Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “There: soft fingers on vibrating steel, and a chord shimmered into the air, nebulous and milky, like light from an old, old star. A voice: warm and low and gentle, a voice to cast spells, charm snakes, shape the course of dreams.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

253. “All of the seats already had an occupant, which meant I was going to have to position myself next to a stranger. In a different mood, I enjoyed this game: one had ten seconds to scan the occupants and select the slimmest, sanest, cleanest-looking person to sit next to.”

— Gail Honeyman

254. “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

255. “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

256. “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

257. “But it didn’t hurt – like noticing you had a stone in your shoe, but while you were sitting down rather than walking on it.”

— Gail Honeyman

258. “The lights were bright on him, and I was in darkness. But he would see me, nonetheless. If it was meant to be, and surely it was, then he would see me, the way I’d seen him, all those weeks ago.”

— Gail Honeyman

259. “I say it out loud, often: niamniamensis. It’s like kissing, the “m’s forcing your lips together, rolling over the consonants, your tongue poking into n’s and over the s’s.”

— Gail Honeyman

260. “You’re still of the view that you don’t want to know anything else about the incident, or about your mother, I understand?” No smiling this time. “That’s right,” I said. “There’s no need – I speak to her once a week, on a Wednesday evening, regular as clockwork.”

— Gail Honeyman

261. “None of his muscles were visible, and I suspect he only ever used the ones in his forearms with any degree of regularity.”

— Gail Honeyman

262. “Do you know much about music, then?” I asked, as we walked toward a pub which Raymond assured me was quiet – “A proper old man’s pub,” he said, whatever that was. “Eh, aye, I guess,” he said. “Wonderful,” I said. “Now please: tell me everything.”

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

— Gail Honeyman

265. “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

266. “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

267. “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

268. “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

269. “People seem to like me better with makeup on, for some reason,” I said. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged, apparently as stumped as I was.”

— Gail Honeyman

270. “Then I felt bad. Even alcoholics deserve help, I suppose, although they should get drunk at home, like I do, so that they don’t cause anyone else any trouble. But then, not everyone is as sensible and considerate as me.”

— Gail Honeyman

271. “I work in accounts, Mrs. Gibbons,” I said. I told her a bit about my job, and she appeared to be fascinated, nodding along and occasionally saying “Is that right?” and “My my, isn’t that interesting.” When I ended my monologue, having exhausted the already limited conversational opportunities afforded by accounts receivable, she smiled.”

— Gail Honeyman

272. “The computer made that annoying ping which indicates the arrival of an electronic message. I clicked on it without thinking. How I despise these Pavlovian responses in myself!”

— Gail Honeyman

273. “She certainly seemed to have a life, not just an existence. She seemed happy. It must be possible, then.”

— Gail Honeyman

274. “Part of me, a very small sliver, briefly considered dipping my head to taste a drop, purely because I’d been ordered not to.”

— Gail Honeyman

275. “When did people become embarrassed to sing in public? Was it because of the decline in churchgoing? And yet the television schedule was full of singing contests in which people, however untalented, were far from shy about participating.”

— Gail Honeyman

276. “He is a spectacularly unsophisticated conversationalist.”

— Gail Honeyman

277. “Some people, weak people, fear solitude.”

— Gail Honeyman

278. “In my eagerness to change, to connect with someone, I’d focused on the wrong thing, the wrong person.”

— Gail Honeyman

279. “My childhood was full of culinary contradiction, and I’ve dined on both hand-dived scallops and boil-in-the-bag cod over the years. After much reflection on the political and sociological aspects of the table, I have realized that I am completely uninterested in food. My preference is for fodder that is cheap, quick and simple to procure and prepare, whilst providing the.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

281. “The past is a living thing.”

— Gail Honeyman

282. “I do exist, don’t I? It often feels as if I’m not here, that I’m a figment of my own imagination. 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. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.”

— Gail Honeyman

283. “Finding out more about him was the right thing to do, the sensible approach, if it turned out that he was going to be the love of my life.”

— Gail Honeyman

284. “I was on the horns of a dilemma; there seemed little point in traveling to hospital to see a comatose stranger and drop off some fizzy pop at his bedside. On the other hand, it would be interesting to experience being a hospital visitor, and there was always an outside chance that he might wake up when I was there. 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

285. “A cultured man. How much we had in common!”

— Gail Honeyman

286. “My preference is for fodder that is cheap, quick and simple to procure and prepare, whilst providing the requisite nutrients to enable a person to stay alive.”

— Gail Honeyman

287. “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? Someone ought to write a book, or at least an explanatory pamphlet, and pass this information on.”

— Gail Honeyman

288. “The gilded confines of the Beauty Hall were not my preferred habitat; like the chicken that had laid the eggs for my sandwich, I was more of a free-range creature.”

— Gail Honeyman

289. “I wasn’t made for illiteracy; it simply didn’t come naturally.”

— Gail Honeyman

290. “Monday takes a long time to come around.”

— Gail Honeyman

291. “This time, I couldn’t resist. I took out my brand-new phone, accessed my pristine Twitter account and waited till he had paid and had left the building. I typed quickly and pressed send.”

— Gail Honeyman

292. “Turn the other cheek for Mummy, Eleanor, there’s a good girl.”

— Gail Honeyman

293. “That evening, I had planned to relax with a cup of Bovril and listen to a very interesting radio program about South American politics, after completing my usual checks on what Johnnie Lomond was up to. He’d sent a desultory tweet about a character in a television program and posted a photograph on Facebook of a new pair of boots he wanted. A slow news day, then. Hearing from Mummy on a Monday was an unexpected, unwelcome surprise.”

— Gail Honeyman

294. “I suppose one of the reasons we’re all able to continue to exist for our allotted span in this green and blue vale of tears is that there is always, however remote it might seem, the possibility of change.”

— Gail Honeyman

295. “I opened my mouth and heard the flesh and gums peel apart, like orange segments being separated.”

— Gail Honeyman

296. “We laughed far longer than his feeble witticism merited, just because it felt good.”

— Gail Honeyman

297. “Mummy always said that an obsession with home interiors was tediously bourgeois and, worse still, that any kind of “do-it-yourself” activities were very much the preserve of the hoi polloi. It’s quite frightening to think about the ideas that I may have absorbed from Mummy.”

— Gail Honeyman

298. “I walked through the fire and I lived.”

— Gail Honeyman

299. “We ended up in a bar five minutes from the hospital, on a busy road. One of the tables outside was unoccupied. The metal surface was covered in circular stains and its legs looked unstable, but Raymond seemed delighted. “Seats outside!” he said, happily throwing himself down and hanging his jacket over the back of his chair. “Right then, I’ll go to the bar,” he said. “What are you after, Eleanor?”

— Gail Honeyman

300. “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