Quotes from Lisa Jewell

I thought of what I'd allowed myself to become, for you. I never wanted that bloody child. I only wanted you.

She felt a terrible hollowness open up inside her, a sense that she was all alone, that she had in fact always been all alone, that the corners of her life were folding in and folding in, and that there was nothing she could do about it.

If, quite against all of Adele's naturally held beliefs, it turned out that there was an afterlife, she strongly suspected that in heaven it would always be a Friday night.

He left immediately, of course. He never wasted a beat when it came to Scarlett. She was his lifeforce, his meaning. He was nothing before Scarlett and he would return to nothing after her. When she needed him, he came to life, like a marionette taken out of a box.

I have exquisite taste, but I just don't know how to put tasteful things together in any semblance of visual harmony. No. I am not good at creating visual harmony. It's OK. I'm good at lots of other things.

No child wants to feel that they weren't wanted, even if they don't care much for the abandoner.

able to give.

I had gone back to being the "other" Saffyre Maddox, the one who showed up in the classroom every morning clean and fresh, hair neatly tied back, some mascara, some lip gloss. It wasn't so much that I actively wanted to look nice, it was more that if I didn't look nice, people would worry, they'd ask me questions, the pastoral-care woman would pull me into her office and expect me to tell her what was wrong with me.

Wanting to die and dying are generally unrelated.

A life without secrets and lies was a simple path to walk

Dad. I am so sorry. I am so, so sorry. I want to kill myself. The thought of you, seeing that. It makes me want to kill myself.

Yes. I agree. We are done here. I am sorry to have upset you, Miss Jones. But what we mustn't forget, whatever the truth of this situation, a young woman was killed in that house. Violently killed. This must remain the focus and I will keep making people cry for as long as it takes to find out who did it and why.

So, how did you manage the turnaround in your finances? I mean, a year and a half ago I was having to do all our food shopping because you were penniless. And now look at you! And the car! Wow!

She groomed me to have sex with her lover when I was thirteen.' 'Her lover?' 'David Thomsen. He was forty-six. Maybe older. She wanted me to get pregnant by him because she wasn't able to. So she groomed me. She left me alone with him. Made out it was romantic.

He is his mother's son: small-minded, self-absorbed, inward-thinking, a little bit racist, a little bit homophobic, a little bit misogynistic. All those things that don't matter when you're fourteen and in love, but start to sprout insidiously to the surface over the years it takes you to go from child to adult

He scoops up the gigantic cat and rests it on his lap. "This is Dick. I call him that because it was the only way I could make sure I got some.

There is nothing worse than a man who can't spell — it takes all the romance out of cards and love letters and things.

I'd subliminally determined at this point that the only way to really know what was going on in the world was to listen to women talk.

At thirty-two years of age, Rachel tried not to dwell too much on the fact that her entire adult existence was a mirage.

She pictures his face, the way his jaw clenches together when he's displeased about something, the way his fist comes down upon inanimate objects when he's annoyed, the flare of his nostrils, the entitled tilt of his chin as he surveys the object of his displeasure.

And to think that you got Interpol involved in this. How embarrassing!

And she knows him well enough to know that he would be humiliated if he found out about her affair with Scarlett and that that humiliation would spill over into anger and that he is strong and he is already only one flash away from hurting her, constantly.

There's little in life as exhilarating and satisfying as a true bargain.

lightness come upon her, a sense that there was a centre to everything after all.