Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Suffering other people’s unkindness must be difficult too; all those bitter, less attractive people, jealous and resentful of your beauty. That’s incredibly unfair of them. After all, beautiful people didn’t ask to be born that way. It’s as unfair to dislike someone because they’re attractive as it is to dislike someone because of a deformity.”

— Gail Honeyman

152. “The shop floor was vast, and I decided to request assistance. The first woman I saw was matronly, and did not seem well placed to dispense fashion advice. The second was in her late teens or early twenties, and therefore too callow to advise me. The third, in the manner of Goldilocks, was just right – around my age, well groomed, sensible-looking. I approached with caution.”

— Gail Honeyman

153. “You can’t protect other people, however hard you try.”

— Gail Honeyman

154. “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.”

— Gail Honeyman

155. “It turned out that if you saw the same person with some degree of regularity, then the conversation was immediately pleasant and comfortable – you could pick up where you left off, as it were, rather than having to start afresh each time.”

— Gail Honeyman

156. “He wasn’t using a knife, but held a fork in his right hand like a child or an American.”

— Gail Honeyman

157. “They gave it to me, unloved, unwanted, irreparably damaged. Also the table.”

— Gail Honeyman

158. “Danny left, Eleanor,” she said, not looking up from her screen. “There’s a new guy now. Raymond Gibbons? He started last month?”

— Gail Honeyman

159. “Sexual union between lovers should be a sacred, private thing.”

— Gail Honeyman

160. “After a minute or two, someone knocked tentatively on the living room door, and a face peeped round – Raymond.”

— Gail Honeyman

161. “It struck me that, in the nicest possible way, she didn’t really have a personality. She was a mother.”

— Gail Honeyman

162. “All of us – and especially young children – need to know that we’re loved, valued, accepted and understood... I said nothing. This was news to me. I let it settle. It sounded plausible, but it was a concept I’d need to consider at more length in the privacy of my own home.”

— Gail Honeyman

163. “I saw him bend down to light the cigarette of a woman in a wheelchair – she’d brought her drip out with her, on wheels, so that she could destroy her health at the same time as taxpayers’ money was being used to try and restore.”

— Gail Honeyman

164. “Listen, the past isn’t over. The past is a living thing. Those lovely scars of yours – they’re from the past, aren’t they? And yet they still live on your plain little face. Do they still hurt?” I shook my head, but said nothing. “Oh, they do – I know they do. Remember how you got them, Eleanor. Was it worth it? For her? Oh, there’s room on your other cheek for a bit more hurt, isn’t there? Turn the other cheek for Mummy, Eleanor, there’s a good girl.”

— Gail Honeyman

165. “You can’t have too much dog in a book.”

— Gail Honeyman

166. “I took a breath. Back in that house, on a good day. Stripes of sunshine on the carpet, a board game set out on the floor, a pair of dice, two brightly colored counters. A day with more ladders than snakes.”

— Gail Honeyman

167. “I feel the need for green as a visceral longing.”

— Gail Honeyman

168. “Tell me, are you courting at the moment, Eleanor?” she asked. How tedious. “Not presently,” I said, “but I have my eye on someone. It’s only a matter of time.” There was a crash from the sink as Raymond dropped the ladle onto the draining board with a clatter. “Raymond!” his mum said. “Butterfingers!”

— Gail Honeyman

169. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

171. “Did you have a good time on Saturday, then?” he asked. I wished it had been between mouthfuls, but it was, in fact, horrifically, during one. “Yes, thank you,” I said. “It was the first time I’ve tried dancing, and I quite enjoyed it.” He kept forking the food into his mouth. The process, and the noise, seemed almost industrial in its relentlessness.”

— Gail Honeyman

172. “My hair was mousy brown, parted in the center, straight and not particularly thick. Human hair, doing what human hair does: growing on my head.”

— Gail Honeyman

173. “During the next free-form jigging section, I started to wonder why the band was singing about, presumably, the Young Men’s Christian Association, but then, from my very limited exposure to popular music, people did seem to sing about umbrellas and fire-starting and Emily Bronte novels, so, I supposed, why not a gender- and faith-based youth organization?”

— Gail Honeyman

174. “I took one of my hands in the other, tried to imagine what it would feel like if it was another person’s hand holding mine. 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.”

— Gail Honeyman

175. “The crematorium was a busy place and the parking spaces were needed, I supposed. I’m not sure I’d like to be burned. I think I might like to be fed to zoo animals. It would be both environmentally friendly and a lovely treat for the larger carnivores. Could you request that? I wondered. I made a mental note to write to the WWF in order to find out.”

— Gail Honeyman

176. “There must be some people for whom difficult behaviour wasn’t a reason to end their relationship with you. if they liked you... they were prepared to maintain contact, even if you were sad, upset or behaving in very challenging ways.”

— Gail Honeyman

177. “Social interaction, it appeared, was surprisingly expensive.”

— Gail Honeyman

178. “He loped off with a strange bouncy walk, springing too hard on the balls of his feet. A lot of unattractive men seem to walk in such a manner, I’ve noticed.”

— Gail Honeyman

179. “No one had ever bought me lunch before. It was a very pleasant feeling, to have someone incur expenditure on my behalf, voluntarily, expecting nothing in return.”

— Gail Honeyman

180. “His bare ankles looked distressingly white above his oxblood leather brogues, which he had teamed with green jogging bottoms. A madman.”

— Gail Honeyman

181. “You shouldn’t give yourself a hard time for not having a ten-year career plan.”

— Gail Honeyman

182. “I’m nearly thirty years old now and I’ve been working here since I was twenty-one. Bob, the owner, took me on not long after the office opened. I suppose he felt sorry for me. I had a degree in Classics and no work experience to speak of, and I turned up for the interview with a black eye, a couple of missing teeth and a broken arm.”

— Gail Honeyman

183. “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

184. “She certainly seems to have a life, not just an existence.”

— Gail Honeyman

185. “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

186. “I marveled at the generosity of those humans who performed intimate services for others.”

— Gail Honeyman

187. “Men like Raymond, pedestrial dullards, would always be distracted by women who looked like her, having neither the wit nor the sophistication to see beyond mammaries and peroxide.”

— Gail Honeyman

188. “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

189. “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

190. “We can all fight against loneliness by engaging in random acts of kindness.”

— Gail Honeyman

191. “Thank you for making me shiny.”

— Gail Honeyman

192. “So what’s your happiest memory from before the fire?” she said. I thought hard. Several minutes went by. “I remember moments here and there, fragments, but I can’t think of a complete incident,” I said.”

— Gail Honeyman

193. “All of the people in the room seemed to take so much for granted: that they would be invited to social events, that they would have friends and family to talk to, that they would fall in love, be loved in return, perhaps create a family of their own.”

— Gail Honeyman

194. “The thing is, even after everything that she’s done, after all of it, she’s still my mummy. She’s the only one I’ve got.”

— Gail Honeyman

195. “He held up a packet of organic curly kale. “What the hell is this?” he said, incredulous. Zinc, I whispered to myself. Raymond hustled me out of the.”

— Gail Honeyman

196. “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

197. “I do understand that some people think waste is wrong, and, after careful reflection, I tend to agree. But I’d been brought up to think very differently; Mummy always said that only peasants and grubby little worker ants worried about such trivial things.”

— Gail Honeyman

198. “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

199. “I understood that assisted conception was the antithesis of careless, spontaneous or unplanned parenthood, that it was the most deliberate of decisions, undertaken only by women who were serious and dedicated in their quest to be mothers.”

— Gail Honeyman

200. “As always, Mummy was scary. But the thing was, this time – for the first time ever – she’d actually sounded scared too.”

— Gail Honeyman