Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “My eye was drawn to a bright green hue, the same shade as a poisonous Amazonian frog, the tiny, delightfully deadly ones.”

— Gail Honeyman

302. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

304. “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

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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

308. “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

309. “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

310. “I was a human woman, no more and no less.”

— Gail Honeyman

311. “The barman was well over six feet tall and had created strange, enormous holes in his earlobes by inserting little black plastic circles in order to push back the skin. For some reason, I was reminded of my shower curtain.”

— Gail Honeyman

312. “I’m so sorry.” We both spoke the words at exactly the same time. We tried again, and the same thing happened. Suddenly, I laughed, and he did too. Short bursts, at first, and then for longer. It was proper, genuine laughter, the kind that makes your whole body shake. My mouth was wide open, my breath slightly wheezy, my eyes shut tight. I felt vulnerable, and yet very relaxed and comfortable. I imagined that vomiting or going to the lavatory in front of him would feel the same way.”

— Gail Honeyman

313. “I’m not really sure I know any normal people.”

— Gail Honeyman

314. “There was no living thing in the universe that was more alone than me. Or more terrible.”

— Gail Honeyman

315. “If I could perform scansion on the Aeneid, if I could build a macro in an Excel spreadsheet, if I could spend the last nine birthdays and Christmases and New Year’s Eves alone, then I’m sure I could manage to organize a delightful festive lunch for thirty people on a budget of ten pounds per capita.”

— Gail Honeyman

316. “I wondered, however, whether I might be better off waiting to see what happened at the gig before taking things to an epistolary level. There was no need to be reckless.”

— Gail Honeyman

317. “I’d only been offered a choice of tea or coffee. I wondered why hair salons didn’t provide anything stronger.”

— Gail Honeyman

318. “I looked around, wondering what time it was, and whether they would have burned Sammy by now, or whether they kept all the bodies back till the end of the day to get a really good blaze going.”

— Gail Honeyman

319. “Good-bye, Mummy,” I said. The last word. My voice was firm, measured, certain. I wasn’t sad. I was sure. And, underneath it all, like an embryo forming – tiny, so tiny, barely a cluster of cells, the heartbeat as small as the head of a pin, there I was. Eleanor Oliphant.”

— Gail Honeyman

320. “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

321. “A woman who knew her own mind and scorned the conventions of polite society. We were going to get along just fine.”

— Gail Honeyman

322. “Eyelids are really just flesh curtains.”

— Gail Honeyman

323. “I cleared my throat before I spoke, realizing that I hadn’t uttered a word for almost twelve hours, back when I told the taxi driver where to drop me off. That’s actually quite good, for me – usually, I don’t speak from the point at which I state my destination to the bus driver on Friday night, right through until I greet his colleague on Monday morning.”

— Gail Honeyman

324. “What about your mum, Eleanor? What happened to her?” I gulped the rest of my wine down as fast as I could. “I’d prefer not to discuss Mummy, if that’s all right, Raymond.”

— Gail Honeyman

325. “She had tried to steer me towards vertiginous heels again – why are these people so incredibly keen on crippling their female customers? I began to wonder if cobblers and chiropractors had established some fiendish cartel.”

— Gail Honeyman

326. “There was no hope, things couldn’t be put right. I couldn’t be put right. The past could neither be escaped nor undone. After all these weeks of delusion, I recognized, breathless, the pure, brutal truth of it. I felt despair and nausea mingled inside me, and then that familiar black, black mood came down first.”

— Gail Honeyman

327. “I decided to clean the flat from top to bottom. I saw how grubby it was, how tired, It looked like I felt – unloved, uncared for.”

— Gail Honeyman

328. “Perhaps that was what pampering meant, though – literally, not having to lift a finger.”

— Gail Honeyman

329. “I stared at her. The imbalance in the extent of our knowledge of each other was manifestly unfair. Social workers should present their new clients with a fact sheet about themselves to try to redress this, I think. After all, she’d had unrestricted access to that big brown folder, the bumper book of Eleanor, two decades’ worth of information about the intimate minutiae of my life. All I knew about her was her name and her employer.”

— Gail Honeyman

330. “It’s as unfair to dislike someone because they’re attractive as it is to dislike someone because of a deformity.”

— Gail Honeyman

331. “He sings in the way that a bird sings; his music is a sweet, natural thing that comes like rain, like sunlight, something that, perfectly, just is.”

— Gail Honeyman

332. “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? He was warm and solid. I could smell his deodorant, and the detergent he used to wash his clothes – over both scents there lay a faint patina of cigarettes. A Raymond smell. I leaned in closer.”

— Gail Honeyman

333. “I should have been offended that he was commandeering my living space, but instead I felt relief, overwhelming relief at being taken care of.”

— Gail Honeyman

334. “I wondered if thats what it would be like in a family – it was simply that you would know, almost unthinkingly, that they’d be there if you needed them, no matter how bad things got. Im not prone to envy, as a rule, but I must confess I felt a twinge when I thought about this. Envy was a minor emotion in comparison to the sorrow I felt at never having a chance to experience this... what was it? Unconditional love, I supposed.”

— Gail Honeyman

335. “He was warm and solid. I could smell his deodorant, and the detergent he used to wash his clothes – over both scents there lay a faint patina of cigarettes. A Raymond smell. I leaned in closer.”

— Gail Honeyman

336. “Have you ever had counseling before, Miss Oliphant?” she said, taking out a notebook from her handbag. It had, I noticed, several accessories attached to it, key rings and the like – a pink, fluffy monkey, a giant metallic letter M, and, most hideous of all, a tiny, sequinned red stiletto shoe. I’d come across the type before. Ms. Temple was “fun.”

— Gail Honeyman

337. “I went to see Loretta, the office manager. She has overinflated ideas of her own administrative abilities, and in her spare time makes hideous jewelry, which she then sells to idiots.”

— Gail Honeyman

338. “Daringly, I didn’t put my name, because I realized he’d know it was from me.”

— Gail Honeyman

339. “There he was, a gift from the gods – handsome, elegant and talented. I was fine, perfectly fine on my own, but I needed to keep Mummy happy, keep her calm so she would leave me in peace.”

— Gail Honeyman

340. “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. I wondered how it would feel to perform such simple deeds for other people.”

— Gail Honeyman

341. “Their laughter seemed to have turned into low whispering now. It never ceases to amaze me, the things they find interesting, amusing or unusual. I can only assume they’ve led very sheltered lives.”

— Gail Honeyman

342. “Everybody needs to take a wee moment to themselves now and again, eh?”

— Gail Honeyman

343. “After some contemplation, I had opted for a square of indeterminate white fish, which was coated in bread crumbs and deep fried and then inserted between an overly sweet bread bun, accompanied, bizarrely, by a processed cheese slice, a limp lettuce leaf and some salty, tangy white slime which bordered on obscenity.”

— Gail Honeyman

344. “What, after all, is the point of eating out if you have to clear up yourself? You might as well have stayed at home.”

— Gail Honeyman

345. “There isn’t anything to eat. Mummy will be back soon. Where’s Mummy?”

— Gail Honeyman

346. “I let myself be held, moved closer into the embrace in fact, because, I was forced to admit, at that particular time and in those particular circumstances, and feeling the way I did, the sensation of being held by him was nothing short of miraculous.”

— Gail Honeyman

347. “There is categorically no need for eye contact when the person concerned is wielding sharp implements.”

— Gail Honeyman

348. “He seemed very out of breath, placed both items gently on my hall carpet without being asked, and started to take off his jacket, still puffing and blowing like a beached porpoise. Smoking kills.”

— Gail Honeyman

349. “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

350. “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