Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 6 of 9

251. “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

252. “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

253. “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

254. “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?”

— Gail Honeyman

255. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

257. “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

258. “Candles in a bathroom! I suspected that Laura was something of a sybarite.”

— Gail Honeyman

259. “He had the look of a gazelle or an impala, one of those boring beige animals with large, round eyes on the side of its face. The kind of animal that always gets eaten by a leopard in the end.”

— Gail Honeyman

260. “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. How would I celebrate my own fortieth birthday? I wondered. I hoped I would have people in my life to mark the occasion when the time came.”

— Gail Honeyman

261. “The goal, ultimately, was successful camouflage as a human woman.”

— Gail Honeyman

262. “I feel sorry for beautiful people. Beauty, from the moment you possess it, is already slipping away, ephemeral. That must be difficult.”

— Gail Honeyman

263. “Why is it that client-facing jobs hold such allure for misanthropes?”

— Gail Honeyman

264. “I feel like a spy or something,” said Raymond, looking at the sealed envelope that lay between us. “You’re completely unsuited to a career in espionage,” I told him. He raised his eyebrows. “Your face is too honest,” I said, and he smiled.”

— Gail Honeyman

265. “Life is all about taking decisive action, darling. Whatever you want to do, do it – whatever you want to take, grab it. Whatever you want to bring to an end, END IT. And live with the consequences.”

— Gail Honeyman

266. “It fell open at a pivotal scene, the one where Jane meets Mr. Rochester for the first time, startling his horse in the woods and causing him to fall. Pilot is there too, the handsome, soulful-eyed hound. If the book has one failing, it’s that there is insufficient mention of Pilot. You can’t have too much dog in a book.”

— Gail Honeyman

267. “Sometimes, when you tried to help with suggestions, it could lead to misunderstandings, not all of them entirely pleasant.”

— Gail Honeyman

268. “She continued to read, and then I saw her face change and she glanced at me, her expression a mixture of horror, alarm and pity. She must have got to the section about Mummy.”

— Gail Honeyman

269. “No, I’m not wearing a hat either,” said Raymond, and we actually laughed. We laughed far longer than his feeble witticism merited, just because.”

— Gail Honeyman

270. “I do feel that tube tops are best suited to the under twenty-fives, if, indeed, they are suited to anyone.”

— Gail Honeyman

271. “I’d spent more in these last few weeks than I usually spent in a year. Social interaction, it appeared, was surprisingly expensive – the travel, the clothes, the drinks, the lunches, the gifts.”

— Gail Honeyman

272. “By the time Keith was sitting on my sofa with a cup of tea, Glen had disappeared. She only really enjoyed her own company. She tolerated mine, but fundamentally she was a recluse at heart, like J. D. Salinger or the Unabomber.”

— Gail Honeyman

273. “He was wearing a denim jacket, paler than his denim trousers. I hadn’t considered that a suit could be fashioned from denim, but there it was.”

— 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.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

277. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

279. “Who was this stranger, and why had I chosen him, of all the men in this city, this country, the world, to be my saviour?”

— Gail Honeyman

280. “However much you loved someone, it wasn’t always enough. Love alone couldn’t keep them safe...”

— Gail Honeyman

281. “All of these seemed strange activities to impose on young people with no interest in them, and indeed I’m certain that they merely served to alienate the majority of us from physical activity for life.”

— Gail Honeyman

282. “Before and after the fire. One day I was breakfasting on watermelon, feta and pomegranate seeds, the next I was eating toasted Mother’s Pride smeared with margarine. That’s the story Mummy told me, at any rate.”

— Gail Honeyman

283. “Are you talking about my face?” I said. “No, silly, your scar. Your face is lovely. You’ve got very clear skin, you know.”

— Gail Honeyman

284. “I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. There was throbbing pain and the beginnings of an itch downstairs. Perhaps I should have put my underpants back on.”

— Gail Honeyman

285. “Budgeting is a skill, and a very useful one at that – after all, if I were to run out of funds, find myself indebted, there is no one, not a single soul, on whom I could call to bail me out. I’d be destitute. I.”

— Gail Honeyman

286. “After the fire, I never managed to find anyone who could fit the spaces that had been created inside me.”

— Gail Honeyman

287. “If they liked you – and, I remembered, Raymond and I had agreed that we were pals now – then, it seemed, they were prepared to maintain contact, even if you were sad, or upset, or behaving in very challenging ways.”

— Gail Honeyman

288. “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

289. “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

290. “Everything was there, obvious to us both, but it all remained unsaid.”

— Gail Honeyman

291. “I couldn’t imagine how it would be possible to hike to the source of the Nile, or to climb up a ladder to investigate a malfunction inside a particle accelerator, wearing kitten heels and ten denier tights.”

— Gail Honeyman

292. “Sleep came like a sledgehammer.”

— Gail Honeyman

293. “He actually sounded like he meant both; that he would indeed see me soon, and that he wished me to take care of myself.”

— Gail Honeyman

294. “The Guinness, Raymond. It was three pounds fifty.” He stared at me. “It’s OK,” I said, “there’s no rush. You can give it to me on Monday, if that’s easier.”

— Gail Honeyman

295. “And the office is largely staffed by shirkers and idiots, Raymond”.”

— Gail Honeyman

296. “Nevertheless, I couldn’t attend Sammy’s funeral in inappropriate clothing. The black dress, the assistant assured me, was smart, but could also be “dressed down.” The coat could be worn all winter. My jerkin had more than paid for itself over the years, but I would keep it, of course, in case it was required again in future. I hung everything up carefully. I was ready. Bring out your dead.”

— Gail Honeyman

297. “I could not solve the puzzle of me.”

— Gail Honeyman

298. “Families came and went, and the whole place felt temporary, somehow, like theatrical scenery that had been hastily assembled and could be shifted at any time.”

— Gail Honeyman

299. “Raymond was looking at me. “I’m going to my mum’s now,” he said.”

— Gail Honeyman

300. “The musician! How blessed.”

— Gail Honeyman