M. K. Hobson Quotes

Emily’s chestnut-colored hair was thick and shiny as silk floss—an extraordinary female endowment. But like most female endowments, it was generally more trouble than it was worth.

It was disappointing, as if a wish she didn’t know she’d made hadn’t come true.

The shortness of the woman’s replies indicated that Emily was asking questions Miss Jesczenka didn’t particularly want to answer, but those were usually the questions that most needed to be asked.

Senator Stanton? The man who’s sold his own soul so many times that no one can figure out who actually owns it?

Dignity is like morality, Mirabilis barked. Too much is as bad as too little.

I’d ask you to forego the jingoistic claptrap, but it’s terrifyingly obvious you truly believe it.

Before the sun went down again, she realized, she would be in New York. The thought sent a nervous thrill through her entire body. Her throat was tight, her heart suddenly racing.

Ever mind the Rule of Three...Three times what thou givest returns to thee.

Your frontier ethics are so rawboned, Miss Edwards, as rough-hewn and clumsy as the log cabin in which you must have been raised. Mrs. Stanton's face was like marble as she spoke; only her lips moved with ugly precision. Decency is striving for perfection in a world in which every other hoglike creature satisfies himself with sloppiness and indulgence. Decency is not in failing to murder someone. It's in murdering the right person, and sparing your family the indignity of getting caught.

But it was impossible to remain so long in the company of a female, even a divine one, without suffering some form of disillusionment.

Sadly, there is a fine line between patriotism and paranoia.

It was her own evil assumptions that had done her in. She hadn’t even considered the third possible explanation for his strange behavior—that he was a perfectly nice man, without an ounce of guile, just trying to be helpful. People helped people in California. Why hadn’t she thought of that? She’d only been in New York a few weeks, and already she was turning hard and suspicious.

Having engaged in vigorous and passionate debate while on their honeymoon trip from New York, they had arrived at the startling—and rather liberating—conclusion that the marriage itself was not at all necessary. Stanton no longer had a name to give, and taking Emily’s would have involved all the tedium of authority and nonsense they’d hoped to avoid. So, in the end, he had returned to her the simple gold band she had worn for so long, sliding it onto the ring finger of her new right hand. And she had given him a soft slow kiss. They were the only vows required.

I don’t think that’s the answer he was looking for. It’s not the answer I was looking for. But maybe it’s the right one.

Emily pounded on the door, assuming it would do no good, but finding the act of pounding very satisfying indeed.