Lily Graham > Quotes

“I would have thought that I suddenly believed in fairy tales and second chances, and I have never been accused of either’ – he squeezed her hand, and sniffed – ‘till now.”
― Lily Graham, The Paris Secret

“the reasons behind it, would take a lifetime to process. It was easy to say now, when one wasn’t at war and not subjected to its power to test you on every level, to put your will for survival above your ideals, what you would have done.”
― Lily Graham, The Paris Secret

“Living on the water took away the boundaries created by land and custom and introversion. Without fences and driveways, the water provided a constant thread of connection and dependency.”
― Lily Graham, The Cornish Escape

“When you lose someone that you've known your whole life, pretty much, it's like you don't just mourn the person you lost at the end, you mourn everything that happened before. All those memories wash over you, like a tide, and it's so easy to get cast adrift”
― Lily Graham, The Last Restaurant in Paris

“Monsieur Géroux collected small good things. The unexpected sound of birdsong, a half-price sale at the bakery, a smile from a passing child. Storing them in his mind for later, when needed.”
― Lily Graham, The Last Restaurant in Paris

“the young haven’t yet learned yet how real the past is, just a whisper away the older you get, and sometimes too real to face.”
― Lily Graham, The Last Restaurant in Paris

“She was a scribble of a woman with curly blonde hair,”
― Lily Graham, The Last Restaurant in Paris

“No one told you how exhausting it was to grieve. How all-consuming. How the only escape was sometimes sleep - when for just a moment you were you again.”
― Lily Graham, The German Girl

“Each of us is told a story about how we begin. One that starts with the people who come before us, providing the foundation on which we build ourselves. Yet when that story shifts, unexpectedly, so do we. Our lives becoming feet made of clay.”
― Lily Graham, The Last Restaurant in Paris

“when she saw Emmanuel walking towards us. ‘What is it?’ I asked, reaching out to stop her from leaving. She looked at me, then blinked. ‘He’s not the kind of man you want to get involved with, is all I need to say – I just—’ She broke off, shook her head and hurried away, and I was left staring after her retreating back and wondering what she meant. As we drove home, there was none of the easy silence we’d shared on the way to the market. Though this time it was me who was being reticent. I couldn’t help thinking about what that woman had said to me. The warning she had given me. Of course, I wasn’t at all ready or willing to enter into any kind of relationship so soon after my husband’s death, but it got me worried nonetheless. Who was this man that I had welcomed into my home? Shared my meals with? Had I been wrong to put my trust in him? Was I so in need of a friend that I had looked for one in the wrong place? Was Emmanuel, with his quiet, sombre ways and his irreverent humour, someone I needed to worry about? Because in a way that’s what I had been hoping – that we’d be friends. That’s what today had felt like. Besides, he was the first person I’d met here who seemed to really understand the kind of pain I was in. He turned to me as we were driving. ‘Is everything okay, Charlotte?’ It was always a surprise when he said my name, and I startled. Shook my head. The women’s warning racing through my head. He’s not the kind of man you want to get involved with. What had she meant by that? Had she meant that he was some kind of adulterer? Or was it something else? There had been something in the woman’s eyes that had seemed to imply that the warning ran deeper than that.”
― Lily Graham, The Island Villa

“If you're going to make the past your present, be prepared for a lifetime of dust ...”
― Lily Graham, The Cornish Escape

“He'd never understand them, his supposed 'betters', and that was the truth. His father, who had never learned to read or write and never had much more than a farthing to his name, had more honour and true gentility in his finger than the whole lot of them combined as far as he was concerned”
― Lily Graham, The Last Restaurant in Paris

“Death is not something you get over. It’s the rip that exposes life in a before and after chasm, and all you can do is try to exist as best you can in the after.”
― Lily Graham, The Postcard

“My mother had told me when my father had passed away that death was something you managed, not something you ever truly got over, and that some days were easier than others. I was grateful that today was one of those rare easier ones. I’d”
― Lily Graham, The Island Villa

“The man she'd married had never come back from those godforsaken trenches. She didn't necessarily blame him; it had come as a shock when he was conscripted, like so many other residents of Southern Jutland, to fight for Germany. It was one of the reasons they'd moved to Elsinore after the war. What neither of them had realised was that the past comes with you, Unless you fight like hell to let it go”
― Lily Graham, The German Girl

“The ceasefire lasted about ten minutes, when she discovered that Bram Stoker - inventor of Dracula - was a 'conspiracy theorist' and that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a fool, who played golf.
"What has that got to do with it?" she cried, exasperated.
He looked at her incredulously. 'Everything. No man can have poetry in his soul and play golf.”
― Lily Graham, The Paris Secret

“If love were enough, I’d tell St Peter to close his gates; I’d block out the stars, and cover the moon with a fist. I’d find a place where time stands still, where no world would exist, except one where we could stand together arm in arm. Except, my darling, here’s the secret you should know: where you are, so am I. No there exists or here. No place exists where I would not come when you need me, for you will always exist in a place where my love is without end.”
― Lily Graham, The Postcard

“Ai carai, after all these years. You can’t kill hope, eh?”
― Lily Graham, The Island Villa

“Since Asta could remember, Jurgen was usually found with a sketchbook in hand. He was forever drawing something he'd seen: scenes of daily life in Hamburg, from canals to people at cafes and restaurants or sitting on benches. He drew dogs roaming free, as well as Asta and their adventures. There was a playfulness to his scenes, a way of looking at the world and finding the humour, along with the shared humanity”
― Lily Graham, The German Girl

“Then she heard a faint”
― Lily Graham, The Paris Secret

“All we can do now is hope.’
I nodded, fighting back the tears. Tired of that word that asked so much, and gave so little in return.”
― Lily Graham, The Postcard

“It’s the advice we all hate to hear, but it’s the only thing that does help with loss – time. It will never not be tinged with sadness, but someday it will be less painful, you’ll see.”
― Lily Graham, The Last Restaurant in Paris

“the”
― Lily Graham, The Child of Auschwitz

“They forget that another language doesn't mean another species. It's not easy to ignore someone's humanity when it is staring you in the face”
― Lily Graham, The German Girl

“They'd all learnt about the cost of prejudice, and how damaging it really was”
― Lily Graham, The German Girl

“I am one of those lucky marvels whose husband has banned them from the kitchen, the last and now permanent ban was during an Everton Three (door slamming on hand) when he’d lamented, in a crazed manner to no one in particular after my failed tomato soup experiment, ‘She’d burn air, so she would,’ accompanied by wild pacing around the tomato splattered linoleum.”
― Lily Graham, The Postcard

“We need stories in order to understand ourselves, for good or bad, to be inspired or horrified, it's how we cope with being human and how we decide what type of person we will become.”
― Lily Graham, The Cornish Escape

“The other thing no one tells you about is what happens after the funeral. When the casseroles stop coming and the phone stops ringing. That’s when it hits you. In the silence. When you wish everything would just stop, but it doesn’t. The sun keeps rising. The tides keep turning. The birds keep singing. And the mail just keeps on coming.”
― Lily Graham, The Island Villa

“have nodded because she looked at me, her eyes serious, “Love should feel good.”
― Lily Graham, A Cornish Christmas

“here”
― Lily Graham, The Paris Secret