Top 80 Beth O'Leary Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “How am I feeling? Untethered. Like something’s got dislodged somewhere in my chest and my body doesn’t function quite right any more. Like I’m alone.”

— Beth O'Leary

2. “Remind myself that there is no saving of people – people can only save themselves. The best you can do is help when they’re ready.”

— Beth O'Leary

3. “Being nice is a good thing. You can be strong and nice. You don’t have to be one or the other.”

— Beth O'Leary

4. “Humiliation is like mould: ignore it and the whole place will get smelly and green.”

— Beth O'Leary

5. “Gerty is a superb human being in the least obvious way.”

— Beth O'Leary

6. “It can take people time to notice and process emotional abuse.”

— Beth O'Leary

7. “It was never home until you were there, Tiffy.”

— Beth O'Leary

8. “The next thing I notice is the sheer quantity of crap in my living room... It’s like a terrible episode of Changing Rooms. Flat has been redecorated to look immeasurably worse. Can only conclude that she was doing it on purpose – nobody could be this tasteless accidentally.”

— Beth O'Leary

9. “Holly couldn’t sleep; we played checkers. She lifts her fingers and dances them over the board like she’s weaving a magic spell before she touches a counter. Apparently it’s a mind game – makes the other player watch where you’re going instead of planning their next move. Where did a seven-year old learn mind games?”

— Beth O'Leary

10. “Who’d have thought – you say something true enough times, you try hard enough, and maybe it sinks in.”

— Beth O'Leary

11. “I think you should know,′ he says. ‘I like you. Like I shouldn’t. That sort of like.”

— Beth O'Leary

12. “The sudden rememberings are striking at entirely random times now, just bobbing up out of nowhere and sending me absolutely reeling.”

— Beth O'Leary

13. “Your brain can do amazing stuff to protect itself from pain,” Mo tells me. “But it’ll struggle to keep secrets from the rest of you for long.”

— Beth O'Leary

14. “Often think it must be very tiring, being Tiffy. Even in note form she seems to expend so much energy.”

— Beth O'Leary

15. “We’re so overdressed for a daytime event about crochet.”

— Beth O'Leary

16. “What is this, medieval times? I bet I’m better at punching people than Leon.”

— Beth O'Leary

17. “It was a weird way to get to know Leon, writing all these notes over the last few months, and it sort of happened without me noticing – one minute I was scribbling him a quick note about leftovers, the next I was in a full-on, day-to-day correspondence.”

— Beth O'Leary

18. “Some people are beyond aromatherapeutic help.”

— Beth O'Leary

19. “People struggle to see it’s not about whether she’s going to die – palliative care isn’t just a place you go to slowly slip away. More people live and leave than die on our wards. It is about being comfortable for the duration of something necessary and painful. Making bad times easier.”

— Beth O'Leary

20. “I wake with a jolt that sends a shock of pain through my ankle. Crying out, I look around me. Floral wallpaper. Am I at home? Who’s that man in the chair by the door, reading... “Twilight?” Leon blinks at me, putting the book down in his lap. ‘You went from unconscious to judgemental very quickly there.”

— Beth O'Leary

21. “I hand her the coffee. She gives it a sip, then nods in approval. I do a little fist pump, officially becoming a less odious human being than the man who wants to build a wall between Mexico and the US.”

— Beth O'Leary

22. “I’m just conveying the brutality of the market to you, Katherin,′ I say. That’s one of my favourite lines. Good old market, always there to be blamed. “The people don’t want history in their crochet books. They want cute pictures and easy instructions.”

— Beth O'Leary

23. “How much did it hurt to come all this way knowing it was just to say goodbye?”

— Beth O'Leary

24. “As a rule, she prefers plants and cats to humans these days. They’re both species with a much better track record.”

— Beth O'Leary

25. “Books are my happy place, he’d told her, and she’d felt herself light up, because that’s exactly what they are to her, too.”

— Beth O'Leary

26. “Surprising how terrible it feels. Perhaps you never know how you feel about someone until they agree to marry someone else.”

