Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “When you’re struggling hard to manage your own emotions, it becomes unbearable to have to witness other people’s, to have to try and manage theirs too.”

— Gail Honeyman

102. “There was no hope, things couldn’t be put right. I couldn’t be put right. The past could neither be escaped nor undone. After all these weeks of delusion, I recognized, breathless, the pure, brutal truth of it.”

— Gail Honeyman

103. “Popular people sometimes have to laugh at things they don’t find very funny, do things they don’t particularly want to, with people whose company they don’t particularly enjoy. Not me. I had decided, years ago, that if the choice was between that or flying solo, then I’d fly solo. It was safer that way. Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.”

— Gail Honeyman

104. “What was a muse, anyway? I was familiar with the classical allusion, of course, but in modern-day, practical terms, a muse seemed simply to be an attractive woman whom the artist wanted to sleep with.”

— Gail Honeyman

105. “There have been times when I felt that I might die of loneliness. People sometimes say they might die of boredom, that they’re dying for a cup of tea, but for me, dying of loneliness is not hyperbole. When I feel like that, my head drops and my shoulders slump and I ache, I physically ache, for human contact – I truly feel that I might tumble to the ground and pass away if someone doesn’t hold me, touch me.”

— Gail Honeyman

106. “There was a certain pleasure in ceding control.”

— Gail Honeyman

107. “Her home was so... shiny. She was shiny too, her skin, her hair, her shoes, her teeth. I hadn’t even realized before; I am matte, dull and scuffed.”

— Gail Honeyman

108. “I suppose even Raymond would think it inappropriate to smoke a cigarette outside a crematorium.”

— Gail Honeyman

109. “You’re braver and stronger than you give yourself credit for. Keep going.”

— Gail Honeyman

110. “I took a deep breath, picked up the pouf and squashed it into a bin liner. It was quite a fight to get it in. As I grappled with it, I thought about what I must look like, my arms wrapped around a giant frog, wrestling it to the ground. I snorted a bit, and then I laughed and laughed until my chest hurt.”

— Gail Honeyman

111. “She was writing in her notebook, and looked up. “Did you ever wish you had a father, or a father figure in your life, Eleanor? Was it something that you missed?” I stared at my hands. It was difficult, talking openly about these things, dragging them out for inspection when they’d been perfectly fine as they were, hidden away.”

— Gail Honeyman

112. “I had convinced myself that he was the one, that he would help to make me normal, fix things that were wrong with my life. Someone to help me deal with Mommy, block out her voice when she whispered in my ear, telling me I was bad, I was wrong, I wasn’t good enough. Why have I thought that?”

— Gail Honeyman

113. “There was nothing to tempt me from the choice of desserts, so I opted instead for a coffee, which was bitter and lukewarm. Naturally, I had been about to pour it all over myself but, just in time, had read the warning printed on the paper cup, alerting me to the fact that hot liquids can cause injury. A lucky escape, Eleanor! I said to myself, laughing quietly. I began to suspect that Mr. McDonald was a very foolish man indeed, although, judging from the undiminished queue, a wealthy one.”

— Gail Honeyman

114. “These magazines could tell me which clothes and shoes to wear, how to have my hair styled in order to fit in. They could show me the right kind of makeup to buy and how to apply it. This way, I would disappear into everywoman acceptability. I would not be stared at. The goal, ultimately, was successful camouflage as a human woman.”

— Gail Honeyman

115. “The strange thing – something I’d never expected – was that it actually made you feel better when someone put their arm around you, held you close. Why? Was it some mammalian thing, this need for human contact?”

— Gail Honeyman

116. “Emily Dickinson’s beautiful poem is called “Wild Nights – Wild Nights!” and combines two elements of which I am inordinately fond: punctuation, and the theme of finding, at long last, a soul mate.”

— Gail Honeyman

117. “But enough of me,” she said, the jagged edge in her voice hardening. “I want to hear about you. What are your plans for the weekend? Are you going out dancing, perhaps? Has an admirer asked you on a date?” Such venom. I tried to ignore.”

— Gail Honeyman

118. “This part of the city was aggressively gray, but green life still struggled into being: moss on walls, weeds in guttering, the occasional forlorn tree. I have always lived in urban areas, but I feel the need for green as a visceral longing.”

— Gail Honeyman

119. “I felt like a newly laid egg, all swishy and gloopy inside, and so fragile that the slightest pressure could break me.”

— Gail Honeyman

120. “There is such a paucity of good manners on display in the so-called service sector!”

— Gail Honeyman

121. “Life sparkled towards me through the drops of rain on glass, shimmered fragrantly above the fug of wet clothes and damp feet.”

— Gail Honeyman

122. “Entertaining is not my area of expertise, I’ll admit that, but surely, if you are a host, you are responsible for ensuring that your guests are provided with a libation? That’s a basic principle of hospitality, in all societies and cultures, and has been since recorded time. In the event, I drank tap water – I rarely imbibe alcohol in public. I only really enjoy it when I’m alone, at home.”

— Gail Honeyman

123. “Some people, weak people, fear solitude. What they fail to understand is that there’s something very liberating about it; once you realize that you don’t need anyone, you can take care of yourself. That’s the thing: it’s best just to take care of yourself.”

