Top 80 Jenny Colgan Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “He had to take his life as he had had to take it for the last five years: to have no expectations as to what each day would bring. In fact, to expect nothing. To grab joy if he could. To hold fast. To try never to be surprised.”

— Jenny Colgan

52. “Some people go through life not really deciding to do much, not wanting to, always too fearful of the consequences to try something new. Of course, that in itself is also a decision. You’ll get somewhere whether you put any effort into it or not. But doing something new is so hard. And a few things can help.”

— Jenny Colgan

53. “Everything seemed to happen so slowly. Nina watched the spiral of dust tremble its way from the ceiling, wavering in the light, a tiny cloud of white, nothing more. But it was, she knew, enough. She looked at Surinder.”

— Jenny Colgan

54. “She stared into the distance and tried to think, honestly and properly, about her life: up here where it was clearer, and she could breathe, and she wasn’t surrounded by a million people in a great hurry dashing or grabbing or shouting or achieving things in their lives that they plastered all over Facebook and Instagram, making you feel inadequate.”

— Jenny Colgan

55. “Multiply all ingredients by four to get too many cupcakes.”

— Jenny Colgan

56. “And recommend them to other people: books for the brokenhearted and the happy, and people excited to be going on vacation, and people who need to know they aren’t alone in the universe, and books for children who really like monkeys, and, well, everything really. And to go places where I’m needed.”

— Jenny Colgan

57. “She is resisting the Internet idea... because she doesn’t want to one day tell her children that she posted an ad on the Internet, interviewed twenty-five hopeful candidates, and finally their father turned up and looked good in comparison with the rest of them. It just doesn’t seem right.”

— Jenny Colgan

58. “Nina had been told regularly since she was a child that she needed more fresh air, at which she would take her book and clamber up the apple tree at the bottom of their tatty garden, away from the car her father was always tinkering with but had never driven in all the years of her childhood – she wondered what had happened to it – and hide there, braced against the trunk, her feet swinging, burying herself in Enid Blyton or Roald Dahl until she was allowed back inside again.”

— Jenny Colgan

59. “Nina wondered what on Earth it would be to have that much money; to buy that many books without worrying.”

— Jenny Colgan

60. “Once upon a time when I was young, I had a lovely boyfriend who bought me a hammock and hooked it up on my tiny and highly perilous roof terrace, where I spent many happy hours just rocking and reading, eating Quavers and reflecting on my lovely handsome boyfriend. Then, I married him and we had a bunch of children and a dog and moved somewhere where it rains all the time, and I think the hammock is in storage. This, my friends, is apparently what’s known as ‘happily ever after’.”

— Jenny Colgan

61. “No experimental cures. No life-prolonging – and misery-prolonging – chemotherapy. As far as Colton was concerned, he had made his plans and said his goodbyes and was now letting the tide go out, ever so slightly; the waves came less far up the beach; the sea got further and further from view, bit by bit.”

— Jenny Colgan

62. “A nice manner and a level head would surely get you much further. But that didn’t cut much with the big cheeses, who liked flakey mission statements and loud, confident remarks.”

— Jenny Colgan

63. “She stepped forward and grabbed a huge romance Nina adored from the top of the pile. “Look at this! You already have it.” “Yes, I know, but this is the hardback first edition. Look! It’s beautiful! Never been read!”

— Jenny Colgan

64. “He was from that generation – the type who didn’t change things just because they were tired of them, or they were outdated. You bought something, or married someone, and stuck with it.”

— Jenny Colgan

65. “Yes! Do you never listen?” “I never listen.” “Okay, well, it’s a good thing I don’t talk much then, isn’t it?”

— Jenny Colgan

66. “It was a very odd concept – that you could become friends with someone simply by examining their bookshelves – but nevertheless, Zoe believed it fervently.”

— Jenny Colgan

67. “She would be as kick-ass as Katniss Everdeen, as uncompromising as Elizabeth Bennet, as brave as Hero.”

— Jenny Colgan

68. “Everyone, if they are lucky, loses parents that they love, in the end.”

— Jenny Colgan

69. “Apparently there is a python magazine that is about computers, and a python magazine that’s about really big snakes and if you get one you don’t really want the other.”

— Jenny Colgan

70. “Even though she had failed, she knew somewhere deep inside that when you were tested with the worst that could happen and you didn’t fall apart, then more things were possible than you imagined.”

— Jenny Colgan

71. “Good,” said Anita. “Do you know what you’re not thinking about when you’re slicing zucchini?” “Everything else?” “Correct. You’re not overthinking everything else.”

— Jenny Colgan

72. “The loch was the worst kind of dangerous: beautiful and tempting.”

— Jenny Colgan

73. “Carmen followed her heart and read books wherever her interests took her, about space, history, romance, anything she felt like, alighting from one to the next like a butterfly. Carmen shrugged.”

— Jenny Colgan

74. “Lilian and Ida Delia headed off to watch television together. They had a shared loathing for everyone who took part in scripted reality shows, and thus absolutely had to watch all of them together in order to better anatomize and discuss the faults of the young people taking part in them and therefore of today’s society in general. They felt this was important work that often required tea and Smarties.”

— Jenny Colgan

75. “People who were normally very organized and in control could fight extremely hard to preserve that control, including reducing their world to a tiny space which could not harm them.”

— Jenny Colgan

76. “He’s American,” corrected Tarnie. “That’s not weird. Well, you know. It is a bit weird but it’s not his fault.”

— Jenny Colgan

77. “People buy things in the hope that it will make them feel better,” said Blair. “It gives you a momentary boost, just buying it, but not for long. It’s just a stupid dopamine hit.”

— Jenny Colgan

78. “What do you think happiness is?” she asked him. “A by-product,” he answered immediately, “to being useful.”

— Jenny Colgan

79. “Polly soaked for a long time, reading her book, until she was warm again from the inside out, then put on her oldest, softest cotton pajamas and woollen socks, and propped herself up at the window to look out at the storm.”

— Jenny Colgan

80. “She would have been considered a beauty in any period of history other than the early twenty-first century, when the only acceptable shape for a beautiful woman was that of a hungry six-year-old who had inexplicably grown solid apple-shaped tits out of her shoulder blades.”

— Jenny Colgan

81. “If you’ve ever flown into London, you’ll know that they often have to put you in a holding pattern, where you circle about, waiting for a landing slot. And I never usually mind it; I like seeing the vast expanse of the huge city below me, that unfathomable number of people busying away, the idea that every single one of them is full of hopes and dreams and disappointments, street after street after street, millions and millions of souls and dreams. I always find it pleasingly mind-boggling.”

— Jenny Colgan

82. “She couldn’t even be jealous; it was something so lovely and far out of reach. It would be like being jealous of Amal Clooney.”

— Jenny Colgan

83. “Because the thing was, she guessed, you always thought you had time – time to fix the relationships that had broken down; to do all the things you thought you’d get around to; to finish everything, tie it up with a neat bow and that was it. But life wasn’t like that at all.”

— Jenny Colgan

84. “She’d read lots of books about people finding new lives, which hadn’t helped her mood either, had made her feel more and more trapped and stuck where she was, as if everyone except her was managing to get away and do interesting things.”

— Jenny Colgan

85. “You’ve moved an entire country away with a big bunch of books and a van. said Surinder. I already think you are totally stupid.”

— Jenny Colgan