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Quote by Gerald Durrell

“Japan and Hong Kong are steadily whittling away at the last of the elephants, turning their tusks (so much more elegant left on the elephant) into artistic carvings. In much the same way, the beautiful furs from leopard, jaguar, Snow leopard, Clouded leopard and so on, are used to clad the inelegant bodies of thoughtless and, for the most part, ugly women. I wonder how many would buy these furs if they knew that on their bodies they wore the skin of an animal that, when captured, was killed by the medieval and agonizing method of having a red-hot rod inserted up its rectum so as not to mark the skin.”

Quote by Gerald Durrell

Book:The Aye-Aye and I
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The Aye-Aye and I

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Author

Gerald Durrell
Gerald Durrell

Gerald Durrell was a British zookeeper, naturalist, and author, born on January 7, 1925, and died on January 30, 1995. He is best known for his series of books about his childhood in Corfu, Greece, and for his work in conservation and the establishment of wildlife reserves. more

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HistoryBritish ColumbiaFur Trade
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“Go upstairs and wait for me," he ordered her. Kate stopped, taken off guard by the velvet undertones in his deep voice. She forgot her anger for a heartbeat, arrested by the promise of pleasure in his smoky eyes; she stood motionless, staring at him but disoriented when the drug swept her up in its most disturbing side effect yet. Attraction. Arousal. A fatal fascination with him gripped her. He was beautiful, undeniably, but an utter mystery to her. One she suddenly desired to solve, obsessed as she had always been with finding hidden answers. An impetuous hunger to taste his lips stormed through her blood.”

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“The most startling part was that, if he recalled correctly, the DuMarins' medieval ancestor was none other than Valerian the Alchemist--- the same dark wizard who had laid the Kilburn Curse upon his family. This heritage would've made Kate practically royalty among the Prometheans---and could make her all the more dangerous to him. For beyond superstition, the girl seemed uniquely suited to enchant him.”

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“To lovers out there …. Love is just feelings. You can feel anything for anyone regardless of how they look and who they are. It doesn’t care about your intelligence or IQ. That is why everyone qualifies to love and to be loved. Your standards has nothing to do with love. That is why most of your relationships don’t work. You want to use your position, beauty, money, power, life status, education, qualification to measure love. If you continue thinking and living like that. You will find partners, but you will never find love. You are busy fighting your feelings because the people you love don’t have your standards.”

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“Her throat interested him greatly, the lovely arc beneath her dainty earlobe, the milky skin, the silken cascade of her perfumed hair... His mind drifted, the wine warming his senses. It had now been three days since he'd had a woman, and he had not forgotten the way she had felt beneath him last night. He still wanted her in spite of himself. Her lips' dewy roses beguiled him, along with the teasing sparkle in those emerald green eyes beneath her black velvet lashes. The candlelight brought out a golden luster in the depths of her light brown hair and danced along the delicate lines of her bare shoulders. Was it wrong to want to lick the caramel sauce out of her splendid cleavage instead of drizzling it politely on the cheesecake? He did his best to keep a tight rein on his dangerous hunger for her, even as his hands tingled with yearning to caress all her creamy, glowing skin. As he took another large swallow of port, he contemplated the fact that there was one sure way to find out if she was really as innocent as she would have him believe. If she was a part of her forebears' sinister conspiracy, it was unlikely that she was a virgin. He was keenly tempted to verify her status for himself by luring her into his bed and finishing what they had started last night.”

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“He found too many real traits to admire in her character--- courage, independence. With all of the needy, clinging ladies waiting for him back in London, he particularly liked her sturdy self-reliance. Gerald Fox's daughter was as sharp as a tack and yet quite down-to-earth. She did not weary him with mindless prattle; did not simper, grovel, or pry; did not even seem to know how to toady to a man of his consequence. She did not play the coquette, either--- a tactic he had enjoyed from women but had never trusted. Instead, she spoke her mind almost as plainly as a man, and as a result, her conversation actually held his interest. Kate peppered her language with witty observations, occasionally made at his expense. He found her saucy impudence oddly refreshing, and instead of minding it, served it back to her. It was great fun to jest and needle each other in mutual irreverence, as they had that night at dinner; one thing they had in common was a willingness to mock their own foibles. Kate laughed at herself for a bluestocking, while he knew very well he was a superstitious fool. But even all of this did not get to the heart of her effect on him. Growing up out there on the moors, isolated from the world, she had an untouched quality about her that made him ache in ways he could not explain. He was so drawn to her. It made him rather uncomfortable. But that night at dinner when she had described her solitary mode of life at her cottage, he had realized that, unlike so many others, she, too, understood the degree of loneliness that he knew all too well.”

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“Trying to keep Rohan out of her thoughts, wondering endlessly if she should apologize for throwing herself at him, she traveled from shelf to shelf, rearranging the books by language, by historical period, by size, as was practical, and above all, alphabetically, by the writer's last name. She had found multiple titles by individual authors scattered willy-nilly through the collection. It made her want to pull her hair out. Obviously!- an individual author's body of work all belonged on one shelf, the works arranged, in turn, by whatever system was most suitable: by volume number, alphabetically by title, or by the year of publication, or, in case of playwrights, works grouped by genre- tragedies with tragedies, comedies with comedies, histories with histories, and so on.”

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“Using the delicate cloth like a handkerchief to protect the brittle pages, she opened the first book she had unearthed: On Dragons. "Oh, how wonderful!" she murmured to herself, gazing at the wildly colored illustrations of giant reptiles, winged and breathing fire. The Chaucerian English was going to take some work to decipher. She would have to see what reference texts she could find in the collection to help her work out the captions, but for now, the pictures fascinated her. The next page showed a silver-armored knight astride a galloping white steed. Armed with a lance, he was shown charging at the hideous, horned dragon that loomed over him, its black, batlike wings outstretched. The knight in the picture had a winged ally of his own, however. In the sky above him hovered none other than St. Michael the Archangel again, her old friend from the duke's family chapel. Come to think of it, she mused, wasn't that white Maltese cross on the little knight's pennant another detail she had noticed in the chapel? She turned the page and stopped at the next colorful picture of a dragon holding its egg in its claws. Some sort of curious symbol was depicted inside the rounded contours of the egg. Kate furrowed her brow and leaned closer, studying the symbol on the dragon's egg. A tingle of faint recognition ran down her spine. I've seen this before. The symbol showed an eight-spoked wagon wheel, with a flaming torch in the center. Beneath the wheel was the Latin motto, Non serviam. Easy enough to translate: "I will not serve.”

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Book:My Dangerous Duke
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