Quotes from Lisa Jewell

I listened to your podcast this summer. Basic bitch? Really? I've been under attack all my life, Alix. All my life. And now from you too.

Business-class travel. If you haven't done it, then you can only imagine it. And once you have done it, you can never unimagine it—you are ruined for life.

And how many stories has she missed all these years while she's been so wrapped up in her own?

unlike his brother

Cooking doesn't just nurture the recipient; it nurtures the chef.

Forty-two is a strange age. Neither young nor old. If I were straight, I suppose I'd be frantically flailing around right now trying to find a last-minute wife with functioning ovaries. As it is, I am not straight, and neither am I the sort of man that other men wish to form lengthy and meaningful relationships with, so that leaves me in the worst possible position—an unlovable gay man with fading looks.

It was hard for her to understand why Arlette was alive when Freddie Mercury, for example, was dead.

Your father was not a boss-eyed sailor. Or a rapist. He was a legend.

Oh, you know,' she says, her voice cracking slightly. 'Just your typical level-two fucked-up rich girl having a stupid crisis. Just ignore me. It's best.

But I realised it wasn't a ghost, it was his SPIRIT and then I realised that a spirit is just another word for a memory, isn't it? The stronger the memory the stronger the spirit. Because as much as I'd love to believe that the spirit lives on as a thing separate to humanity, I know that's not true. It's in our minds, in our hearts, that a person's spirit lives on.

Seems strange,' he continues. 'A girl you barely know, yet you have selfies with her on your phone and then she's cuddling up to you at the bus stop like she's your best friend.

I've barely eaten and the cheap, not-quite-cold-enough champagne goes directly to the bottom of my stomach and into my bloodstream and I find, as my eyes take in the beauty of Chicago's skyline reflected in the rose-gold mirror of the lake, that I am crying.

This time next year the skinny wife would be living in some shit flat somewhere because it would be all she could afford, and his kids would have to shuttle back and forth between two shit flats and sit making awkward conversation with Alicia, and looking after their mum because her heart would be broken and she wouldn't be the mum they knew anymore, she'd be a new mum, and their childhoods would be shattered and changed. And

The only bad books are books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that had been published is going to be a 'good book' for someone

Please don't be sorry. Please just cry for as long as you need to cry.

My theory, currently, is that this is someone who has known something all along whilst remaining in the shadows. Someone who knows what happened to Tallulah and Zach.

Rejection was a fact of life. It wasn't a nice fact of life. But it was a fact.

her sleep vigilantly

All brains are remarkable, but yours is more remarkable than most and I think you should just focus on what tat brain pf yours is capable of and not get hung up on labels and names.

It can't be a coincidence, she thinks now; it can't be a coincidence that they've all gone, that they've abandoned houses, social media platforms, college places, friends.

He did just enough to make her feel loved, protected, respected and admired

Things that felt like a good idea at ten o'clock would seem like the worst idea in the world by ten thirty. Someone once said to her that the key to a happy life was making good decisions. But making good decisions was beyond her because she could always see an infinity of outcomes and all of them seemed good for at least a moment.

He'd cried and buried his wet face in her shoulder and told her that he was not worthy, that she could leave him, that he wouldn't blame her, that this was not what she'd signed up for, less than she deserved. She had stroked his hair and soothed him and told him that she was not with him for his money, that she was with him because she loved him. She loved him. She loved him.

It's the money thing,' he said after a short, murky moment of post-coital silence. 'It's … I'm not used to this. I'm not used to being poor. I'm not used to having to take money from the woman I love. I'm just … I'm emasculated, Rachel. I'm fucking emasculated.