Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “If I’m ever unsure as to the correct course of action, I’ll think, “What would a ferret do?”

— Gail Honeyman

352. “I had no idea what it was, but I realized that I’d happily sit here in the warmth with him and watch a golf programme if that was all there was.”

— Gail Honeyman

353. “I needed to make something happen, anything. I couldn’t keep passing through life, over it, under it, around it. I couldn’t go on haunting the world like a wraith.”

— Gail Honeyman

354. “Graphic design is of no interest to me. I’m a finance clerk. I could be issuing invoices for anything, really: armaments, Rohypnol, coconuts.”

— Gail Honeyman

355. “With my animal grooming regime in mind, I would turn my attention to my talons.”

— Gail Honeyman

356. “After much reflection on the political and sociological aspects of the table, I have realized that I am completely uninterested in food.”

— Gail Honeyman

357. “Yes,” I said, and then, remembering my manners, I muttered, “Thank you, Raymond.”

— Gail Honeyman

358. “I did not own any Tupperware, having no need of it until this point. I could go to a department store to purchase some. That seemed to be the sort of thing that a woman of my age and social circumstances might do. Exciting!”

— Gail Honeyman

359. “Laura’s house was at the end of a neat cul-de-sac of small, modern houses. There were several cars in the driveway. We approached the front door and I noticed that she had red geraniums in window boxes. I find geraniums somewhat unsettling; that rich, sticky scent when you brush against them, a brackish, vegetable smell that’s the opposite of floral.”

— Gail Honeyman

360. “I feel like a spy or something,” said Raymond, looking at the sealed envelope that lay between us. “You’re completely unsuited to a career in espionage,” I told him. He raised his eyebrows. “Your face is too honest,” I said, and he smiled.”

— Gail Honeyman

361. “Eleanor Oliphant? June Mullen, Social Work,” she said, stepping forward, her progress blocked by the door. “I was expecting Heather,” I said, peering around.”

— Gail Honeyman

362. “For my twenty-first birthday gift, he therefore punched me in the kidneys, kicked me as I lay on the floor until I passed out and then gave me a black eye when I came round, for “withholding information.”

— Gail Honeyman

363. “The slow noise of the scissors slicing through it was like the sound of embers shifting in a fire: tinkly, dangerous.”

— Gail Honeyman

364. “Could I ever become a Musician’s muse, I wondered? What was a muse, anyway?”

— Gail Honeyman

365. “We walked in silence, the kind that you didn’t feel the need to fill.”

— Gail Honeyman

366. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

368. “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

369. “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

370. “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

371. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

375. “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

376. “I was homeschooled after that.”

— Gail Honeyman

377. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

379. “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

380. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

382. “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

383. “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

384. “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

385. “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

386. “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

387. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

389. “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

390. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

392. “She lived alone, had a job, her own business even. She certainly seemed to have a life, not just an existence.”

— Gail Honeyman

393. “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

394. “You grew inside me, your teeth and your tongue and your cervix are all made from my cells, my genes.”

— Gail Honeyman

395. “Who was this stranger, and why had I chosen him, of all the men in this city, this country, the world, to be my saviour?”

— Gail Honeyman

396. “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

397. “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

398. “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

399. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman