Home > Author > David Liss
1 " I fear we face a new kind of man along with this new kind of affluence. When lands meant wealth, men could perhaps have enough. Too much land was difficult to govern. But with paper money, more is simply more. In France, you know, where they suffer from their own financial mania, they have a word - the millionaire - to denote men whose wealth is measured in the millions. Millions. It is inconceivable, but there are more than a few men who hold this title. "
― David Liss , A Conspiracy of Paper (Benjamin Weaver, #1)
2 " Yes, I know this narrative is crowded with beautiful women - Mrs. Pearson, Mrs. Maycott, Mrs. Lavien, Mrs. Bingham. We might form a cricket team of beautiful women. I cannot help it if they are the ones who excite my notice and so trouble myself to describe. "
― David Liss , The Whiskey Rebels
3 " Coffee, he insisted, has all but destroyed the plague in England. It preserves health in general and makes those who drink it hearty and fat; it helps the digestion and cures consumption and other maladies of the lung. It is wonderful for fluxes, even the bloody flux, and has been known to cure jaundice and every kind of inflammation. Besides all that, the Englishman wrote, it imparts astonishing powers of reason and concentration. In the years to come, the author said, the man who does not drink coffee may never hope to compete with the man who avails himself of its secrets. "
― David Liss , The Coffee Trader
4 " Lucy had no wish to entertain that gentleman. None at all. It was not that Lucy did not wish to marry Mr. Olson, for she had no doubt that marrying him was the most practical thing to do. Nevertheless, she would very much rather avoid the necessity of making conversation with him. "
― David Liss , The Twelfth Enchantment
5 " I knew there was no point in debating a man such as this. The world bent and contorted itself to fit his understanding, not the other way around. I could not make him see reason, could not make him regret his actions. It would be a mistake to try. "
― David Liss , The Day of Atonement (Benjamin Weaver #4)
6 " Sometimes you make your mistakes with your eyes wide open. "
― David Liss
7 " I enjoy my pettiness with a dose of wit. "
8 " What had passed between them had been real and true and lived. Not like the silly infatuation she had felt for [him] when she was 16, or the foolish attraction she’d felt. Theirs had been a true love. Forged and built and earned. "
9 " You are but a hard turd in the ass of my journey. "
10 " I did not tremble to lose what men called beauty, but I feared the loss of my spirit and humor and love of living, the things I believed made my soul human and vibrant. "
11 " There will always be a storm. You may be rained on or cause the rain yourself. I much prefer the latter. "
12 " Not anticipating I'd be on trial for my life, my mother hadn't bothered to pack a suit for me. She was, by nature, an optimist. "
― David Liss , Randoms (Randoms, #1)
13 " I mean no disrespect to the gentlemen of the bench, but it is no secret that our system of justice, praised throughout Europe for its severity and its swiftness, is a terrible and fearful thing, and no man, guilty or innocent, wishes to stand before it. "
14 " We are all driven by our passions, and our task is to know when to submit to them and when to resist. "
15 " Needless to say, it was inconceivable that I would be welome in, let alone invited to, their home. It was as well, then, that I did not limit myself only to those places where people might wish me to be. "
16 " If we do nothing...and turn our backs now, in future generations, when rank corruption masquerades as libery, it will be upon our shoulders. True patriots will then ask why we who were there to witness our nation at the crossroads did nothing. "
17 " Lucy absently thanked him and at once began to consider which among her gowns would be best suited for a midnight adventure to a gothic castle. "
18 " Proximity, I have learned, is often as effective as violence. "
19 " You have my word as a gentleman." [The other man remarks that he is not a gentleman and he retorts] "Then you have my word as a scoundrel, which, I know, opens up a rather confusing paradox that I have neither the time nor inclination to disentangle. "
20 " The less said about the things Steve ate for breakfast the better, though I will mention that the food did not want to be eaten, and Steve had to remove the singers before he could pop the things in his mouth. "
