Top 160 Lucy Foley Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “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

53. “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

54. “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

55. “War happens to people, one by one.’ That’s exactly it, you see. Until it happens to you, you have no way of understanding it, let alone imagining it. Until then, it is simply a monster under the bed.”

— Lucy Foley

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

— Lucy Foley

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

— 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. “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

60. “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

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

— Lucy Foley

62. “If you love someone, really, you don’t so anything to hurt them.”

— Lucy Foley

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

— Lucy Foley

64. “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

65. “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

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

— Lucy Foley

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

— Lucy Foley

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

— Lucy Foley

69. “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

70. “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

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

— Lucy Foley

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

— Lucy Foley

73. “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

74. “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

75. “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

76. “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

77. “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

78. “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

79. “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

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

— Lucy Foley

81. “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

82. “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

83. “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

84. “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

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

— Lucy Foley

86. “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

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

— Lucy Foley

88. “Look, okay, I know I’m attractive. Very attractive. There, I’ve said it. Do you hate me now? Anyway, I don’t need it confirmed by some potbellied construction workers who would catcall anyone with a short skirt or tight top. If anything, they cheapen it.”

— Lucy Foley

89. “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

90. “You didn’t miss much,’ a man – slender, dark red hair – swoops into the conversation. ‘Just a load of bitches burning their tits off and gossiping over bottles of Whispering Angel. Goodness,’ he says, giving me a once-over before bending in to kiss my cheek. ‘Don’t you scrub up well?’ ‘Er – thanks.”

— Lucy Foley

91. “Hundreds, perhaps even thousands of pounds’ worth of silk and lace. The sort of lingerie that is not meant to be worn under clothes, that is meant only to grace your flesh for a few minutes before it is whipped off.”

— Lucy Foley

92. “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

93. “I didn’t believe in love at first sight until I saw Callum, across the bar at Fresher’s week, this boy with black curls and beautiful blue eyes. He gave me a sort of slow smile and it was like I knew him. Like we had always meant to come together, to find each other.”

— Lucy Foley

94. “There is nothing here to tell you about the man who inhabits the room, unless the nothing is in itself a clue to something. It has the anonymity of a prison cell.”

— Lucy Foley

95. “But also, I watch. I see everything. And it gives me a strange kind of power, even if I’m the only one who’s aware of it.”

— Lucy Foley

96. “And there is a pack feeling about them, like dogs that might behave well on their own but, once all together, don’t have their own minds. I’ll have to keep my eye on them tomorrow, make sure they don’t get carried away.”

— Lucy Foley

97. “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

98. “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

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

— Lucy Foley

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

— Lucy Foley