women are never mysterious, or elegant, or pursued by handsome men. And they're always treated like children. I refuse to be short.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Children #Men #Handsome

The trick was forgetting about what she had lost ...and learning to go on with what she had left.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Goes On #Forget #Lost

What kind of wedding would you like?" he asked, and stole another kiss before she could reply. "The kind that turns you into my husband." She touched the firm line of his mouth with her fingers. "What kind would you like?" He smiled ruefully. "A fast one.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Husband #Kissing #Mouths

Yes, but you need to learn your maths." "I don't need to, really. I already know how to count to a hundred. And I'm sure I'll never need ore than a hundred of anything.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Math #Needs #Hundred

I've missed you, Sebastian." "Have you, love?" He unfastened the buttons of her robe, the light eyes glittering with heat as her skin was revealed. "What part did you miss the most?" "Your mind," she said, and smiled at his expression. "I was hoping for a far more depraved answer than that." "Your mind is depraved," she told him solemnly. He gave a husky laugh. "True.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Eye #Light #Expression

But no one can predict of a certainty what will happen. And none of it will change how I intend to spend the rest of my life. I will live it on my terms. And you... you can have all of me or nothing. I won't be an invalid any longer. Not even if it means losing you.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Mean #Choices #Losing

... He didn't know how to say good-bye. His throat ached from the strain of holding back his emotions. “I don't want to leave you,” he said humbly, reaching for her cold, stiff hands. Emma lowered her head, her tears falling freely. “I'll never see you again, will I?” He shook his head. “Not in this lifetime,” he said hoarsely. She pulled her hands away and wrapped her arms around his neck. He felt her wet lashes brush his cheek. “Then I'll wait a hundred years,” she whispered. “Or a thousand, if I must. Remember that, Nikki. I'll be waiting for you to come to me.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Fall #Hands #Years

Recently Mr. Mawdsley’s donkey escaped from his stall, raced down the road, and somehow found his way into an enclosed pasture. Mr. Caird’s prized mare was innocently grazing when the ill-bred seducer had his way with her. Now it appears the mare has conceived, and a feud is raging between Caird, who demands financial compensation, and Mawdsley, who insists that had the pasture fencing been in better repair, the clandestine meeting would never have occurred. Worse still, it has been suggested that the mare is a shameless lightskirt and did not try nearly hard enough to preserve her virtue.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Trying #Feuds #Demand

You could run to the farthest corners of the earth. There's no place you could go where I wouldn't love you. Nothing you could do to stop me.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Running #Love You #Earth

I had never ironed anything in my life. The proper pressing of a shirt was a mystery of the universe akin to black holes and dark matter.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Dark #Black #Matter

Where's your instruction manual?" I asked him. "What's the baby customer-service number?
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Baby #Numbers #Instruction

Seduction is merely encouraging a man to do something he already wants to do.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Men #Want #Seduction

Having regrets is the only sign that you’ve done anything interesting with your life.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Regret #Interesting #Done

It was unfair that people who longed for love the most, searched the hardest for it, found it so elusive.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#People #Unfair #Found

If my love can hold you, I'll keep you with me.
-- Lisa Kleypas

No marriage stays in the same pattern forever. It is both the best feature of marriage and the worst, that it inevitably changes.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Forever #Patterns #Worst

I won’t apologize for my past. A man is supposed to have experience.” “From all indications, you’ve acquired enough for ten men.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Past #Men #Apologizing

That drew a mocking laugh from Lillian. “Really, someone should tell St. Vincent that he’s a living cliché. He has become the embodiment of everything they say about reformed rakes.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Laughing #Rakes #Embodiment

Justine reached for a fresh tissue and clamped it to Lucy’s nose as if she was a child. “Friends are the support bras of life. We don’t let each other down. Right?
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Children #Support #Noses

I think you'll have to marry me, Miss Fielding." "To save your reputation?" Derek grinned, bending to kiss the flash of pale throat revealed by the robe. "Someone has to make a respectable man of me.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Kissing #Men #Thinking

One could pick apart love, examine every filament of attraction, and still it would never be fully explained. It simply was.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Stills #Attraction

We may run into Kevin,” Lucy said gloomily. “She’s hoping to run into Kevin,” Zoë assured her. Justine smiled grimly. “Preferably with my car.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Running #Car #May

Sam was waiting for her,his gaze sweeping over her. "Looks great." "I look like a geek," Lucy said. "I smell like a brewery. And I need a bra." "My dream date.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Dream #Smell #Waiting

It was a kiss to level mountains and shake stars from the sky. It was a kiss to make angels faint and demons weep...a passionate, demanding, soul-searing kiss that nearly knocked the earth off its axis.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Stars #Angel #Kissing

Believe me, when my ‘personal endowments’ are being discussed, I always pay attention.” ~ Cam Rohan
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Believe #Rohan #Attention

I suppose now I'm obliged to wish you happiness in your new life. Although happiness in the absence of indoor plumbing is a debatable concept.
-- Lisa Kleypas

#Wish #New Life #Absence