Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “Thank you for making me shiny.”

— Gail Honeyman

302. “I went to the happy place in my mind for a moment, the pink and white fluffy place with bluebirds and gentle babbling streams and, now, a semi-bald cat purring noisily.”

— Gail Honeyman

303. “LOL could go and take a running jump. I wasn’t made for illiteracy; it simply didn’t come naturally.”

— Gail Honeyman

304. “If I’m ever unsure as to 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

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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

308. “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

309. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

311. “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

312. “I’d been pondering this, and concluded that there must be some people for whom difficult behaviour wasn’t a reason to end their relationship with you. 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. This was something of a revelation.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

319. “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

320. “Men like Raymond, pedestrial dullards, would always be distracted by women who looked like her, having neither the wit nor the sophistication to see beyond mammaries and peroxide.”

— Gail Honeyman

321. “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

322. “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

323. “I put my hands to my ears, unable to believe what I was hearing. Without exaggeration, it could only be described as the cacophonous din of hell.”

— Gail Honeyman

324. “Whatever Raymond was eating smelled disgusting, like gently reheated vomit.”

— Gail Honeyman

325. “Annoyingly, we began walking down the path at the same time.”

— Gail Honeyman

326. “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

327. “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

328. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

330. “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

331. “I did briefly consider taking up smoking,” I admitted, “but I thoroughly research all activities before commencement, and smoking did not in the end seem to me to be a viable or sensible pastime. It’s financially rebarbative too,” I said.”

— Gail Honeyman

332. “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

333. “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

334. “His eyes were light brown. They were light brown in the way that a rose is red, or that the sky is blue. They defined what it meant to be light brown.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

336. “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 requisite nutrients to enable a person to stay alive.”

— Gail Honeyman

337. “I saw him bend down to light the cigarette of a woman in a wheelchair – she’d brought her drip out with her, on wheels, so that she could destroy her health at the same time as taxpayers’ money was being used to try and restore.”

— Gail Honeyman

338. “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

339. “They were heels which were easy to walk in, but which were, nonetheless “very feminine.” On what basis was this decided, and by whom? Did it matter? I made a mental note to research gender politics and gender identity at some point. There would be a book about it – there were books about everything.”

— Gail Honeyman

340. “Listen, the past isn’t over. The past is a living thing. Those lovely scars of yours – they’re from the past, aren’t they? And yet they still live on your plain little face. Do they still hurt?” I shook my head, but said nothing. “Oh, they do – I know they do. Remember how you got them, Eleanor. Was it worth it? For her? Oh, there’s room on your other cheek for a bit more hurt, isn’t there? Turn the other cheek for Mummy, Eleanor, there’s a good girl.”

— Gail Honeyman

341. “Lesson: I must be prepared at all times.”

— Gail Honeyman

342. “She was always telling us we had to be on the lookout for someone who was good enough.” I shook my head. “I suppose that’s how I ended up here,” I said. “Trying to find someone like that, and then getting confused and making a giant mess of everything.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

344. “I could almost believe that someone might enjoy, or at least tolerate, my company over the duration of a brief luncheon, but it stretched credibility to think that it could happen twice in one week.”

— Gail Honeyman

345. “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

346. “The past is a living thing.”

— Gail Honeyman

347. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

350. “She certainly seems to have a life, not just an existence.”

— Gail Honeyman