Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “His social skills were woefully inadequate, especially for a people-facing job like his.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

303. “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

304. “I didn’t burn Mummy, I walked through the fire and I lived.”

— Gail Honeyman

305. “There was, it seemed, no Eleanor-shaped social hole for me to slot.”

— Gail Honeyman

306. “I’d found a way to help me move forward at last. A way to replace a loss with a gain.”

— Gail Honeyman

307. “She’s the only one I’ve got. And good girls love their mothers. After the fire, I was always so lonely. Any mummy was better than no mummy.”

— Gail Honeyman

308. “I’m a widower, Eleanor,” Sammy said. “Jean died five years ago – cancer. Took her quick, in the end.” He paused and sat up straighter. “I’ve two sons and a daughter.”

— Gail Honeyman

309. “I’d made my legs black, and my hair blonde. I’d lengthened and darkened my eyelashes, dusted a flush of pink onto my cheeks and painted my lips a shade of dark red which was rarely found in nature. I should, by rights, look less like a human woman than I’d ever done, and yet it seemed that this was the most acceptable, the most appropriate appearance that I’d ever made before the world.”

— Gail Honeyman

310. “Go to Bobbi Brown, tell them Claire sent you.”

— Gail Honeyman

311. “Why him? Why now? On Monday morning, waiting at the bus stop, I tried to work it out. It was a tricky one. 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

312. “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?”

— Gail Honeyman

313. “Erm, right. I just wanted to let you know that I’m going in to see Sammy again today.”

— Gail Honeyman

314. “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

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

318. “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

319. “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

320. “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

321. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

323. “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

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

328. “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

329. “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

330. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

332. “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

333. “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

334. “He is a spectacularly unsophisticated conversationalist.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

337. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

339. “The past is a living thing.”

— Gail Honeyman

340. “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

341. “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

342. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

344. “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

345. “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

346. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

349. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman