Top 100 C.J. Tudor Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Once you strip those away we become just a mass of flesh, bone and blood vessels.”

— C.J. Tudor

52. “I open my mouth, my tongue flounders around and, eventually, my brain shoves it in the direction of the most obvious words: ‘He’s dead.’ ‘Dead?’ Funny how people always repeat that word, even though they know they’ve heard it correctly. A kind of denial by delay.”

— C.J. Tudor

53. “All the stuff we take for granted can just be ripped away.”

— C.J. Tudor

54. “She regards me with raised eyebrows. At least I think they’re raised. They could just be painted on.”

— C.J. Tudor

55. “For who are we if not the sum of our experiences, the things that we gather and collect in life?”

— C.J. Tudor

56. “My life is one long wreck of ‘should haves’, crashing into each other in a big tangled mess of regrets.”

— C.J. Tudor

57. “The Old Testament is crap. It’s full of misogyny, torture and inconsistencies. Jesus preached about love. All love.”

— C.J. Tudor

58. “Or perhaps all adults feel like that at times. Like we’re just playing at being grown-up, but inside we’re still children, shuffling around in oversized clothes, wishing someone would tell us that monsters don’t exist.”

— C.J. Tudor

59. “Ideas, when you’re a kid, are a bit like seeds scattered in the wind. Some don’t make it; they get carried away on the breeze, forgotten about and never mentioned again. Others take root. They dig their way down, they grow and they spread.”

— C.J. Tudor

60. “People say there’s nothing stronger than love. They’re right. That’s why the worst atrocities are always committed in its name.”

— C.J. Tudor

61. “I drew her to me and hugged her as hard as I could, like I could squeeze out all the pain, even as a small part of me wondered if, sometimes, forgetting was the kindness. Remembering – perhaps that was the killer.”

— C.J. Tudor

62. “You’re fading, slipping from my memories. Because memories are only as strong as the people who hold onto them. And I’m tired. I don’t know if I can hold on for much longer.”

— C.J. Tudor

63. “Being an adult is only an illusion. When it comes down to it I’m not sure any of us ever really grow up.”

— C.J. Tudor

64. “Were you looking at her face before, Eddie?’ I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say, or understand why his voice didn’t sound so friendly any more.”

— C.J. Tudor

65. “Truth has a habit of simply being the truth. The only real choice you have is whether to believe it or not.”

— C.J. Tudor

66. “Why do we hate our girls so much that history echoes with their screams and the earth is pitted with their unmarked graves?”

— C.J. Tudor

67. “People you feel obliged to hang around with out of habit and history rather than any real desire for their company.”

— C.J. Tudor

68. “The fact is, we all have a price, we all have buttons that can be pressed to make us do things that are not entirely honourable.”

— C.J. Tudor

69. “She looks like someone who spends a lot of time being efficient and the rest of it sleeping. But not enough.”

— C.J. Tudor

70. “Never have regrets. You make a decision, and you make it for the right reason at the time. Even if it proves to be the wrong decision later, you live with it.”

— C.J. Tudor

71. “Or maybe that’s just my perception. Often, what comes with age is not wisdom but intolerance.”

— C.J. Tudor

72. “For who are we if not the sum of our experiences, the things that we gather and collect in life? Once you strip those away, we become just a mass of flesh, bone, and blood vessels.”

— C.J. Tudor

73. “My little sister. Eight going on eighteen. Funny, feisty, stubborn, silly. Stupidly intelligent, annoyingly sweet. Hilarious, frustrating, entertaining. The boniest yet somehow also the softest little body to ever envelop me in a gangly web of arms and legs. A toothy smile that could shatter the hardest heart. A tough little tomboy who still wanted to believe in Santa Claus and magic. But then, who doesn’t?”

— C.J. Tudor

74. “We romanticize the past with our period dramas and glossy film adaptations. A bit like we do with nature. Nature is violent, unpredictable and unforgiving. Eat or be eaten. That’s nature. However much Attenborough or Coldplay you wrap it up in.”

— C.J. Tudor

75. “That’s how it is when you’re kids. You can let things go. It gets harder as you get older.”

— C.J. Tudor

76. “That’s the thing with adults. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you say; they only hear what they want to hear.”

— C.J. Tudor

77. “As all tragedies are. That’s what makes them so hard to bear. The acceptance that life is random and often cruel. We seek to attribute blame. We cannot accept that things happen without reason. That not everything is within our control. We make ourselves small gods of our own universe without any of God’s mercy, wisdom or grace.”

