Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “The jeans looked too small but, miraculously, they stretched around me and I was able to fasten them. The top was loose, with a high neck. I felt appropriately covered up, if nothing else, although I couldn’t see the cutout section at the back. I looked exactly like everyone else. I supposed that was the point.”

— Gail Honeyman

252. “Eleanor. However hard you try to walk away from that fact, you can’t, darling, you simply can’t. It isn’t possible to destroy a bond that strong.”

— Gail Honeyman

253. “Danny left, Eleanor,’ she said, not looking up from her screen. ‘There’s a new guy now. Raymond Gibbons? He started last month?’ She said this as though I should have known. Still not looking up, she wrote his full name and telephone extension on a Post-it note and handed it to me.”

— Gail Honeyman

254. “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

255. “A daughter’s relationship with her father can sometimes influence her subsequent relationships with men. Do you have any thoughts about that, Eleanor?”

— Gail Honeyman

256. “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

257. “How brave are you prepared to be, Eleanor?” Laura asked. This was the correct question. I am brave. I am brave, courageous, Eleanor Oliphant.”

— Gail Honeyman

258. “If I’m ever unsure as to the correct course of action, I’ll think, “What would a ferret do?”

— Gail Honeyman

259. “I had convinced myself that he was the one, that he would help to make me normal, fix the things that were wrong with my life.”

— Gail Honeyman

260. “I had no idea what it was, but I realized that I’d happily sit here in the warmth with him and watch a golf programme if that was all there was.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

262. “I needed to make something happen, anything. I couldn’t keep passing through life, over it, under it, around it. I couldn’t go on haunting the world like a wraith.”

— Gail Honeyman

263. “He took out a beautifully battered leather wallet and paid with a credit card, although I noted that the total sum was less than eight pounds. I expect, rather like a member of the royal family, that he is simply too important to carry cash.”

— Gail Honeyman

264. “Which way are you going, Eleanor?” he asked. I considered the best response to this question. I was heading home for an exciting rendezvous. This highly unusual occasion – an appointment with a visitor to my home – meant that I needed to curtail this tedious, unplanned interaction posthaste.”

— Gail Honeyman

265. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

267. “This way, I would disappear into everywoman acceptability. I would not be stared at.”

— Gail Honeyman

268. “I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination.”

— Gail Honeyman

269. “Who can understand the workings of fate, after all? Far greater minds than mine had tried and failed, to arrive at a conclusion.”

— Gail Honeyman

270. “I had done such things in the past, tried to be kind, tried to take care, I knew that I had, but that was before.”

— Gail Honeyman

271. “It was hardly surprising that my mother had become institutionalized – that, one assumed, was a given, considering the nature of her crime – but she had gone far, far further than necessary by occasionally adopting the accent and argot of the places where she has been detained.”

— Gail Honeyman

272. “He looked closely at me. “What happened to your face? You don’t” – he leaned forward quickly, touched my arm over the blanket – “you definitely don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m just being a nosy bastard!”

— Gail Honeyman

273. “But, by careful observation from the sidelines, I’d worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little. 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.”

— Gail Honeyman

274. “What, I wondered, was the point of me? I contributed nothing to the world, absolutely nothing, and I took nothing from it either. When I ceased to exist, it would make no material difference to anyone. Most people’s absence from the world would be felt on a personal level by at least a handful of people. I, however, had no one. I do not light up a room when I walk into it. No one longs to see me or to hear my voice.”

— Gail Honeyman

275. “I have yet to find a genre of music I enjoy; it’s basically audible physics, waves and energized particles, and, like most sane people, I have no interest in physics. It therefore struck me as bizarre that I was humming a tune from Oliver! I mentally added the exclamation mark, which, for the first time ever, was appropriate.”

— Gail Honeyman

276. “My eye was drawn to a bright green hue, the same shade as a poisonous Amazonian frog, the tiny, delightfully deadly ones.”

— Gail Honeyman

277. “I have yet to find a genre of music I enjoy; it’s basically audible physics, waves and energized particles, and, like most sane people, I have no interest in physics.”

— Gail Honeyman

278. “It occurs to me that there are many things in life that I’ve never considered doing, Raymond. I suppose I hadn’t realized that I had any control over them. That sounds ridiculous, I know,” I said.”

