Quotes from Lisa Jewell

And it occurs to her for the very first time that maybe Hanna isn't intrinsically unhappy. That maybe she just doesn't like her.

You will stay, won't you? I have, as ever, royally overcatered.

That wearing shiny shoes with bows on and rolling your eyes at other kids is not a sign of maturity, but a sign that you've missed a whole set of steps on the road to maturity.

I mean," says Blue, "that a man who can't love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed.

You are a grown woman! You're not a teenager. This is the real world. We are real people. This is real life. And things sometimes happen that don't fit in with how we think the story should go, but we just have to take a deep breath and get on with it, not sit there in the corner sulking because it's not what we were hoping for. Come on!

Someone, somewhere has liked something that Jasmine has posted on Instagram. This means that Alice's phone will continue to pop for the next ten minutes or so as everyone Jasmine knows likes the thing she posted. Alice pictures a sea of disembodied thumbs senselessly pressing hearts. She sighs.

People could look and see just a man, but in the same glance, the answer to all their problems.

It should be you missing and Ellie eating beans on toast.

I'm not sure, any more, I'm not sure about anything. But I'd happily try it. Try anything really, just to get back to myself.

As an adult man now of forty-one years old I have often used this refrain to get people to do what I want them to do. I didn't know who else to turn to. It gives the person your trying to manipulate nowhere to go. Their only option is to capitulate.

He knows there's more to life than five major events, that life is made up of all the moments in between.

I'm a dog person at heart and got the cats only because they're easier for selfish people to look after.

Once you had a reputation for being nice you couldn't mess with it.

But we all behaved badly in that house; not one of us got out of there without a black mark. I've come to accept our sins as survival strategies.

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 loved is a dangerous thing indeed. And I think Floyd is dangerous because he's pretending to be someone he's not in order to get you to love him.

I have done my best with what nature gave me. Money can't buy you love but it can buy you a chiseled jaw, perfectly aligned teeth, and plumped-up lips.

Memories fluttered about her mind, of days that had passed and died and were never to return.

For days and days on end they could act like everything was normal, like they were on a lovely little adventure together. And then the reality of their situation would crash through the façade and they'd emerge like a straggle of pile-up survivors crawling from the wreckage.

And you will always be so much more than a label.

My father's going to take everything you own and then break your life.

Libby can hear the whisper of every moment that this room has existed. Feel every breath of every person who has ever sat where she is sitting.

Hanna. Her middle child. The difficult one. The tiring one. The one she wouldn't want to be stranded on a desert island with. And a terrible thought shot through her, so fast she barely registered it. 'It should be you missing and Ellie eating beans on toast.

She read it through just once, before pressing send and propelling it forcefully, wantonly, thoughtlessly into the universe, where it would change the course of her life in ways that she could not possibly have imagined.

Poppy's hands fall on to the book. 'Stories', she says, 'are the only thing in this world that are real. Everything else is just a dream.