— Beth O'Leary

27. “This flatshare. I wish I never done it. Wish I’d never opened up my life like that and let someone else walk in and fill it up. I was doing fine – safe, managing. Now my flat’s not mine, it’s ours, and when she’s gone all I will see is the absence of tiffin and books about bricklayers and that bloody stupid paisley beanbag. It’ll be another room full of what’s missing. Just what I didn’t want.”

— Beth O'Leary

28. “I’m rather worn out, and it’s an awful lot easier to be independent when there’s somebody else there with you.”

— Beth O'Leary

29. “It all seems too good, like we can’t possibly deserve it, like we’re taking too much happiness and not leaving enough for everyone.”

— Beth O'Leary

30. “Every day is a good day, if you look hard enough.”

— Beth O'Leary

31. “My sexual frustration cannot be stopping you sleeping,” I say, conceding the point. “If that was possible, nobody would ever have been able to sleep in Victorian times.”

— Beth O'Leary

32. “Coldness growing low down in stomach. Heart rate up again, and for all the wrong reasons this time. I’m getting angry. That feeling again, the trapped hateful rage at hearing someone you try so hard to love saying the worst things.”

— Beth O'Leary

33. “Have you ever looked forward to reading a book so much you can’t actually start it?”

— Beth O'Leary

34. “Is it really an adventure if you don’t make at least one ill-advised decision?”

— Beth O'Leary

35. “Love as a bargain. Like, giving up your heart is scary, but doable if the other person does it at the exact same moment, like two soldiers lowering their weapons.”

— Beth O'Leary

36. “If I really thought I wasn’t good enough, I’d stop writing. Deep down, I love what I write and I think other people might too, one day.”

— Beth O'Leary

37. “But that’s the thing about almost: you can be ninety-nine per cent there, you can be an inch away from doing it, but if you stop yourself from stepping over that line, nobody will ever know how close you were.”

— Beth O'Leary

38. “I was trying so hard. All the time dredging up the worst memories, the endless conversations with Mo, the counselling. I was trying. But I guess Leon thought I was too broken to fix myself.”

— Beth O'Leary

39. “Do you know what an achievement it is to turn out that way growing up in your house?” Marcus says to my father, straightening up. He meets my dad’s gaze like it’s no effort at all, like he isn’t even frightened. “Do you know what it takes to be a good man when someone’s always told you you’re not good enough?”

— Beth O'Leary

40. “It’s weird how easily you can get to know someone from the traces they leave behind when they go.”

— Beth O'Leary

41. “Relationships like that stop being about ‘voluntarily’ very quickly. There’s lots of ways someone can make you stay with them, or think you want to.”

— Beth O'Leary

42. “Settle what down? What is there that needs settling? I know who I am and what I want. I don’t need some guy to make me complete, or whatever it is they’re meant to do.”

— Beth O'Leary

43. “Back when I was with Justin, if I was going out clubbing with Rachel he would always remind me that lots of men see ‘quirky girl’ and think ‘desperate and easy’. He’s right, as per usual. I actually wonder if it’s easier to get laid as a quirky girl than a perky cheerleader type: you’re more approachable, and nobody assumes you’ve already got a boyfriend.”

— Beth O'Leary

44. “Everyone’s got the potential to do the wrong thing – if we were measured that way, we’d all come up short. It’s about what you do.”

— Beth O'Leary

45. “Never been one for worst-case scenarios,” Jackson says. He crouches to dip his roller in the tray; his wrists are flecked with paint now, new, brighter freckles. “When they happen, you cope. And it’s usually one you’ve not thought of that gets you, so why worry?”

— Beth O'Leary

46. “You were healing. You’re still healing. You’ll maybe always be healing. And that’s OK. It’ll just be part of what makes you you.”

— Beth O'Leary

47. “More silence, but it’s Mo-style silence, which means it is somehow incredibly reassuring. Like an audio hug. He doesn’t need words, Mo – his arts are beyond them.”

— Beth O'Leary

48. “You do waste an awful lot of time when you’re young.”

— Beth O'Leary

49. “I’ve just validated all your stuff about how people always let you down, haven’t I? You’re not mad because you’re not even surprised.”

— Beth O'Leary

50. “We don’t have any good words for talking about death – they’re all too small.”

— Beth O'Leary