Top 160 Lucy Foley Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “But here the cold has a chance to get you properly in its grip.”

— Lucy Foley

52. “I’m fascinated by – and a little bit suspicious of – people who have made loads of money. To me they’re like another species altogether, a breed of sleek and dangerous big cats.”

— Lucy Foley

53. “I suppose we all carry around different versions of ourselves.”

— Lucy Foley

54. “Perhaps it’s simply growing older. A sense that she doesn’t have to prove herself any longer, that she knows exactly who she is. I envy that.”

— Lucy Foley

55. “When I step outside the sun is just beginning to go down, spilling fire upon water. It tinges pink the mist that has begun to gather over the bog, that shields its secrets. This is my favourite hour.”

— Lucy Foley

56. “This was the most tender rack of lamb, velvet on the tongue, crushed potatoes scented with rosemary. It was perfect.”

— Lucy Foley

57. “In my experience, those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.”

— Lucy Foley

58. “Sometimes,’ I say, ‘I think it’s too difficult to tell the people closest to you. The ones you love.”

— Lucy Foley

59. “There are people who hold out for love, capital letters LOVE, and don’t stop until they’ve found it. There are those who give up because they don’t find it. Boom or bust – all or nothing. And then, perhaps in the majority, there are those who settle. And I think we’re the sensible ones. Because love doesn’t always mean longevity.”

— Lucy Foley

60. “We wouldn’t have worked. We’re friends, good friends. You know that.’ At that I feel him pulling away from me, retreating from the cliff edge.”

— Lucy Foley

61. “If I can’t move heaven, then I shall raise hell.”

— Lucy Foley

62. “Besides, there can’t be any real harm in not saying anything. Can there?”

— Lucy Foley

63. “There’s nothing less sexy than a lack of ambition, is there?”

— Lucy Foley

64. “You know, my friend, I have found that the best way to come to terms with one’s past is like this, through talk. It is painful, but, little by little, it helps to diffuse its power.”

— Lucy Foley

65. “In a strange way, it feels as though much of the evening since we got interrupted earlier has been a kind of foreplay. Feeling the gaze of the others upon us: envious, awed. Seeing in their reactions to us how good we look together. And yes, the hurt of having crossed a line with Charlie and being rebuffed. Maybe he’ll hear us.”

— Lucy Foley

66. “There are people who hold out for love, capital letters LOVE, and don’t stop until they’ve found it. There are those who give up because they don’t find it.”

— Lucy Foley

67. “What’s that expression the French have for it? Jolie laide: ugly beautiful.”

— Lucy Foley

68. “He put his hand on my shoulder because he can. Perhaps I’m reading too much into it. But it felt like a reminder that he is the one in charge, that I am working for him. That I must dance to his tune.”

— Lucy Foley

69. “I only hope she knows what she’s doing. Climbing so high, so quickly: it only makes for further to fall.”

— Lucy Foley

70. “When I married Jacques I understood it as an exchange. My youth and beauty for his wealth. Over the years, as is the way with this particular kind of contract, my worth only diminished as his increased.”

— Lucy Foley

71. “But that’s nostalgia for you, the tyranny of those memories of childhood that feel so golden, so perfect.”

— Lucy Foley

72. “You better look after my daughter. You better not feck this up. And if you do anything to hurt my girl – well, it’s simple. I’ll come for you.”

— Lucy Foley

73. “But that’s what being poor does to you; it shortens your childhood. It hardens your ambition.”

— Lucy Foley

74. “Sometimes these impulses overtake me – the urge to push things a bit further... even the urge to wound. I can’t stop myself, it’s like a compulsion.”

— Lucy Foley

75. “To crawl, as Theo put it, back into the belly of the beast, I’d thought it sounded melodramatic when he said it but when I stand at the gate and look up at it, it feels right. Like this place, this building, is some huge creature ready to swallow me whole.”

— Lucy Foley

76. “Jamie believed that people are basically civilized animals. That the essential urges are hidden beneath a layer of social gloss; stifled, controlled.”

— Lucy Foley

77. “You are one of the reasons I chose to have my wedding here, in Ireland. Because I know how much you value that heritage, I value it too. I wish it didn’t matter to me, what you think. But it bloody does. So you’re going to walk me up the aisle. That’s the very least you can do. You can walk me up that aisle and look bloody delighted for me, every step of the way.”

