Lisa Jewell Quotes

They say that your powers of memory are at their peak when you're 26, and it's all downhill after that.

Adele was struck by how often women undervalued their own efforts while being endlessly impressed by those of their peers.

But, what if it's not a mistake? What if it's true?

Well then, my angel... you'll be a very rich woman indeed.

But what do you do with an unattainable crush once it's yours to keep? What does it become? Should there perhaps be a word to describe it? Because that's the thing with getting what you want: all that yearning and dreaming and fantasizing leaves a great big hole that can only be filled with more yearning and dreaming and fantasizing.

you are the only woman I have ever met who I would want to be in a little house with, do you see? Other women make me want to get on boats and run away. You, you make me want to stay somewhere, so that I can see your face everyday. So that I can hold you everyday and watch you grow older. You make me want to be an adult man. You make me want to settle down.

That's always the way in life: the longer you leave things, the harder they are to do.

It's been ten years since Ellie Mack disappeared, a fifteen year old fro north London, disappeared on her way to the library.

When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it's like I go back into the dream.

Listen, Dad, in a family like this, the wife without a child is at the bottom of the heap. Everyone comes before them. Everyone.

I know it sounds like it was all just a terrible disaster. Of course it does. Any situation involving four dead bodies is clearly far from ideal.

A man who can't love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed.

she was only here because she didn't have the guts to be anywhere else. Because she felt like the last guest at an unsuccessful party, too guilt-ridden to leave.

[He] didn't view the less idyllic chapters of his life as the results of "mistakes." He didn't believe in mistakes. He believed in a preordained path, and so far every point on this path had felt right. Every bad relationship had felt right, every shitty job he'd done had felt right - because he'd chosen them.

The journey back through the house, like all return journeys, felt shorter and less convoluted; the sense of knowing how long the tunnels were and where they ended up was reassuring

Like I might be about to do something really, really stupid. And knowing I'm going to do it isn't going to stop it from happening.

She remembered the intensity of her desire to undress him, to be naked with him, the way she felt like she could say whatever she wanted and be fully understood and do whatever she wanted and be totally accepted. She remembered how easy it had all been, how open and bright, like being in a whitewashed room with all the windows wide open.

All men are weak,' said Phin. 'That's the whole bloody trouble with the world. Too weak to love properly. Too weak to be wrong.

If destiny could bring two people together, then it could just as easily tear them apart, and, if it could tear two people apart, then it could just as easily bring them back together again. There was no beginning, middle and end to destiny. It wasn't neat and manageable. It was random and scary.

Freedom came in strange forms and from unexpected directions.

Memories fluttered about her mind, of days that had passed and died and were never to return.

All books are good," he said.
"That's not true," I said. "I've read some really bad books." I was thinking specifically of Anne of Green Gables, which we'd been forced to read the term before and which was the most stupid, annoying book I'd ever encountered.
"They weren't bad books," Phin countered patiently. "They were books that you didn't enjoy. It's not the same thing at all. The only bad books are the books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that has been published is going to be a 'good book' for someone.

But maybe I'll end up doing something else unconventional. Who knows. And I really hope that if I do, and as long as I'm not hurting anyone or doing anything, like, illegal, that everyone would accept it, you know, just carry on loving me anyway.

But she has five years to find Him and marry him and then another five years to have a baby, maybe two if she likes the first one. She's not in a rush. Not yet. She'll just keep swinging left, keep looking nice when she goes out, keep accepting invitations to social events, keep positive, keep slim, keep herself together, keep going.

The concept of a troubled, lonely, middle-class, gay fifty-eight-year-old living alone in dusty squalor in a chocolate-box cottage in the heart of the Cotswolds was a hard one to grasp in the context of his sweaty, noisy, hectic, foreign, red-light existence.

You never really know a person until after they're dead. That's when it all comes out. All the stuff they locked up in boxes. All the secrets, all the lies. That's when you really know the truth.

Imagine," she said, her face turning serious for a moment, "imagine if something happened to one of us and there was no Easter egg hunt next year, imagine if everything stopped being perfect - you would wish so hard that you'd taken part today . . .

I'm not going to tell you that in ten years you'll look back and wonder what the hell you were thinking, because I remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But not I know that me is fluid and shape-changing.

You're here every night, you join in, but you always seem to be - I don't know - more of a spectator than a participant, as if you are studying us, possibly for some sort of anthropological purpose. Do you even like us?

Because deep down inside, she was scared. Scared of being alone, scared of being an outsider. Scared that she had all of her chances of happiness; and blown each and every one of them.

Friends can be a pain. They can be demanding and hard work. But maybe that's because they're the wrong friends. I read a quote once, can't remember who by, but they said that your friends aren't necessarily the people you like best, they're just the people who got there first.

Why is Nana's house so messy?', she asked after an incongruous moment. Vicky smiled. Ah, well you see, your Nana is a very special lady. She's really quite magical, you know. And when she looks at the world, she sees it in a very special way, like it's a party bag or a toy shop, and she likes to keep bits of it, and she feels sad when she throws things away.

There was no beginning, middle and end to destiny, it wasn't neat and manageable. It was random and scary and if it wanted to it would.