Explore the most impactful and insightful quotes and sayings by Deborah Harkness, and enrich your perspective with the wisdom. Share these inspiring Deborah Harkness quotes pictures with your friends on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, completely free. Here are the top 187 Deborah Harkness quotes for you to read and share.
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
Magic is desire made real. -- Deborah Harkness
A man like Matthew never frees himself of the shadows completely. But perhaps it is necessary to embrace the darkness in order to love him, Philippe continued. -- Deborah Harkness
Witches see the truth plainly - even if their husbands are full of nonsense. -- Deborah Harkness
I sighed. "What can I do to convince you that I'm all right?" "Pick up the phone more often, for starters," she said grimly. -- Deborah Harkness
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
Our arrival there and not at a busier, more crowded airport on the other side of town was yet another example of the magical efficiency and convenience of vampire travel. -- Deborah Harkness
Mark me well, Diana: Lives will be lost because of your love for my son ... What does it matter who deals the deathblow? If you do not do it, then Matthew will. -- Deborah Harkness
You have always been a child between, a witch apart. But there is no path forward that does not have him in it. Whichever way you go, you must choose him. -- Deborah Harkness
I cannot shield you from the challenges you will face. You will know great loss and danger, but also great joy. You may doubt your instincts in the years to come, but your feet have been walking this path since the moment you were born. -- Deborah Harkness
are you always like this, all dressed up in adrenaline, and no place to go? -- Deborah Harkness
Everyone who has ever been in pain knows that morphine and magic are the same. -- Deborah Harkness
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
You're taking this very well, Gallowglass," Diana said gratefully. "Matthew would be trying to talk me out of it." "That's what you get for falling in love with the wrong man," he said under his breath, slipping the phone back into his pocket. -- Deborah Harkness
Stop trying to be perfect. Try being real for a change. -- Deborah Harkness
For storms will rage and oceans roar,
When Gabriel stands on sea and shore,
And as he blows his wondrous horn,
Old worlds die and new be born. -- Deborah Harkness
I don't expect you to have no regrets about who you've lost along the way. How could you not have been loved before, when I love you so much? -- Deborah Harkness
They'll figure it out if we're not careful. Humans like power - secrets, too. -- Deborah Harkness
A wave of undergraduates arrived to disrupt the city's tranquillity. -- Deborah Harkness
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
I teach 18- to 21-year-olds - the 'Harry Potter' generation. They grew up as voracious readers, reading books in this exploding genre. But at some point, I would love for them to give Umberto Eco or A.S. Byatt a try. I hope 'A Discovery of Witches' will serve as a kind of stepping-stone. -- Deborah Harkness
Sometimes my pagan background was a serious professional liability. -- Deborah Harkness
All you have to do is be a good listener. Nobody really wants to keep secrets, not even the dead. People leave clues everywhere, and if you pay attention, you can piece them together. -- Deborah Harkness
For us to be together, we needed to decide which secrets to share and then let the others go. -- Deborah Harkness
Matthew had been accumulating secrets ... My life might be too brief to hear them all, never mind understand them. -- Deborah Harkness
She's taken over one of the castle's towers and painted the walls with images of the philosopher's stone. It's like working inside a Ripley scroll! I've -- Deborah Harkness
The door swooshed open. A tiny woman in a purple miniskirt, red boots, and a black T-shirt that read STAND BACK - I'M GOING TO TRY SCIENCE walked through. Miriam Shephard had arrived. -- Deborah Harkness
How we spoke about magic and with whom we discussed it. Humans outnumbered us and found our power frightening, my mother explained, and fear was the strongest force on earth. -- Deborah Harkness
No wonder Philippe always looked so exhausted," he said ruefully when he was through. "It's very fatiguing pretending you're in charge when your wife actually rules the roost. -- Deborah Harkness
I couldn't resist hiding some historical details and a few clues relevant to the plot and characters of 'A Discovery of Witches' throughout the pages of the novel. -- Deborah Harkness
Matthew feels deeply. It is a blessing as well as a burden to love to love so much that you can hurt badly when love is gone. -- Deborah Harkness
The secret is that I may be the head of the Bishop-Clairmont family, but you are its heart," he whispered. "And the three of us are in perfect agreement: The heart is more important. -- Deborah Harkness
We don't lock up books in this house," Philippe said, "only food, ale, and wine. Reading Herodotus or Aquinas seldom leads to bad behavior. -- Deborah Harkness
