93 Quotes by Anne Perry

God! I hate clever women!” She froze for an instant before the reply was on her lips. “I love clever men!” Her eyes raked him up and down. “It seems we are both to be disappointed.

Perhaps it is because my conviction is anyone may believe whatever they wish. Intolerance is a greater offense against God than holding a strange or even inconsistent belief. You have the right to worship what you wish – a pile of stones in your garden – as long as you do not injure others.

If we can still surmount what is natural and believe what we wish to believe, in spite of the force of evidence, then for a while at least we are masters of our fate, and we can paint the world we want.

The imagination conjures so many things, and one feels the pain of them all, until one knows.

That is the magical thing about books. You can listen to all the greatest people who have ever lived, anywhere in the world, in any civilization. You can see what is completely different about them, things you never imagined.

You deliberately don’t ask the questions to which you would rather not know the answers. You call it trust. You know too late that it is cowardice.

Whether you are happy or not depends to some degree upon outward circumstances, but mostly it depends how you choose to look at things yourself, whether you measure what you have or what you have not.

Here in England there’s a glass wall between you and the taste of reality. I don’t want to see the last true passion tamed by railways, and men with Bibles telling everyone to cover their bodies.” He spread his powerful, elegant hands. “Play your string quintets, by all means, Mr. Narraway, but don’t silence the drums simply because you don’t understand them. The men who play violins have steel and gunpowder, and the men who play drums don’t.

Be aware that you can truly help people only by aiding them to become what they are, not what you are.