Jessie Burton Quotes

We're nothing more than prisoners to your desire.

My brother knows the danger of having nothing to do.

The surface of Amsterdam thrives on these mutual acts of surveillance, the neighborly smothering of a person's spirit.

Like Tracy Chevalier, Burton is skilled at evoking place . . . Wonderful' Guardian

True love was a flower in the gut, its petals unfurling inside out. You would risk all for love -- blissful, never without its drops of dismay.

Writing is a leap of faith. But how wonderful that the person you're putting faith in is yourself.

Pity, unlike hate, can be boxed and put away.

She had told me that the approval of other people should never be my goal

her bed by the stove, Cornelia's hand hovers over the remaining cabbage.

Growing older does not seem to make you more certain, Nella thinks. It simply presents you with more reasons for doubt.

Just because someone says something with passion, doesn't make it true.

Then where is home, Johannes?" He looks at the maps on his wall. "I don't know," He says. "Where comfort is. And that is hard to find.

The air is hot, the atmosphere a bruise.

sometimes it's hard to love a person you know too well.

For what am I, she wonders, but a product of my own imagination?

The bars on our cage are of our own making.

Hard grind got us the glory, the saying goes-- but sloth will slide us back into the sea.

Because, Petronella - it's something in his soul. It's something in his soul and you can't get it out.

I love. I love you. From back to front, I love you.

Every woman is the architect of her own fortune.

Perhaps this is fashionable conversation - combative and unsettling, passing for casual talk.

A lifetime isn't enough to know how a person will behave.

The turnip cannot thrive in the tulips patch of soil.

But the words she chooses withhold their best qualities, they refuse to match the way she feels inside.

This city is like no other city in the world. It is brilliant but it is bloated, and I've never called it home

I thought I deserved them, the sort of people you found only in novels. Quick

Amsterdam: Where the pendulum swings from God to a guilder.

Everything Man sees he takes for a toy.
Thus is he always, forever a boy.

My life was a beanstalk and I was Jack, and the foliage was shooting up and up, abundant, impressive, at such speed that I could barely cling on.

Love is best a phantom than reality, better in the chase than caught.

I see you are working your usual magic this evening." "Not magic, Madame. Just me." Agnes

Love is better in the chase than caught - by Marin

Souls and purses, she thinks, these two are obsessed with souls and purses.

The more they try to look holy the less I am convinced,

We were born to imagine.

I feel younger than eighteen but burdened as a eighty-year-old.

Hard grind got us the glory,

Freedom is a glorious thing. Free yourself, Marin. The bars on your cage are of your own making.

What was once, is no longer.

You are a stone, thrown upon a lake. But the ripples you create will never make you still.

the browning Assendelft flatlands, this stranger

She has always thought that kindness was an active thing. But the not doing of something, an act of restraint -- could that be kindness too?

Neighbours watching neighbours, twisting ropes to bind us all.

You have to keep your wealth afloat and no one will do it for you. It'll run through your fingers if you don't care.

A Depressive?'
'Smiles in ballrooms, weeps in bedrooms. Ill in her head.' Olive tapped her temple. 'And here.' She touched her heart.

of fear beats inside her. Who is this woman, watching from afar, who comments

Words are water in this city. One drop of rumour could drown us.

Marin believes love is better in the chase than caught.

A piece of art only succeeds when it's creator...possesses the belief that brings it into being

In suffering do we find our truest selves," she says.

The rules of this house are written in water. I must either sink or swim.

Nothing here is more fabulous than the truth

Believe it or don't believe it, Madame. But my feet are tired too. Bloody tired. Like a dead man's.

GOD - the importance of invisible over tangible

Then the birds flew away, their names turned to kisses, a silence to spell a new world.

But how right is it to kill a man for something that is in his soul?

All we can do if we're lucky is stich up the mistakes other people make.

How do I begin to love you? - the

Why are we so trapped by the hours, the minutes of every day? Why can't we live the life that's always out of reach?

In suffering we find our truest selves.

There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.

But words are water in Amsterdam, they flood your ears and set the rot, and the church's east corner is crowded.

Here she is a puppet, a vessel for others to pour their speech. And it is not a man she has married, but a world.

There are horizons through the brickwork, you wait and see.

You are sunlight through a window, which I stand in, warmed. My darling.

This is not a conversation, it is Agnes sending out darts and watching them pierce.

From little seeds great flowers grow.

Love your children, for they are the seeds that will make this city bloom.

The ink was secret nectar, for Marin isn't married.