— C.J. Tudor

78. “That’s the problem with life. It never gives you a heads-up. Never offers you even the slightest clue that this might be an important moment. You might want to take some time, drink it in. It never lets you know that something is worth holding on to until it’s gone.”

— C.J. Tudor

79. “You’re either a good guy or a survivor. And the earth is full of dead good guys.”

— C.J. Tudor

80. “There are some things in life you can alter – your weight, your appearance, even your name – but there are others that wishing and trying and working hard can never make any difference to. Those things are the ones that shape us. Not the things we can change but the ones we can’t.”

— C.J. Tudor

81. “We’re all too busy, too distracted by the sheer effort of getting through each day – working, paying the bills, the mortgage, shopping – that we don’t want to look deeper. We don’t dare. We want things to be fine. To be “hunky-dory”. Because we simply haven’t got the energy to deal with it if they’re not. It’s only when something bad happens, something irretrievable, that we see things properly. And then it’s too late.”

— C.J. Tudor

82. “I wait for the significance of this to dawn. Moss grows around my feet. Glaciers form and melt.”

— C.J. Tudor

83. “But she had done a lot of things over the last three years that she had never thought herself capable of. None of us know, until pushed, what our limits truly are. How far we would go for those we love.”

— C.J. Tudor

84. “Assuming can trip us up in other ways too. It can stop us seeing people for who they really are and make us lose sight of the people we know.”

— C.J. Tudor

85. “Never have children, a friend once told me. Not if you want to finish a cup of coffee, get to see the end of a film or enjoy a full night’s sleep ever again.”

— C.J. Tudor

86. “Of course, as it turned out, we were waiting. And when the girl’s pale hand beckoned from a careless fall of crumpled leaves, it felt as though the whole town let out a long, stagnant breath. Because it had happened. The worst had finally come.”

— C.J. Tudor

87. “There are no winners in life. Life is ultimately all about losing: your youth, your looks. But most of all, those you love. Sometimes I think it’s not the passing of the years that really ages you but the passing of the people and things you care about. That kind of ageing can’t be smoothed away by needles or plumped out with fillers.”

— C.J. Tudor

88. “Personally, I have found that it is much better to take your fears, lock them up in a nice, tightly shut box and shove them into the deepest, darkest corner of your mind. But each to their own.”

— C.J. Tudor

89. “Faith, to an extent, is a placebo. If you believe it works, it works.”

— C.J. Tudor

90. “Although we can never really ease trauma, our mind is good at repairing it, layering over it with new experiences, like fresh skin growing over an old wound. The scar remains. It just hurts less and becomes harder to see.”

— C.J. Tudor

91. “I suppose he was right. Love isn’t a choice. It’s a compulsion. I know that now. But perhaps, sometimes, you should choose. Or, at least, choose not to fall in love.”

— C.J. Tudor

92. “She had felt more dead than alive. One foot in this world. One foot already in the other.”

— C.J. Tudor

93. “They say not knowing is worse. But sometimes, knowing is just as bad. Knowing is finally finding that elusive needle in the haystack, only to discover that the needle was the very thing stopping the entire haystack from collapsing and burying you.”

— C.J. Tudor

94. “People are made to feel guilty for ‘living a lie’, but who hasn’t hidden parts of themselves from those they love? Because we don’t want to hurt them. Because we don’t want to see the disappointment in their eyes. We talk about love being unconditional, but very few of us ever want to put that to the test.”

— C.J. Tudor

95. “The service is short. Which is both a mercy and a timely reminder of how seventy years on this planet can be condensed into ten minutes of summary and a few unnecessary wafflings about God.”

— C.J. Tudor

96. “I had started to notice how careless people were; like they didn’t realise how important it was to hold on to things or they could be gone forever.”

— C.J. Tudor

97. “We don’t realize, any of us, how much our existence depends upon hope and purpose, the promise of a new day. Take that away and we’re just automatons, going through the motions until we wind down and die.”

— C.J. Tudor

98. “I think we have the capacity for good and evil. But for some, one side is more prevalent than the other.”

— C.J. Tudor

99. “What these apocalypse agitators couldn’t seem to grasp was that the planet was managing to self-destruct very nicely on its own, thank you. So, all the attacks, protests and assassinations were the equivalent of giving a wedgie to someone who was lying on the floor, bleeding out from every orifice, and expecting them to care.”

— C.J. Tudor

100. “You want to believe the world is black and white. But, as an adult, you realise that most people exist in the grey area in between. All stuck in the middle and bumbling through.”

— C.J. Tudor