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1 " It’s not about where you came from. What kind of shit might have happened to you in the past. It’s about who you are. What you do with the opportunities life presents to you. "
― Lucy Foley , The Paris Apartment
2 " I could not explain that I simply wanted someone to love. Wholehearted, unreserved, requited. "
3 " It’s a beautiful building, but there’s something rotten at its heart. Now he’s discovered it he can smell the stench of it everywhere. "
4 " You know, I read somewhere that sixty percent of us can’t go more than ten minutes without lying. Little slippages: to make ourselves sound better, more attractive, to others. White lies to avoid causing offence. So it’s not like I’ve done anything out of the ordinary. It’s only human. "
5 " For so many years my insignificance and invisibility have been a mask I can hide behind. And in the process I have avoided raking up the past. Raking up the shame. "
6 " When I married Jacques I understood it as an exchange. My youth and beauty for his wealth. Over the years, as is the way with this particular kind of contract, my worth only diminished as his increased. "
7 " But that’s what being poor does to you; it shortens your childhood. It hardens your ambition. "
8 " didn’t realise at the time how cheaply I had been bought. I didn’t free myself when I married my husband, as I’d thought. I didn’t elevate myself. I did the exact opposite. I married my pimp: I chained myself to him for life. Perhaps my daughter did the very thing I hadn’t had the courage to do. "
9 " Paris you can live in the most luxurious apartment and the scum of the city will still wash up at your door on occasion. The drug addicts, the vagrants. The whores. Pigalle, the red-light district, lies just a little way away, clinging to the coattails of Montmartre. "
10 " A pathetic thing to hope, but there you have it. I’ve always had to hunt for scraps where paternal affection’s concerned. "
11 " He was a chameleon, an enigma. I had no idea, really, who I had invited under this roof, into the bosom of my family. "
12 " An ageing wife is one thing; a fat wife is another. "
13 " A strange feeling, knowing they can see me but I can't see them properly. "
14 " She looks rich. Not flashy rich. The French equivalent of posh. You don’t have hair that perfect unless you spend your days doing basically nothing. "
15 " To signify class, good taste, the kind of breeding that cannot be bought. "
16 " To crawl, as Theo put it, back into the belly of the beast, I'd thought it sounded melodramatic when he said it but when I stand at the gate and look up at it, it feels right. Like this place, this building, is some huge creature ready to swallow me whole. "
17 " There’s something reckless about her – it feels as though she might do anything. Unpredictable. Dangerous. And given this morning’s outing she’s clearly got issues with the police. "
18 " I only hope she knows what she's doing. Climbing so high, so quickly: it only makes for further to fall. "
19 " To others gardening is a form of creative abandon. To me it is a way of exerting control upon my surroundings. "
20 " I pause. Something about this doesn’t feel right. I’ve had to rely on my instincts quite a lot over the years. And I’ve also been here before. Hand clasped around the door handle. Not knowing what I’m going to find on the other side— "