— Gail Honeyman

279. “I’m not lonely, Mummy,” I said, protesting. “I’m fine on my own. I’ve always been fine on my own.”

— Gail Honeyman

280. “She lived alone, had a job, her own business even. She certainly seemed to have a life, not just an existence.”

— Gail Honeyman

281. “You’re a bit mental, aren’t you?” she said, not in the least aggressively, but slurring her words somewhat. It was hardly the first time I’d heard this. “Yes,” I said, “yes, I suppose I am.”

— Gail Honeyman

282. “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

283. “She’s not my type, to be honest.’ He took a noisy mouthful of beer. ‘I mean, looks are important, of course they are, but you’ve got to be able to have a laugh, enjoy each other’s company too, you know? I’m not sure me and Laura have got that much in common.”

— Gail Honeyman

284. “That said, I did sometimes wonder what it would be like to have someone – a cousin, say, or a sibling – to call on in times of need, or even just to spend unplanned time with. Someone who knows you, cares about you, who wants the best for you. A houseplant, however attractive and robust, doesn’t quite cut the mustard, unfortunately.”

— Gail Honeyman

285. “The cat squirmed in my arms and landed on the carpet with a heavy thump. She strolled over to the litter tray, squatted down and urinated loudly, maintaining extremely assertive eye contact with me throughout. After the deluge, she lazily kicked over the traces with her back legs, scattering litter all over my freshly cleaned floor. A woman who knew her own mind and scorned the conventions of polite society. We were going to get along just fine.”

— Gail Honeyman

286. “Eventually I decided to start from the outside and work my way in. That’s what happens in nature after all: shedding skin, rebirth. Animals birds and insects can provide such useful insights. If I’m ever unsure of the correct course of action, I’ll think what would a ferret do? Or how would a salamander respond to this situation? Invariably I find the right answer.”

— Gail Honeyman

287. “There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar.”

— Gail Honeyman

288. “Something different,” I said. “What would you suggest?” “How brave are you prepared to be, Eleanor?” Laura asked. This was the correct question. I am brave. I am brave, courageous, Eleanor Oliphant.”

— Gail Honeyman

289. “I noticed him glance at me, and then he slowed his steps to match mine. I realized that such small gestures – the way his mother had made me a cup of tea after our meal without asking, remembering that I didn’t take sugar, the way Laura had placed two little biscuits on the saucer when she brought me coffee in the salon – such things could mean so much.”

— Gail Honeyman

290. “You grew inside me, your teeth and your tongue and your cervix are all made from my cells, my genes.”

— Gail Honeyman

291. “Did men ever look in the mirror, I wondered, and find themselves wanting in deeply fundamental ways? When they opened a newspaper or watched a film, were they presented with nothing but exceptionally handsome young men, and did this make them feel intimidated, inferior, because they were not as young, not as handsome? Did they then read newspaper articles ridiculing those same handsome men if they gained weight or wore something unflattering?”

— Gail Honeyman

292. “Was this how it worked, then, successful social integration? Was it really that simple? Wear some lipstick, go to the hairdressers and alternate the clothes you wear?”

— Gail Honeyman

293. “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

294. “I’d worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little. 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.”

— Gail Honeyman

295. “He had rather seemed to enjoy my monologue while we were waiting for the ambulance; well, insofar as I could tell, given that he was unconscious.”

— Gail Honeyman

296. “Poor old soul,” he said. I nodded. Surprisingly, I felt an emotion that I recognized as anxiety or concern in relation to this elderly stranger.”

— Gail Honeyman

297. “Erm, right. I just wanted to let you know that I’m going in to see Sammy again today.”

— Gail Honeyman

298. “What color would you like?” she said. My eye was drawn to a bright green hue, the same shade as a poisonous Amazonian frog, the tiny, delightfully deadly ones. I handed it to her. She nodded. She wasn’t actually chewing gum, but her demeanor was very much that of a gum chewer.”

— Gail Honeyman

299. “I yearned for that brief, sharp feeling I get when I drink it – a sad, burning feeling – and then, blissfully, no feelings at all.”

— Gail Honeyman

300. “She lowered her voice again. “We’re not exactly talking criminal masterminds in here, darling – I think Professor Moriarty can rest easy for now.”

— Gail Honeyman