— Gail Honeyman

124. “As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe.”

— Gail Honeyman

125. “I felt the heat where his hand had been; it was only a moment, but it left a warm imprint, almost as though it might be visible. A human hand was exactly the right weight, exactly the right temperature for touching another person, I realized.”

— Gail Honeyman

126. “Tiny slivers of life – they all added up and helped you to feel that you too could be a fragment, a little piece of humanity who usefully filled a space, however minuscule.”

— Gail Honeyman

127. “When people ask me what I do – taxi drivers, hairdressers – I tell them I work in an office.”

— Gail Honeyman

128. “Raymond rang the doorbell – the chime played the opening chords to Beethoven’s Third Symphony. A very small boy, his face smeared with, one hoped, chocolate, answered and stared at us. I stared back at him. Raymond stepped forward. “All right, mate?” he said. “We’re here to see your granddad.” The boy continued staring at us, somewhat unenthusiastically. “I’m wearing new shoes,” he stated, apropos of nothing. At that moment, Laura appeared behind him in the hallway.”

— Gail Honeyman

129. “I had to google “mofo” and must confess to being slightly alarmed by the result.”

— Gail Honeyman

130. “It takes a long time to learn to live with loss, assuming you ever manage it.”

— Gail Honeyman

131. “I have often noticed that people who routinely wear sportswear are the least likely sort to participate in athletic activity.”

— Gail Honeyman

132. “They choose things like plates, bowls and cutlery – I mean, what are they doing at the moment: shoveling food from packets into their mouths with their bare hands? I simply fail to see how the act of legally formalizing a human relationship necessitates friends, family and coworkers upgrading the contents of their kitchen for them.”

— Gail Honeyman

133. “I folded my pillow in half to support me as I sat up. Sleep still felt far away, and I was in need of soothing. I reached down into the gap between the mattress and the wall and sought my old faithful, its edges rounded and softened with years of handling. Jane Eyre. I could open up the novel at any page and immediately know where I was in the story, could almost visualize the next sentence before I reached it.”

— Gail Honeyman

134. “A semi-human bath sponge with protruding front teeth! On sale as if it were something completely unremarkable! For my entire life, people have said that I’m strange, but really, when I see things like this, I realize that I’m actually relatively normal.”

— Gail Honeyman

135. “There was, it seemed, no Eleanor-shaped social hole for me to slot.”

— Gail Honeyman

136. “I have always enjoyed reading, but I’ve never been sure how to select appropriate material. There are so many books in the world – how do you tell them all apart? How do you know which one will match your tastes and interests?”

— Gail Honeyman

137. “Their laughter seemed to have turned into low whispering now. It never ceases to amaze me, the things they find interesting, amusing or unusual. I can only assume they’ve led very sheltered lives.”

— Gail Honeyman

138. “What, I wondered, was the point of me?”

— Gail Honeyman

139. “Everybody needs to take a wee moment to themselves now and again, eh?”

— Gail Honeyman

140. “But no one has ever shown me the right way to live a life, and although I’d tried my best over the years, I simply didn’t know how to make things better. I could not solve the puzzle of me.”

— Gail Honeyman

141. “I’d found a way to help me move forward at last. A way to replace a loss with a gain.”

— Gail Honeyman

142. “After some contemplation, I had opted for a square of indeterminate white fish, which was coated in bread crumbs and deep fried and then inserted between an overly sweet bread bun, accompanied, bizarrely, by a processed cheese slice, a limp lettuce leaf and some salty, tangy white slime which bordered on obscenity.”

— Gail Honeyman

143. “She’s the only one I’ve got. And good girls love their mothers. After the fire, I was always so lonely. Any mummy was better than no mummy.”

— Gail Honeyman

144. “What, after all, is the point of eating out if you have to clear up yourself? You might as well have stayed at home.”

— Gail Honeyman

145. “I’m a widower, Eleanor,” Sammy said. “Jean died five years ago – cancer. Took her quick, in the end.” He paused and sat up straighter. “I’ve two sons and a daughter.”

— Gail Honeyman

146. “There isn’t anything to eat. Mummy will be back soon. Where’s Mummy?”

— Gail Honeyman

147. “In my recent experience, the perfect man appears when you’re least expecting it. Fate throws him into your path, and then providence ensures that you will end up together.”

— Gail Honeyman

148. “I let myself be held, moved closer into the embrace in fact, because, I was forced to admit, at that particular time and in those particular circumstances, and feeling the way I did, the sensation of being held by him was nothing short of miraculous.”

— Gail Honeyman

149. “I’d made my legs black, and my hair blonde. I’d lengthened and darkened my eyelashes, dusted a flush of pink onto my cheeks and painted my lips a shade of dark red which was rarely found in nature. I should, by rights, look less like a human woman than I’d ever done, and yet it seemed that this was the most acceptable, the most appropriate appearance that I’d ever made before the world.”

— Gail Honeyman

150. “It was just that I wanted to tell you that you’re a pointless waste of human tissue. That was all. Bye then, darling!’ she said, bright as a knife.”

— Gail Honeyman