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1 " When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it's like I go back into the dream. "
― Lisa Jewell , Then She Was Gone
2 " As the father of your children, as a friend, as someone who shared a journey with you and as someone who loves you and cares about you. I don’t need to be married to you to be all those things. Those things are deeper than marriage. Those things are for ever. "
3 " Stories,” she says, “are the only thing in this world that are real. Everything else is just a dream. "
4 " May was like the Friday night of summer: all the good times lying ahead of you, bright and shiny and waiting to be lived. "
5 " A man who can’t love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed. "
6 " I remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know that me is fluid and shape-changing. "
7 " If she could rewind the timeline, untwist it and roll it back the other way like a ball of wool, she’d see the knots in the yarn, the warning signs. Looking at it backward it was obvious all along. "
8 " The blame game could be exhausting sometimes. The blame game could make you lose your mind . . . all the infinitesimal outcomes, each path breaking up into a million other paths every time you heedlessly chose one, taking you on a journey that you’d never find your way back from. "
9 " Cooking doesn’t just nurture the recipient, it nurtures the chef. "
10 " The blame game could make you lose your mind … all the infinitesimal outcomes, each path breaking up into a million other paths every time you heedlessly chose one, taking you on a journey that you’d never find your way back from. "
11 " People try and make out there’s a greater purpose, a secret meaning, that it all means something. And it doesn’t. "
12 " When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it’s like I go back into the dream. "
13 " She’d never worked out how he’d done it, how he’d found that healthy pink part of himself among the wreckage of everything else. But she didn’t blame him. Not in the least. She wished she could do the same; she wished she could pack a couple of large suitcases and say good-bye to herself, wish herself a good life, thank herself for all the memories, look fondly upon herself for just one long, lingering moment and then shut the door quietly, chin up, morning sun playing hopefully on the crown of her head, a bright new future awaiting her. She would do it in a flash. She really would. "
14 " You knew I would, didn’t you?’ She smiles sadly. ‘Oh, I don’t know, I suppose it occurred to me. I would have said something. Soon. I was on the verge. It just didn’t seem like first-date kind of fodder.’ ‘No,’ he says softly. ‘I get that.’ She turns the mug round and round, not sure where to head next with this development. "
15 " because I remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know that me is fluid and shape-changing. So whatever you’re feeling now, it’s temporary. "
16 " She turns off her phone and she rests it on the kitchen counter and feels a wave of relief and weightlessness pass through her. She is unburdened of something she hadn’t even known she was carrying. "
17 " That was how she’d once viewed her perfect life: as a series of bad smells and unfulfilled duties, petty worries and late bills. "
18 " I’ve told her not to come here expecting validation or exemption from the usual rules of human decency. "
19 " that a man who can’t love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed. "
20 " 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. "
