Louise O'Neill Quotes

I was born in the water and I was born of the water.

It is your father who has insisted on calling me a 'witch'. That's is simply a term that men give women who are not afraid of them, women who refuse to do as they are told.

It didn't matter what my father said – that Alex was lazy, that all he cared about was having fun. Well, I wanted to have fun, for once. Fun, I could appreciate. I've never cared for beauty. Beauty fades, there's no loyalty in it. My mother told me it was better to cultivate my wit, my intelligence. If I'd had a daughter, I would have told her the same. I would have made her strong. A woman needs to be strong to survive.

I do the splits perfectly in PE. I lose half a pound in two days. I get the spinach and pig-meat frittata from the lo-carb section for lunch. And no-one else knows. I mentally construct a MyFace status, polishing the memories carefully until they shine. The need to record my life is as fundamental as my need to breathe. Without MyFace, I'm floating. I have nothing to anchor me down, to prove I exist.

She catches sight of herself in her video-feed, her face contorted with fury. Wiping spittle from the sides of her mouth, she reaches behind her to grab her lip gloss and reapplies it. "And don't even start thinking about what a bitch I am," she says. Her eyes are steady, the heat receding from her skin. "This is not my fault. I'm just doing what we have been trained to do. This is who we are, freida. This is who we were designed to be.

The women always get blamed. Have you noticed that? The wives are nags. The mistress is a bitch for betraying the sisterhood. And the men just fall through the cracks in between. We expect so little from our boys, don't we, Grace?

I'm beginning to wonder that if, when we call a woman crazy, we should take a look at the man by her side, and guess at what he has done to drive her to insanity.

Every maid in court has been told that we must maintain a certain weight for the aesthetic preference of the Sea King and his mer-men.

We teach our girls how not to get raped with a sense of doom, a sense that we are fighting a losing battle. When I was writing this novel, friend after friend came to me telling me of something that had happened to them. A hand up their skirt, a boy who wouldn't take no for an answer, a night where they were too drunk to give consent but they think it was taken from them anyway. We shared these stories with one another and it was as if we were discussing some essential part of being a woman, like period cramps or contraceptives. Every woman or girl who told me these stories had one thing in common: shame. 'I was drunk . . . I brought him back to my house . . . I fell asleep at that party . . . I froze and I didn't tell him to stop . . .' My fault. My fault. My fault. When I asked these women if they had reported what had happened to the police, only one out of twenty women said yes. The others looked at me and said, 'No. How could I have proved it? Who would have believed me?' And I didn't have any answer for that.

I like it better when my room is pitch black, when the dark is so thick it swallows me up and I feel as if I could drown in it.

They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.

How is it that two eyes, a nose and a mouth can be positioned in such varying ways that it makes one person beautiful, and another person not?

I don't know how people pretend to be something they're not; it takes so much effort. That was always my problem, ever since I was your age. I didn't care about what people thought of me. I only wanted to be true to myself.

We have been told since we were mer-children that extra-weight is revolting

It is always there, the sun, even when we cannot see it.

If I cannot speak, I suddenly realize, then I can change nothing.

I shall be passed from one man to the next, ownership tranferred with ease of a handshake and I will be expected to smile as the deal is done

We are women. And women are warriors, after all.

My body is not my own any more. They have stamped their names all over it.

Is it possible to want everything to change and nothing to change, all at the same time?

I want to hide, fold into the shadows and become invisible so no-one can look at me any more.

I want you to remember always how powerful you are. Never allow anyone to take that away from you, or try and make you feel small.

I can' because the Sea King will be angry if we do not do as he wishes. He will not stand for female insubordination, today of all days

No one ever calls her husband "unnatural" for abandonning his children; no, instead they whisper that Lorelai must have failed to satisfy him".

Why, isabel? Why are you doing this to yourself? To your body?'
And why are you doing this to me? is the awful, selfish thought that is left unsaid.
'Because I can,' she answers, and I shiver as she unconsciously echoes chastity-ruth.
'But-'
'Because it's my body,' she cuts in. 'Isn't it?

We have never had a class on how to say no to men while simultaneously never saying no to them.

That voice… My voice, it was my voice. How did Flora have my voice? How could I have thrown it away? The only time I was ever happy under the sea was when I was singing, and I sewed my mouth shut in the hopes that a boy I barely knew could kiss it open again.

She's beautiful, but it's a faded beauty now, as if she's been washed too many times.

When did we all become fluent in this language that none of us wanted to learn?