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Kelsey Brickl QUOTES

Kelsey Brickl QUOTES

1 " When some women felt fear, they covered it with an iron grate of courage, I thought. Men might be dangerous, but they were very often unperceptive. If fear only rumbled through a woman’s soul and glittered through her eyes, then perhaps the man she feared would not be aware it was there at all. He might even think that she was entirely confident, dauntless. He might believe her veneer of bravery. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Paint

2 " The war dragged on, as wars tend to do. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Hardtack: A Civil War Story

3 " Pick a side? You done picked the wrong side. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Hardtack: A Civil War Story

4 " I was scarcely the first, nor the only current, girl of impressive derivation to be unceremoniously thrust through the iron gate at the entrance of Le Murate by parents whose aspirations for their daughters did not include marriage. Our paths to the convent were varied, but no matter. We all wound up in the same habit. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Paint

5 " She was an afterthought, little Martha. She was treated the way many families treated pet dogs - she had to be fed and cleaned every now and then, but she was left to her own devices for the most part. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Hardtack: A Civil War Story

6 " It wasn’t that Nell was weak. It was that the world was dangerous. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Hardtack: A Civil War Story

7 " He was an indecent man, I told myself - prayerfully - and then I prayed for him to become decent. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Paint

8 " It was a tribute to Raphael that lesser artists wanted to copy his work, but this… this was a travesty. The fresco consisted of Galatea’s apotheosis, wherein she is surrounded by mythical creatures. A beautiful scene, with all the potential in the world, but very poorly executed here. Galatea herself looked vapid and empty. The rest of the painting indicated pure ignorance on the part of the painter. I shook my head in confusion. The giant Polyphemus was depicted with two normal eyes, when clearly he ought to have but one. Triton, for his horn, was using not a shell but an actual trumpet of brass. I nearly laughed aloud at that observation; would not such an instrument be completely destroyed by seawater? Who the devil had painted this monstrosity? "

― Kelsey Brickl , Paint

9 " Sometimes a revolution turns into an actual government, or at the very least an actual way of life that contrasts with days past like blood on snow. Such was the case in France, where even as the guillotine released a steady river of gore, Royalist insurrections were suppressed by what had become a sophisticated military.

In Toulon, the Royalist insurrection in 1793 led to an actual siege by republicans, spearheaded by none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. The Royalists in Toulon, supported by the British and Spanish, were feared by the republicans as an existential threat to every hope and promise of the revolution. For months there were bombardments, cannon fire that made the windows in the prison tremble. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

10 " There was no justice in rebellion. This Javert had come to believe after seeing Marseille fall headfirst into the abyss of the revolution. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

11 " Youth is as easily wasted as a fine wine consumed by a drunken man. There is no poetry in aging, and Javert lived out the process in its most hideous iteration. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

12 " The ground had opened up and spit out hell, Nell thought, and the detritus was Shiloh. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Hardtack: A Civil War Story

13 " Thus, in the boy’s mind, drink and destruction braided together. Intoxication, he concluded, was a swift and effective catalyst for havoc. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

14 " In August, an inescapable blanket of heat settled over Paducah, the last gasping breath of summer roaring its weight out over the populace. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Paint

15 " She parted her lips as though she were going to scold him, but, after a moment of sitting with her mouth agape like a fish, thought the better of it. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Paint

16 " Praying to the Almighty, Javert?” called a voice, and Javert opened his eyes to see Rousseau and Leclerc smirking at him. Javert tipped his head and said to the others,

"If I was, it would be awfully rude to interrupt my prayer, don’t you think? But, no, Leclerc. I find no solace in speaking with an imaginary puppeteer.”

Rousseau, who was twenty-five and utterly dim of mind, frowned at Javert’s words. Javert rolled his eyes and sighed,

"I don’t pray. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

17 " Fire on the cavalry!” cried an officer from behind them. Javert raised his musket and glared with one open eye at the approaching horde. His eyes trained on a man in white astride a large bay mount. The Mameluk cavalry had their curved swords wielded, and they shone in the sun like blinding jewels. Javert tried to decide whether he should hit the horse or the rider. Without hesitating, he made his decision and pulled the trigger.

The Mameluk cavalry rider’s arms flung upward as he was struck, and his body hurtled backward as though shoved by an invisible hand. The bay horse galloped onward in terror, leaving its master behind on the sand. The man’s white robes went scarlet around his belly, and he did not move again. Javert hurried to reload his musket, glancing over to see that Masse was sitting and staring over the battlefield in silence. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

18 " In his most thrilling military victory to date, Napoleon had defeated an Ottoman force eighteen thousand men strong at Aboukir. It had been Javert’s first real taste of battle, watching cannon fire blow ships into splinters and hearing the last screams of drowning men. The French army, stinking and spluttering with plague, had emerged victorious but exhausted. They had taken refuge in Alexandria, though it hardly felt safe. Very recently, Napoleon had left with a few of his nearest friends for a voyage into the Delta. Now Javert was just one of the confused mass left reeling in the wake of the chaos. "

― Kelsey Brickl , Wolves and Urchins: The Early Life of Inspector Javert

19 " Sometimes the smoke from the factories and riverboats and trains would obscure the night sky entirely. But the town's industrial breath was blowing somewhere else tonight, and so the Armstrong house was bathed in starlight. Nell studied the little white specks, like glittering dust on black velvet, and she asked,

"You boys ever wonder what it'd be like to be somewhere else? "

― Kelsey Brickl , Hardtack: A Civil War Story