Quotes from Jenny Colgan

Everyone is alien. And even when you are in love with someone, even when you think you know them better than you know yourself; even when you think you know everything about them and they you, and you live in each other's souls. Even then you know nothing about them at all.

It's also a story too about how if you love books, well, then I always think you have a layer of protection against the world, which sounds strange, but that is what I truly believe.

You are music to me," he said, quietly. "You are a dance, or the whisper of a song. When you are cross, you are Beethoven dreamink of the far seas, and when you are happy you are Saint-Saëns to me, and when you are sad you are Grieg looking on a rainy day, and when you laugh it is Mozart to me. And I would so very much like to make you dance.

That didn't sound much like a date, Rosie thought. Useful wasn't a word you used about a date. It was a word you used about a stapler.

Be silent, hide away and let your thoughts and longings rise and set in the deep places of your heart. Let dreams move silently as stars, in wonder more than you can tell. Let them fulfill you—and be still.

It was horribly difficult, she reflected, to have finally found the place you thought of as home, only to realize you were going to have to move on again.

My good man, could we have one deadly issue to deal with at a time?

Then when Matt had come along it hadn't been fireworks, passion and fights and drama. It had been low- key, sweet, lovely. But that didn't meant it wasn't the real thing. It never had done. Just because it wasn't suprising hadn't meant it wasn't right.

All the real blokes I know are obsessed with cars and have started doing cycling at the weekend and being really, really boring about it and banging on about their Fitbits and growing stupid beards and talking about being on Tinder. That's what all the 'real men' are like these days!

The way my luck is at the moment," said Polly, "I probably will get a tiny bit of money back, and as I leave the bank after picking it up, a bolt of lightning will come out of the sky and set it on fire. Then a piano will fall on my head and knock me down a manhole.

That was the problem with being so pale. Well, that and not being able to go out in bright sunlight without turning the color of a lobster and starting to smoke slightly.

There were daffodils, yes, and crocuses, and the hardy little snowdrops; and green was beginning to wreathe its way across the land – but when you still had to scrape the ice off your car in the morning, when you still had to run across the road in howling gales and lashing rain, when it felt as if you were holding your breath, waiting for the year to begin, even as days of your life passed you by …

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

Baby steps – one at a time. One day at a time, one breath at a time. That's the only way anyone gets through anything, okay?

If you weren't an extrovert, if you weren't shoving yourself out into the open all the time, posting selfies everywhere, demanding attention, talking constantly, people just gazed right past you. You got overlooked.

when people dedicate their lives to one thing that they really, really love and learn a lot about, amazing things can happen.

When you look at things the same way you've always done, nothing changes. When you change perspective, everything changes.

bread, the cornerstone of eating, one of the fundamentals of life!

No, I would say they are more arseholey than you.

I could do with a bit of piece and quiet.

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.

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'.

Life was short and loss was long and if anyone could find a bit of happiness – a tiny bit – they had to cling onto it like a lifebelt thrown to a drowning man

Dogs are tremendously good at showing you you don't have to check your phone every two seconds to have a happy life.