Top 30 Sally Hepworth Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Things were far better watched from a distance... When you watched too closely, you saw things you didn’t want to see.”

— Sally Hepworth

2. “What’s the point in having a mentally ill aunt if she can’t buy you a Nerf Super Soaker Electrostorm Blaster?”

— Sally Hepworth

3. “Some people jumped in and tried to save someone who was in trouble; others did anything they could to save themselves.”

— Sally Hepworth

4. “People underestimate the role fate plays in our lives.”

— Sally Hepworth

5. “It is just a problem, Antoinette, he would probably have said, and a problem is only a problem until you solve it.”

— Sally Hepworth

6. “The library belongs to everyone. The library, Janet used to say, is one of only a few places in the world that one doesn’t need to believe anything or buy anything to come inside.”

— Sally Hepworth

7. “By the time I get out of the shower, Tom is in bed. At first I think he is asleep, but as soon as I crawl in beside him, his eyes open. “How are you going to live without me?” he says. We both chuckle, even as a tear slides from the corner of Tom’s eye. “I won’t,” I say, and then he reaches for me and we don’t talk anymore.”

— Sally Hepworth

8. “I’d always found there was something agreeable about people who liked dogs and something untrustworthy about those who didn’t.”

— Sally Hepworth

9. “The less perfect things were, she was finding, the more likely they were to be real.”

— Sally Hepworth

10. “Instead she was a spectator – a strange woman in a bathrobe, watching through the window. But she was going to get her life back. That was exactly what she’d come to Pleasant Court to do.”

— Sally Hepworth

11. “I never had a good answer to Mom’s question. ‘If I don’t remember, will I have been here at all?’ But maybe her question was flawed. Maybe it doesn’t matter what you remember. Maybe if someone else remembers and speaks your name, you were here.”

— Sally Hepworth

12. “One thing you didn’t realize until you were a grandparent was that little children were a tiny glimpse of magic in a dreadfully difficult world. They had to be disciplined, sure, but they also had to be enjoyed. Parents worked so hard these days that often they didn’t make time to enjoy them, but grandparents knew better. The days were long and years were short, that was what everyone said these days.”

— Sally Hepworth

13. “Life is too short not to kiss.”

— Sally Hepworth

14. “Angry is just a pen name for sad,” Janet had explained. “In my experience, nine times out of ten if you are kind to the angry person, you will calm them down and find out what is really going on with them.”

— Sally Hepworth

15. “It’s the truth. Ollie and Nettie would never help me. I’m their mother, which means in our relationship they will always be children, and will only see things from their own perspectives.”

— Sally Hepworth

16. “Dementia isn’t the only place that memories are found to be flawed – people find out they can’t rely on their memories every day. People blindsided in relationships. People who find out their truth is a lie. People pulled from trauma. People awakened, as in Anna and Eve. I wondered: If you can’t use memories to steer your life, what can you use? I didn’t know. It was why I had to write this book.”

— Sally Hepworth

17. “It’s funny, even though we’ve just been discussing dementia-related stuff, for the last few minutes, it didn’t feel like either of us had dementia. It felt like we were just a guy and a girl, discussing life.”

— Sally Hepworth

18. “A few months ago, presented with the knowledge that life wasn’t going to be what I’d planned, I wanted to check out, close the book. But now, it’s like suddenly I’ve found a few more pages. And it feels like, against all likelihood, the last chapter might be the best one of all. The last chapter, in fact might be something great.”

— Sally Hepworth

19. “If it were up to me, every child would have a year in the library before they went to school.”

— Sally Hepworth

20. “You might start something on a lie, or finish it on a lie, but that doesn’t mean that everything in the middle isn’t the truth.”

— Sally Hepworth

21. “The sound of a phone ringing is among the most crazy-making noises in the world for me. The tinny, repetitive sound of it. The accompanying vibration. Thankfully, my phone rarely rings.”

— Sally Hepworth

22. “To my family and friends who live in terror of being cast as a villain in one of my books. It’s a valid fear. Be nice to me.”

— Sally Hepworth

23. “Sisterly relationships are so strange in this way. The way I can be mad at Rose but still want to please her. Be terrified of her and also want to run to her. Hate her and love her, both at the same time. Maybe when it comes to sisters, boundaries are always a little bit blurry. Blurred boundaries, I think, are what sisters do best.”

— Sally Hepworth

24. “Funny how love can remain, despite everything.”

— Sally Hepworth

25. “Maybe when it comes to sisters, boundaries are always a little bit blurry. Blurred boundaries, I think, are what sisters do best.”

— Sally Hepworth

26. “Perhaps the very worst people still had some good in them. And perhaps the very best had some bad.”

— Sally Hepworth

27. “One thing I’ve learned about facing fear,” he says, “is that sometimes, it’s just too scary.”

— Sally Hepworth

28. “That people without sisters think it’s all sunshine and lollipops or all blood and guts. But actually it’s always both. Sunshine and guts. Lollipops and blood.”

— Sally Hepworth

29. “You know how you feel for someone you know who is hurt or sick or sad? Imagine feeling that for everyone. Not just everyone you know, but everyone. Every person in the world. All the time.”

— Sally Hepworth

30. “I’m beginning to think Wally was right when he said I was normal and everyone else were the weirdos.”

— Sally Hepworth

31. “The thing that makes ethics interesting is that no two individuals see things the same. We all have our own internal barometer of what’s right and wrong.”

— Sally Hepworth

32. “Your mother was my life partner, he always says, and a life partner is for life.”

— Sally Hepworth

33. “Turns out I don’t need someone holding my board and pushing me into the wave – I can do it myself. Several times as, as I ride the wave, I have that glorious, blissful feeling... like I’m flying. It’s even better than the feeling I had the day Gabe took me surfing. Because it taught me that Gabriel Gerard isn’t the only one who can make magic. I can make magic too.”

— Sally Hepworth

34. “Oh, I prefer not to touch people if I can possibly help it. Did you know that we carry an average of thirty-two hundred bacteria from a hundred and fifty species on our hands at any one time? This includes fecal bacteria! If I shook hands with everyone I met at the library, I’d be constantly ill, not to mention contaminated with god knows what.”

— Sally Hepworth