Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “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

252. “How different Raymond’s life had been from mine – a proper family, a mother and a father and a sister, nestled among other proper families. How different it was still; every Sunday, here, this.”

— Gail Honeyman

253. “You never think about the people that are left behind to deal with the aftermath of it all.”

— Gail Honeyman

254. “He had his hands in the pockets of his low-slung denim trousers, and was wearing a strange, oversized woolen hat that I hadn’t seen before. It looked like the kind of hat that a German goblin might wear in an illustration from a nineteenth-century fairy tale, possibly one about a baker who was unkind to children and got his comeuppance via an elfin horde. I rather liked it.”

— Gail Honeyman

255. “I’d learned that money was something to worry about, to ration.”

— Gail Honeyman

256. “The minister, looking pleased with himself, said that they’d stitched a happy life together after.”

— Gail Honeyman

257. “That’s all you ever want for your kids: for them to be happy.”

— Gail Honeyman

258. “I’ve noticed that most Scottish people don’t inquire beyond “down south,” and I can only assume that this description encapsulates some sort of generic Englandshire for them, boat races and bowler hats, as though Liverpool and Cornwall were the same sorts of places, inhabited by the same sorts of people. Conversely, they are always adamant that every part of their own country is unique and special. I’m not sure why.”

— Gail Honeyman

259. “I was homeschooled after that.”

— Gail Honeyman

260. “Was I alive? I hoped so, but only because if this was the location of the afterlife, I’d be lodging an appeal immediately.”

— Gail Honeyman

261. “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

262. “Social interaction, it appeared, was surprisingly expensive – the travel, the clothes, the drinks, the lunches, the gifts. Sometimes it evened out in the end – like with the drinks – but, I was finding out, more often than not, one incurred a net financial loss.”

— Gail Honeyman

263. “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

264. “He had a heart attack not long after I started uni,” he explained to me. “Never got to enjoy his retirement,” his mother said. “It often happens that way.” They both sat quietly for a moment. “What did he do for a living?” I asked. I wasn’t interested, but I felt it was appropriate. “Gas engineer,” Raymond said.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

266. “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

267. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

269. “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

270. “He reached in and lifted out the fattest cat I’d ever seen.”

— Gail Honeyman

271. “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

272. “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

273. “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

274. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

280. “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

281. “Eleanor,” he said, “why don’t you give me a call in a bit, and maybe you could bring his stuff over to him?”

— Gail Honeyman

282. “I had hair, ears, eyes and a mouth. I was a human woman, no more and no less.”

— Gail Honeyman

283. “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

284. “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

285. “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

286. “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

287. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

289. “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

290. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

292. “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

293. “Sleep came like a sledgehammer.”

— Gail Honeyman

294. “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

295. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

297. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

299. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman