Repartee Quotes

“I stabbed you. With a massive sword. You caught on fire."
His lips twitched, almost imperceptibly. "Okay, so maybe our problems aren't like other couples.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome."
"And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody."
"And yours," he replied with a smile, "is wilfully to misunderstand them.”
― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“He grinned. It was a wicked grin, the kind that made the blood in Clary's veins run a little faster. "You want to go on a date?"
Caught off guard, she stammered. "A wh-what?"
"A date," Jace repeated. "Often 'a boring thing you have to memorize in history class,' but in this case, 'an offering of an evening of blisteringly white-hot romance with yours truly."
"Really?" Clary was not sure what to make of this. "Blisteringly white-hot?"
"It's me," said Jace. "Watching me play Scrabble is enough to make most women swoon. Imagine if I actually put in some effort.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Lost Souls

“I must be overtired', Buttercup managed. 'The excitement and all.'
'Rest then', her mother cautioned. 'Terrible things can happen when you're overtired. I was overtired the night your father proposed.”
― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

“If I be waspish, best beware my sting.”
― William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew

“Tell me now, fairy as you are - can't you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?"
"It would be past the power of magic, sir;" and, in thought, I added, "A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather, your sternness has a power beyond beauty."
Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think too good for common purpose: it was the real sunshine of feeling - he shed it over me now.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Want to play hangman? asks Theophile, and I ache to tell him that I have enough on my plate playing quadriplegic. But my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home. By the time you strike, even you no longer understand what had seemed so witty before you started to dictate it, letter by letter. So the rule is to avoid impulsive sallies. It deprives conversation of its sparkle, all those gems you bat back and forth like a ball-and I count this forced lack of humor one of the great drawbacks of my condition.”
― Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

“You believe in love, just as a child believes in Santa Claus or a fairy tale.”
“What is love then, if not a fairy tale meant for adults?”
― Abhaidev, That Thing About You

“[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly can attack a great lion and speedily put him to flight.”
― Christine de Pizan, Le Débat Sur Le Roman De La Rose

“[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, "Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has made the very noble book of the Rose, which surpasses all others that were ever written in French. When you have read this book a hundred times, provided you have understood the greater part of it, you will discover that you could never have put your time and intellect to better use!"

My answer: Oh man deceived by willful opinion! I could assuredly answer but I prefer not to do it with insult, although, groundlessly, you yourself slander me with ugly accusations. Oh darkened understanding! Oh perverted knowledge ... A simple little housewife sustained by the doctrine of Holy Church could criticise your error!”
― Christine de Pizan, Le Débat Sur Le Roman De La Rose

“Paparazzi arrived for Hugh [Grant]. We had to stand under a tree and smile for them.
Photographer: 'Hugh, could you look less -- um --'
Hugh: 'Pained?”
― Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

“Watching him, his hands buried in his pockets—to keep from circling her neck she supposed—she couldn't help but marvel at the curious mix of Southern courtesy and male arrogance, the natural assumption he shouldered of being lawfully in control. "Engaging in a moral battle isn't always hazardous to one's health, you know."
"Doesn't look like it's doing wonders for yours."
"Saints be praised, it can actually be rewarding."
Looking over his shoulder, he halted in the middle of the room. "Irish."
"I beg your pardon?"
"You. Irish. The green eyes, the tiny bit of red in your hair. Is Connor your real name?"
"Yes, why..." she said, stammering. Bloody hell. "Of course."
"Liar."
She felt the slow, hot roll of color cross her cheeks. "What could that possibly have to do with anything?"
"I don't know, but I have a feeling it means something. It's the first I've heard come out of that sassy mouth of yours that didn't sound like some damned speech." He tapped his head, starting to pace again. "What I wonder is, where are you in there?”
― Tracy Sumner, Tides of Passion

“She was up again at that.
"In love? You? Nonsense! Nonsense! Nonsense! You do not know what the word means. You are like a--like a fish, with no more love in you than a fish, and no more heart than a fish, and--"
"Spare me the rest, I beg. I am very clammy, I make no doubt, but you will at least accord me more brain than a fish?”
― Georgette Heyer, The Black Moth

“If,"said the Dowager, after a pregnant silence," I had ever dared to speak so to my grandmother, I should have been soundly whipped and confined to my bedchamber on bread-and-water for a sennight!"
The gravity vanished from Cressy's face. "no, would you, Ma'am? How very brave your parents must have been!”
― Georgette Heyer, False Colours

“-[...] comme vous me paraissez amateur; car lorsque je suis entré vous regardiez mes tableaux, je vous demande la permission de vous faire voir ma galerie : tous tableaux anciens, tous tableaux de maîtres garantis comme tels ; je n'aime pas les modernes.
-Vous avez raison, monsieur, car ils ont en général un grand défaut : c'est celui de n'avoir pas encore eu le temps de devenir des anciens.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Ignatov: "...History has shown charm to be the final ambition of the leisure class. What I do find surprising is that the author of the poem in question could have become a man so obviously without purpose. "
Rostov: "I have lived under the impression that a man's purpose is known only to God."
Ignatov: "Indeed. How convenient that must have been for you.”
― Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow

“He leaned close. "I look at you, I look at this." His gesture indicated the fine room, the fine people in it. "And I doubt you've ever been hungry in your life.

It seemed a ridiculous thing to have to prove.

She leaned closer, reached across his untouched plate, and plucked the small white carnation from his boutonniere. She bit the petals from the stem and chewed.”
― Ashley Warlick, The Arrangement

“You tries tuh be so much-knowin'. You got tuh learn how tuh speak when you spokin to, come when youse called."

"Ah ain't got tuh do but two things--stay black and die," Sister Berry snapped.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Jonah's Gourd Vine

“The fat man, taken by surprise, was very hurt.
"Search me, Missus."
"I might if I had the time. Her bright eyes, small and dark as his own, took in his great bulk with wicked amusement. "What are you carrying about with you? The dome of St Paul's?"
"Ho! Who's talking, eh?" As the insult went home he forgot all caution. "Margot Fonteyn of the Convent Garden I suppose.”
― Margery Allingham, The Tiger in the Smoke