— Lucy Foley

78. “There are always secrets around the fringes of a wedding. I hear the things said in confidence, the bitchy remarks, the gossip. I heard some of the best man’s words in the cave.”

— Lucy Foley

79. “Actually, I know this place better than they think. It is more familiar to me in some ways than any other place I have known in my life. And I’m not worried about it being haunted. I have my own ghosts. I carry them with me wherever I go.”

— Lucy Foley

80. “I feel the rage, almost comforting in its familiarity, blossoming up inside of me and obliterating everything else in its wake.”

— Lucy Foley

81. “He’s kind of attractive, if you like your men rough around the edges.”

— Lucy Foley

82. “But around my family I find myself regressing, letting all the old pettiness and envy and hurt come rushing back until I am teenage Jules, plotting to get away. I must be bigger than this. I have forged my own path. I have built it all on my own, something stable and powerful. And this weekend is a statement of that. My victory march.”

— Lucy Foley

83. “It was the worst, most shameful thing I had ever done. It was the best thing that had ever happened to me.”

— Lucy Foley

84. “God, it’s all too disgusting to contemplate. Did he think about her, when we slept together? Did he think I was too stupid to ever guess? He must have done, I suppose. And he was right. That’s one more small part of what makes it so insulting.”

— Lucy Foley

85. “An ageing wife is one thing; a fat wife is another.”

— Lucy Foley

86. “I’m not saying that I have a drinking problem; I don’t. But I don’t ever drink for pleasure. I do it out of necessity. I use it as another painkiller: to blunt the edge of things, to alleviate the chronic, aching torment of memory.”

— Lucy Foley

87. “It’s tricky – as anyone who has been in this situation will know – to be the latest addition to a group of old friends.”

— Lucy Foley

88. “In the centre of everything stands the huge cake. It has appeared whole and perfect before them for most of the day, its train of sugar foliage glittering beneath the lights. But only minutes before the lights went out the guests gathered around to watch its ceremonial disembowelling. Now the deep red sponge gapes from within.”

— Lucy Foley

89. “Yeah,’ I say. It’s a pretty cringe word, but it’s.”

— Lucy Foley

90. “She looks rich. Not flashy rich. The French equivalent of posh. You don’t have hair that perfect unless you spend your days doing basically nothing.”

— Lucy Foley

91. “I have always, always got a plan; have done ever since I was little.”

— Lucy Foley

92. “They’re a family. They’re a family. And this isn’t Ben’s apartment: not really. Right now I’m sitting here inside someone’s family home. Why on earth didn’t Ben tell me this? Did it not seem important? Did he somehow not know?”

— Lucy Foley

93. “I see him look us over. I don’t think he likes what he sees. Is that a sneer, as he takes in Nick’s spotless Barbour coat, Samira’s Hunter wellies, Miranda’s fox-fur collar? If so, who knows what he makes of my city dweller’s clothes and wheeled Samsonite.”

— Lucy Foley

94. “Even though I wouldn’t change any of it, I’ve wondered whether we missed out on a couple more years of carefree fun. There’s another self that I sometimes feel I lost along the way. The girl who always stayed for one more drink, who loved a dance. I miss her, sometimes.”

— Lucy Foley

95. “She didn’t come to the hen do even though there was a room free in the villa for her. It did look odd –.”

— Lucy Foley

96. “He was a chameleon, an enigma. I had no idea, really, who I had invited under this roof, into the bosom of my family.”

— Lucy Foley

97. “I tune back in to the others. I feel like I’m coming up from underwater.”

— Lucy Foley

98. “Once he was stuck just outside Edinburgh on a train for four hours, because of an electrical fault. “You saw straightaway which people would eat you,” he told me, “without any hesitation, if you were stuck on a lifeboat together.”

— Lucy Foley

99. “Who’d have thought it?’ Femi says. ‘All of us, respectable adults. And having come out of that place? Again, no offence to your dad, Will. But it was like somewhere from another century. We’re lucky we got out alive – four boys left every term, as I recall.”

— Lucy Foley

100. “For so many years my insignificance and invisibility have been a mask I can hide behind. And in the process I have avoided raking up the past. Raking up the shame.”

— Lucy Foley