Top 400 Gail Honeyman Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

403. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

405. “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

406. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

408. “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

409. “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

410. “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

411. “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

412. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

414. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

416. “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

417. “Sleep came like a sledgehammer.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

419. “The musician! How blessed.”

— Gail Honeyman

420. “His social skills were woefully inadequate, especially for a people-facing job like his.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

422. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

424. “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

425. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

427. “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

428. “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

429. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

431. “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

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

— Gail Honeyman

433. “But no one has ever shown me the right way to live a life, and although I’d tried my best over the years, I simply didn’t know how to make things better. I could not solve the puzzle of me.”

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

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

— Gail Honeyman

436. “I yearned for that brief, sharp feeling I get when I drink it – a sad, burning feeling – and then, blissfully, no feelings at all.”

— Gail Honeyman

437. “She lowered her voice again. “We’re not exactly talking criminal masterminds in here, darling – I think Professor Moriarty can rest easy for now.”

— Gail Honeyman

438. “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

439. “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