But it's too soon for me to imagine losing you. -- Deborah Harkness
Elias Ashmole, a seventeenth-century book collector and alchemist whose books and papers had come to the Bodleian from the Ashmolean Museum in the nineteenth century, along with the number 782. -- Deborah Harkness
Elizabeth Kostova's 2005 blockbuster, The Historian, -- Deborah Harkness
Do not refuse me because I am dark and shadowed,' I whispered, remembering -- Deborah Harkness
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
Do you wonder what it would be like for me to taste you? -- Deborah Harkness
If the thirsty stag runs to the brook, it's only because he isn't aware of the cruel bow ... If the unicorn runs to its chaste nest, it's only because he doesn't see the noose prepared for him. -- Deborah Harkness
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
Daemons are brilliant, but we're not vicious - not like the vampires. -- Deborah Harkness
The world of scholarship is much more measured in its appreciation and also its criticism than the world of popular literature. -- Deborah Harkness
Take care, Gallowglass," Matthew murmured. It was no casual farewell, but an order. His nephew nodded. "As if your wife were my own. -- Deborah Harkness
Be careful, daughter ... You are a creature of the crossroads, neither here nor there. 'Tis a dangerous place to be. -- Deborah Harkness
I really love helping students and helping them empathize with people who lived a really long time ago. That's one of the highlights of working in fiction. -- Deborah Harkness
I watched in silence as the parts of Matthew I knew and loved - the poet and the scientist, the warrior and the spy, the Renaissance prince and the father - fell away until only the darkest, most forbidding part of him remained. He was only the assassin now. But he was still the man I loved. -- Deborah Harkness
She could not imagine why these companies all chose shades of blue for their logos. Blue had always struck her as such a serene, soothing color, yet all social media offered was endless agitation and posturing. It was worse than the court of Versailles. Come -- Deborah Harkness
If you truly love someone, you will cherish what they despise most about themselves. -- Deborah Harkness
Men don't have it. Our resolve is born out of fear. It's merely bravado." His glance -- Deborah Harkness
Change is the only reliable thing in the world. -- Deborah Harkness
There was an avocado green slow cooker, a venerable coffeemaker, two coffee grinders, and a blender. These were the tools of the modern witch, though Sarah kept a big black cauldron by the fireplace for old times' sake. -- Deborah Harkness
Cheap wine is defined by its price, and it depends on personal spending limits. So for me, any wine under $10 is cheap. -- Deborah Harkness
That will save me from me breaking the window or picking her lock, he thought. -- Deborah Harkness
Films are wonderful but they do fix an identity. I can't read 'Pride and Prejudice' anymore, for instance, without imaging Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy. -- Deborah Harkness
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
Your father says a wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountaintop. -- Deborah Harkness
I would rather have had this moment with you - just this one night - than centuries with someone else ... -- Deborah Harkness
You know that I'm not going to let the Holy Roman Emperor - or anybody else, for that matter - seduce me. -- Deborah Harkness
Because you will love him as you love no one else, I tied your magic to your feelings for him. Even so, only you will have the ability to draw it into the open. -- Deborah Harkness
We face a dark future if children stop asking questions, Susanna, Goody Alsop remarked. -- Deborah Harkness
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
To pleasant songs my work was once given, and bright were all my labors then; / But now in tears to sad refrains I must return. -- Deborah Harkness
There were no vampires of note in Western literature until about the 18th century. But they tell us where we park our anxieties, whether its over-powerful women, death or damnation. We make our own monsters. -- Deborah Harkness
Scientist. Vampire. Warrior. Spy. The bells paused before the final knell. Prince. I wondered what more our journey would reveal about this complex man I had married. -- Deborah Harkness
Survival and sexuality were linked in ways I'd never appreciated until now. He -- Deborah Harkness
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
We're witches - of course the house is haunted. But -- Deborah Harkness
Wordlessly I looked back at him, astonished that a kiss on the palm could be so intimate. -- Deborah Harkness
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
Malachi Smith. Crispin Jones. Suzette Boudrot. Claude Le Breton." Matthew paused as Ransome searched the ledger's entries for the names. "You should have kept them in chronological order instead of alphabetical. That's how I remember them." Ransome -- Deborah Harkness
Once upon a time, about 10 years ago, I thought maybe I could write a mystery series about a midwife in Elizabethan England. I had an elaborately convoluted title and an elaborately convoluted plotline, and at that point I got stupendously bored. -- Deborah Harkness
Like a siren who sings to the sailor, asking him to steer his ship into the rocks, the call of your blood could be my undoing - and yours. -- Deborah Harkness
Vote?" Matthew said, incredulous. "Since when did we vote in this family?" "Since Marcus took over the Knights of Lazarus," Gallowglass replied, drawing a silver lighter from his pocket. "We've been choking on democracy since the day you left. -- Deborah Harkness
Secrets are unreliable allies. they allow us to believe we are safr, yet all the while they are destroying us. -- Deborah Harkness
Memories were short and history unkind. It was the way of the world. -- Deborah Harkness
Imagine how Nathaniel might drive if he actually was an old lady - a centuries-old old lady, like me. That's how I will drive for the rest of my days, so long as you are in the car. -- Deborah Harkness
Am I dreaming?" "You're not dreaming," Matthew said. "And, Diana?" He hesitated. "I love you." It was what I most wanted to hear. The forgotten chain inside me started to sing, quietly, in the dark. -- Deborah Harkness
As far as I can tell, there are only two emotions that keep the world spinning, year after year." He hesitated, then continued. "One is fear. The other is desire. That's what I wrote about." Love -- Deborah Harkness
As a historian, I love every little detail, but whole long passages about wood paneling and journeys on horseback and every stop at every inn had to go out the window. I decided the history in the books should be like spice in a soup - a little went a long way. Like cilantro. -- Deborah Harkness
Children needed love, a reliable source of comfort, and an adult willing to take responsibility for them. -- Deborah Harkness
My niece was very much caught up in the vampire craze for young adults, and she thought having a vampire boyfriend would be a cool thing. What do you do on a first date? The more I thought about it, the more fun I had imagining what you'd serve a vampire for dinner. -- Deborah Harkness
Matthew did remember saying something like that once - long before he'd met Diana. He made an involuntary check on the house. It was a combination of instinct and reflex now, this need to -- Deborah Harkness
All that children need is love, a grown-up to take responsibility for them, and a soft place to land. -- Deborah Harkness
I'm a storyteller, and I have really good material to work with: I've been studying magic and the occult since about 1983. -- Deborah Harkness
You travel safely too, Auntie Diana. And bring that uncle of mine with you, Gallowglass said to the sea and the sky before he climbed back onto his bike and headed into a future he could no longer imagine nor postpone. -- Deborah Harkness
Se Souvenir du passe, et qu'il ya un avenir: Remember the past, and that there is a future. -- Deborah Harkness
Don't consider painful what's good for you. -- Deborah Harkness
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
There's nothing more powerful than human fear - not magic, not vampire strength. Nothing. -- Deborah Harkness
I know,I can smell it, too, -- Deborah Harkness
He walks through your future, but he's in the past as well. He's always in shadows, never in the light. And though he's dangerous, the shadowed man doesn't pose a threat to you. -- Deborah Harkness
All men are fools, Your Majesty," Matthew said swiftly. -- Deborah Harkness
Now I want nothing more than to grow old with you," Matthew said. -- Deborah Harkness
Blue had always struck her as such a serene, soothing color, yet all social media offered was endless agitation and posturing. It was worse than the court of Versailles. -- Deborah Harkness
Rebecca asked me what made the most lasting impression on children. I told her it was the stories their parents read to them at night, and all the messages about hope and strength and love that were embedded in them. -- Deborah Harkness
It's one thing to wander in the darkness because you know no different, but it's quite another to enjoy the light only to have it taken from you, -- Deborah Harkness
Giving a woman your whole life is meaningless without giving her your whole heart as well. -- Deborah Harkness
Fear had also choked out any desire to work magic. It had been my crutch and my cloak, keeping me from exercising my power. Fear had sheltered me from the curiosity of others and provided an oubliette where I could forget who I really was: a witch. I'd -- Deborah Harkness
I am capable of opening my own door," I said, getting out of the car. "Why do today's women think it's important to open a door themselves?" he said sharply. -- Deborah Harkness
I have a master's degree in medieval literature. Wyverns - or firedrakes, if you prefer - were once common in European mythology and legends." "But you . . . you're my accountant," Sarah sputtered. "Do you have any idea how many English majors are accountants?" Vivian asked with raised eyebrows. -- Deborah Harkness
