Quotes from Lisa Jewell

But nothing was often everything in forensics. Nothing could often be the answer to the whole bloody thing.

I've told her not to come here expecting validation or exemption from the usual rules of human decency.

But maybe I'll end up doing something else unconventional. Who knows. And I really hope that if I do, and as long as I'm not hurting anyone or doing anything, like, illegal, that everyone would accept it, you know, just carry on loving me anyway." Meg

that a man who can't love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed.

I remember his face when my father said that he no longer had private health cover, how quickly he left the house, how he dropped his unctuous demeanor like a brick. He sent him straight to the hospital in an NHS ambulance and left without saying goodbye.

She slept all night with the bedroom window open even though she knows women are advised not to. She arranged glasses in a row along her windowsill so that if a man did break in at least she would have some warning.

the lightness of having nothing to do and nowhere to be. She thought of all the things she could do once she'd finished this chapter of her life, all the books she could read and the picnics she could eat and the funfairs and shopping trips and holidays and parties.

Do you love him?' 'Yes.' 'Do you love him enough to hurt a lot of people who don't deserve to be hurt?' 'How do you expect me to answer that?' 'It's a tough question, but you do need to answer it. Not now, but over the next hours and days.

It's amazing how boring you can get away with being when you're pretty. No one seems to notice. When you're pretty everyone just assumes you must have a great life. People are so short-sighted, sometimes. People are so stupid.

I will never guilt trip my children when they are adults, she'd vowed. I will never expect more than they are

She felt like a creature born to reside on the bottom of the ocean floor, dark and flat and half-blind, slowly rising through the icy water to the glittering light above.

And it was them; I knew it clearly. It was them, draining the house, like vampires, of all of its decent energy, of all of its love and life and goodness, draining it all for themselves, feasting on our misery and our broken spirits.

But she has five years to find Him and marry him and then another five years to have a baby, maybe two if she likes the first one. She's not in a rush. Not yet. She'll just keep swinging left, keep looking nice when she goes out, keep accepting invitations to social events, keep positive, keep slim, keep herself together, keep going.

You're here every night, you join in, but you always seem to be - I don't know - more of a spectator than a participant, as if you are studying us, possibly for some sort of anthropological purpose. Do you even like us?

The front door goes again, and Josh appears. Cate's heart lifts a little. While Georgia always arrives with news and moods and announcements and atmospheres, her little brother arrives as though he'd never left. He doesn't bring things in with him, his issues unfurl gently and in good time.

And by the way"—she looks up suddenly—"I've read every single Agatha Christie novel ever published. Twice. So I might even be quite useful.

But what you just said, about him being dangerous. What do you mean by that?" "I mean," says Blue, "that a man who can't love but desperately needs to be lived is a dangerous thing indeed. And I think Floyd is dangerous because she's pretending to be someone he's not in order to get you to love him.

How much more of the taxpayers' money can I throw at this thing? An evil woman. A woman loved by nobody, missed by nobody, a woman with shards of ice in her heart. A case of child abuse where no evidence remains, where numerous people were in the house, where no records of any description exist for an entire six-year period of time, where a family of itinerants moved in and took over without anyone ever knowing. It's impossible. It's terrible.

She's not in a rush. Not yet. She'll just keep swiping left, keep looking nice when she goes out, keep accepting invitations to social events, keep positive, keep slim, keep herself together, keep going.

I was protective of my antisocial persona in many ways. It felt safe to be invisible. No one had any expectations of me, and after eighteen years living in my parents' house it was liberating not to be expected to do anything or be anything. So it was ambiguous, this feeling. On the one hand I wanted to be like these golden girls. On the other I felt far superior to them.

And also, I was in love with him and when you're in love, you'll forgive almost anything. It's a trait that I've carried with me into adult life, unfortunately. I always fall in love with people who hate me.

Never marry a woman. They might look good, but they destroy you.

Voyeurism was a form of control, like mental abuse, like rape, like bullying. It was nothing to do with the physicality of the action, and all to do with the feeling of power it gave the perpetrator, the balancing out of delicate ids and egos.

cats stretched out in puddles of sunshine;