Wearing an antique bridal gown, the beautiful queen of the vampires sits all alone in her dark, high house under the eyes of the portraits of her demented and atrocious ancestors, each one of whom, through her, projects a baleful posthumous existence; she counts out the Tarot cards, ceaselessly construing a constellation of possibilities as if the random fall of the cards on the red plush tablecloth before her could precipitate her from her chill, shuttered room into a country of perpetual summer and obliterate the perennial sadness of a girl who is both death and the maiden.

The Lady of the House of Love ~ Angela Carter

How was it she had never noticed before that his agate eyes were equipped with lids, like those of a man? Was it because she had only looked at her own face, reflected there?

The Courtship of Mr Lyon ~ Angela Carter

The Beast sunk his great head on to his paws.
You will come back to me? It will be lonely here, without you.

The Courtship of Mr Lyon ~ Angela Carter

Although her father had told her of the nature of the one who waited for her, she could not control an instinctual shudder of fear when she saw him, for a lion is a lion and a man is a man and, though lions are more beautiful by far than we are, yet they belong to a different order of beauty and, besides, they have no respect for us: why should they? Yet wild things have a far more rational fear of us than is ours of them, and some kind of sadness in his agate eyes, that looked almost blind, as if sick of sight, moved her heart.

The Courtship of Mr Lyon ~ Angela Carter

If you are so careless of your treasures, you should expect them to be taken from you.

The Tiger's Bride ~ Angela Carter

Gambling is a sickness. My father said he loved me yet he staked his daughter on a hand of cards. He fanned them out; in the mirror, I saw wild hope light up his eyes. His collar was unfastened, his rumpled hair stood up on end, he had the anguish of a man in the last stages of debauchery. The draughts came out of the old walls and bit me, I was colder than I'd ever been in Russia, when nights are coldest there.

A queen, a king, an ace. I saw them in the mirror. Oh, I know he thought he could not lose me; besides, back with me would come all he had lost, the unravelled fortunes of our family at one blow restored. And would he not win, as well, The Beast's hereditary palazzo outside the city; his immense revenues; his lands around the river; his rents, his treasure chest, his Mantegnas, his Giulio Romanos, his Cellini saltcellars, his tides... the very city itself.

You must not think my father valued me at less than a king's ransom; but, at no more than a king's ransom.

The Tiger's Bride ~ Angela Carter

The candles dropped hot, acrid gouts of wax on my bare shoulders.
I watched with the furious cynicism peculiar to women whom circumstances force mutely to witness folly, while my father, fired in his desperation by more and yet more draughts of the firewater they call 'grappa', rids himself of the last scraps of my inheritance.
When we left Russia, we owned black earth, blue forest with bear and wild boar, serfs, cornfields, farmyards, my beloved horses, white nights of cool summer, the fireworks of the northern lights.
What a burden all those possessions must have been to him, because he laughs as if with glee as he beggars himself; he is in such a passion to donate all to The Beast.

The Tiger's Bride ~ Angela Carter

Carnivore incarnate, only immaculate flesh appeases him.

The Company of Wolves ~ Angela Carter

The wolf is carnivore incarnate.

The Company of Wolves ~ Angela Carter

Time was his servant, too; it would trap me, here, in a night that would last until he came back to me, like a black sun on a hopeless morning.

The Bloody Chamber ~ Angela Carter

You were always in danger in the forest, where no people are. Step between the portals of the great pines where the shaggy branches tangle about you, trapping the unwary traveler in nets as if the vegetation itself were in a plot with the wolves who live there, as though the wicked trees go fishing on behalf of their friends - step between the gate posts of the forest with the greatest trepidation and infinite precautions, for if you stray from the path for one instant, the wolves will eat you. They are gray as famine, they are as unkind as plague.

The Company of Wolves ~ Angela Carter

So may all your wives, if you need them, be rich and pretty; and all your husbands, if you want them, be young and virile; and all you cats as wily, perspicacious and resourceful as:

PUSS-IN-BOOTS

Puss in Boots ~ Angela Carter

He drew away from me into that wax-works stillness of his; I was only a little girl, I did not understand. And, he said unspoken to my wounded vanity, I have had too many honeymoons to find them in the least pressing commitments. I know quite well that this child I've bought with a handful of colored stones and the pelts of dead beasts wouldn't run away.

Narrator, The Bloody Chamber ~ Angela Carter

One false step, oh, my poor, dear girl, next in the fated sisterhood of wives; one false step and into the abyss of the dark you stumbled.

Narrator, The Bloody Chamber ~ Angela Carter

I had the brief notion that his heart, pressed flat as a flower, crimson and thin as tissue paper, lay in this file.

Narrator, The Bloody Chamber ~ Angela Carter

All was in order, so I found nothing.
Not a random doodle on an old envelope, nor the faded photograph of a woman.
Only the files of business correspondence, the bills from the home farms, the invoices from tailors, the billets-doux from international financiers.
Nothing.
And this absence of the evidence of his real life began to impress me strangely; there must, I thought, be a great deal to conceal if he takes such pains to hide it.

Narrator, The Bloody Chamber ~ Angela Carter

The lilies I always associate with him; that are white. And stain you.

Bloody Chamber ~ Angela Carter

His wedding gift, clasped around my throat. A choker of rubies, two inches wide, like an extraordinarily precious slit throat.

The Bloody Chamber ~ Angela Carter

The tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers.

The Tiger's Bride, The Bloody Chamber ~ Angela Carter