Opportunity is fleeting, experiment dangerous, and judgement difficult. -- Deborah Harkness
Now I have you. One day you will be gone, and my life will be over. -- Deborah Harkness
You don't feel this way now, but you're lucky to have found her at last ... But is she lucky, Hamish? Is she fortunate to have a creature like me in pursuit? ... That's entirely up to you. Just remember-no secrets. Not if you love her. -- Deborah Harkness
I realised that today we are very much interested in reading about subjects that would have also interested people in the 1500s: ghosts, demons and things that go bump in the night. -- Deborah Harkness
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
I had been in 1590 for less than twenty-four hours, but I was already heartily sick of Christopher Marlowe. -- Deborah Harkness
My wife had learned to give in to what someone older, stronger, and meaner wanted. -- Deborah Harkness
I've seen courage like yours before - from women, mostly." Matthew continued as if I hadn't spoken. "Men don't have it. Our resolve is born out of fear. It's merely bravado. -- Deborah Harkness
English vampires may not be as well behaved around witches as the American ones are. -- Deborah Harkness
Gallowglass returned to Sporrengasse with two vampires and a pretzel. -- Deborah Harkness
fine initium novum,'" Matthew said, gazing upon the land of his father as though he had, at last, come home. "'In every ending there is a new beginning. -- Deborah Harkness
Desire urges me on as fear bridles me" Bruno. -- Deborah Harkness
I promise not to draw blood, if you promise not to weep. -- Deborah Harkness
Goddess does not want us to imitate some ideal of perfection, but to be our true selves. -- Deborah Harkness
monsters always look just like ordinary men. -- Deborah Harkness
It pained Emily to her librarian's soul to see books mistreated like this. -- Deborah Harkness
For your wedding gift, I wish I had a spell that could make you see yourself as others do.' 'Based -- Deborah Harkness
Give me knowledge of my end and the measure of my days, so I may know my fraility. My lifetime is no longer than the width of my hand. It is only a moment, compared to yours. -- Deborah Harkness
You tell me that magic is just desire made real. Maybe spells are nothing more than words that you believe with all your heart, -- Deborah Harkness
I want a simple, ordinary life ... like humans enjoy. -- Deborah Harkness
Sorry, we've got ghosts. -- Deborah Harkness
You have found a woman who is worthy of you, with courage and hope to spare, Matthaios.' 'I know,' Matthew said, taking my hand. 'Know this, too: you are equally worthy of her. Stop regretting your life. Start living it. -- Deborah Harkness
Still, you need him as much as you need the air you breathe, and he wants you as he's wanted nothing and no one since I made him. So it is done, and we will make the best of it. -- Deborah Harkness
I have a weakness for smart men. -- Deborah Harkness
For me, a $20 wine that drinks like a $40 wine in terms of complexity and interest is a value, while a $5 wine that is not very good is not a value at all in my opinion. -- Deborah Harkness
Do not fear me because I am dark and shadowed -- Deborah Harkness
Her bark is worse than her bite. -- Deborah Harkness
Neither his family nor his next taste of blood mattered as much as knowing that she was safe and within arm's reach. If that was what it meant to be bewitched, he was a lost man. -- Deborah Harkness
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
Now most in the room accept we're more similar than different and treat one another with courtesy. -- Deborah Harkness
I'm a professional non-fiction reader, that's what I do. But in my 20s we had our own vampire and witch moment, courtesy of Anne Rice, whose books I read and loved. -- Deborah Harkness
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
A willingness to change was the secret of survival. -- Deborah Harkness
The wolf who wins is the wolf you feed. The evil wolf feeds on anger, guilt, sorrow, lies, and regret. The good wolf needs a diet of love and honesty, spiced up with big spoonfuls of compassion and faith. So if you want the good wolf to win, you're going to have to starve the other one. -- Deborah Harkness
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
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
We kissed each other, long and deep, while my legs opened like the covers of a book. -- Deborah Harkness
I keep telling you we have no reason to rush. Modern creatures are always in such a hurry," Matthew murmured, drawing the fallen sheet down to my waist. "Call me old-fashioned if you'd like, but I want to enjoy every moment of our courtship. -- Deborah Harkness
I trust my wife's judgement ... That's what Philippe says about Granny, just before all hell breaks loose. -- Deborah Harkness
Remember the past - and await the future. -- Deborah Harkness
Whoever can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead. -- Deborah Harkness
Some promises matter more than others. -- Deborah Harkness
