David Liss Quotes

#1. The world is full of wonders that cannot be measured. That is why they are wonders.

David Liss

#2. 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.

David Liss

#3. I splashed some water on my face again because I thought that's what you do in a crisis. You wash your face. Did it really help, or was it a myth circulated by the soap industry?

David Liss

#4. 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.

David Liss

#5. Oh yeah, I grew up with comics. You know, I always like to describe myself as a 'narrative junkie.' I love novels, I love comics, movies, TV. If it's a good story, I'm hooked.

David Liss

#6. Proximity, I have learned, is often as effective as violence.

David Liss

#7. I was always a big Justice League fan. I always loved Batman, Superman - I have a weird Martian Manhunter fixation.

David Liss

#8. 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.

David Liss

#9. 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.

David Liss

#10. Wright and Cowen, who have separately written important scholarly works on the financial history of the early republic, here repackage their research for readers of popular history, and do so impressively.

David Liss

#11. In the past, people generally believed they could acquire magic in two ways: through learning the craft, either from another practitioner or from books; or through obtaining magic from a powerful being-think Faust or the classic, demonized witch, both of whom get their mojo from Satan.

David Liss

#12. I imagine it is because you can lead him to a story for his newspaper, and if it is for his paper, it must be something to make Hamilton look poorly.

David Liss

#13. 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

#14. I lived in Atlanta for a couple of years while getting my masters at Georgia State. I thought I hated it at the time, but I've been back a couple of times since, and there's no place I've lived to which returning is so much like visiting a place I only remember from my dreams.

David Liss

#15. I don't generally listen to music while working, but sometimes music can help me get past minor writer's block.

David Liss

#16. I enjoy my pettiness with a dose of wit.

David Liss

#17. You are but a hard turd in the ass of my journey.

David Liss

#18. In my research, what I found most interesting was how common and ordinary magic was to people in the past.

David Liss

#19. I am saying that while popular culture usually portrays practitioners of magic as separate from ordinary people, often biologically different, many people have habits or customs or superstitions that show magic was once a whole lot more democratic.

David Liss

#20. I went with the old adage that you should write what you know. What I knew was 18th century Britain, so what I decided I would do is write a novel based on my dissertation research.

David Liss

#21. Seduction is an absolute pleasure to read
clever, suspenseful, exciting, mysterious, learned, and engrossing. Some of the best historical fiction I've read in quite some time and just plain reading fun. M.J. Rose is at the top of her game, and that is saying something.

David Liss

#22. In 1985 I'd never seen a mullet before, had no idea what a mullet was, what it was called, or why someone might choose to endure such a thing except for the simple pleasure that comes from having two haircuts on one head. All I knew was that it looked monumentally stupid.

David Liss

#23. We are all driven by our passions, and our task is to know when to submit to them and when to resist.

David Liss

#24. over the last decade I had little

David Liss

#25. What are we playing for? This needs to be worth my while."
"Honour?" Steve suggested. "Let me know if your universal translator got that one. I know it may be a tough concept for your species.

David Liss

#26. I once spent a spent a summer selling encyclopedias door to door.

David Liss

#27. 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

#28. I do feel like I'm in this lucky position where I can write something and people will read it, and I feel like I should say something that's probably worth saying ... I feel like it's something worth saying, and one more person saying it is better.

David Liss

#29. I do, in fact, have a book club. I meet with a couple of guys once a month of a lunchtime discussion of some interesting text, usually, but not always, philosophical.

David Liss

#30. 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.

David Liss

#31. I didn't want to write a book that suggested that magic good/technology bad.

David Liss

#32. Sometimes you make your mistakes with your eyes wide open.

David Liss

#33. 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.

David Liss

#34. There will always be a storm. You may be rained on or cause the rain yourself. I much prefer the latter.

David Liss

#35. 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.

David Liss

#36. Gabriela was in prison for Judaizing, but she recited the prayers of her tormentors. She had not even the comfort of the religion for which she was punished.

David Liss

#37. 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

#38. Filigree - charming if one but overlooked the fact that it

David Liss

#39. 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

#40. At what point, I wondered, does silence become complicity?

David Liss

#41. 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.

David Liss