It was a brutal picture, a tug-of-war between two equal but opposing impulses. It had the ring of truth, however, -- Deborah Harkness
In every moment, for the rest of my life, I will be choosing you. -- Deborah Harkness
It smells like the past. But not the dead past. It's so alive. -- Deborah Harkness
the air had that magically still quality common in autumn. The whole world felt crisp and bright, and time seemed suspended. -- Deborah Harkness
She was like a camera that had been chronically out of focus until someone came by and twisted the lenses into alignment. -- Deborah Harkness
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
I see you, even when you hide from the rest of the world. I hear you, even when you're silent. -- Deborah Harkness
Could I have some water?" "I'll get it." Marcus hopped up from his stool. "There's some in the specimen fridge. -- Deborah Harkness
It's doubtful we're the first creatures to love those we should not, and we surely won't be the last. -- Deborah Harkness
One should find wholeness in marriage, Gabriel, but it should not be a prison for either party, said Rabbi Loew. -- Deborah Harkness
Magic provides a way of still having room for possibilities, an unlimited sense of what the world offers. Magic is always there when science is found wanting. -- Deborah Harkness
I want what I shouldn't want, and I crave someone I can never have. -- Deborah Harkness
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
His eyes sent coldness deep under my skin, where it spread like a stain. "Domenico, -- Deborah Harkness
Einstein said that all physicists were aware that the distinctions between past, present, and future were only what he called 'a stubbornly persistent illusion.' Not only did he believe in marvels and wonders, he also believed in the elasticity of time. -- Deborah Harkness
Magic was nothing more than desire made real, -- Deborah Harkness
So that's it?" I asked when I could manage it. "We're going to abide by an ancient, narrow-minded agreement made almost a thousand years ago. Case closed. -- Deborah Harkness
rashers of bacon. -- Deborah Harkness
A lot of our assumptions of the world are fairly cynical, fairly negative, and assume the worst. What our reading tastes show - in this rush to fantasy, romance, whatever - is that we actually still want to believe in a world of possibility, in a world of mystery. -- Deborah Harkness
Why do today's women think it's important to open a door themselves?" he said sharply. "Do you believe it's a testament to your physical power? -- Deborah Harkness
Like all parents, they were just doing their best from moment to moment. -- Deborah Harkness
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
This is why you have to stop keeping secrets, Matt. They're going to destroy you from the inside. -- Deborah Harkness
Normal' is a bedtime story-a fable-that humans tell themselves to feel better when faced with overwhelming evidence that most of what's happening around them is not 'normal' at all. -- Deborah Harkness
Witches have their share of nasty legends to contend with, I said, thinking of the witch-hunts and the executions that followed. -- Deborah Harkness
Decide what to do to survive, and do it. -- Deborah Harkness
You do angry. I just saw it. And you left at least one hole in my carpet to prove it. -- Deborah Harkness
Mature? Widow? I had just turned thirty-three. -- Deborah Harkness
The first requirement of war: allies must not kill each other. -- Deborah Harkness
It begins with absence and desire.
It begins with blood and fear.
It begins with a discovery of witches. -- Deborah Harkness
My ideas about vampires may be romantic, but your attitudes toward women need a major overhaul. -- Deborah Harkness
And if we all did what we should, we would wake to find ourselves in paradise -- Deborah Harkness
Oh, yes. I know all about vampires and their crazy ways. Apparently, Fernando didn't have the same reluctance as Matthew and Ysabeau did to tell vampire tales. -- Deborah Harkness
The strongest distinguishing characteristic of humans is their power of denial. -- Deborah Harkness
Here's Fernando, Sarah said in a tone suggesting that deliverance had come at last. -- Deborah Harkness
I know. You were nervous before you opened your eyes. -- Deborah Harkness
The question of why you're here-how we're all here- really does consume you," I said slowly ...
Matthew studied his wine. "It's the only question worth asking. -- Deborah Harkness
Much of what qualified as magic was simply desire in action ... Magic is desire made real. -- Deborah Harkness
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
And then you weave a forspell that called forth a rowan tree simply to tame a firedrake. Had -- Deborah Harkness
You're impossible. Stop worrying about what other women do. Be your own extraordinary self. -- Deborah Harkness
Be still," he said, voice harsh. "I might not be able to control myself if you step away. -- Deborah Harkness
And happiness is always louder than sadness. -- Deborah Harkness
I could still feel the chain that anchored me to Matthew, witch to vampire. -- Deborah Harkness