Elizabeth Haynes > Quotes

“This isn't normal. This isn't how normal people think.
Fuck off, world- what the hell is normal anyway?”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“Nobody can see pain. They have no frame of reference for pain that's happening to someone else. They can only see inactivity - which they interpret as laziness.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“You never realise what loneliness is until it creeps up on you - like a disease, it is, something that happens to you gradually.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“That before-and-after-feel, as though this was going to be the end of one time and the beginning of another.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“As my English teacher used to tell me, if you can´t think of the right thing to say, say nothing at all.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“I dreamed of death the way previously I'd dreamed of the pain leaving me, and the way before that I'd dreamed of gardens and children and weekends away. Death was my elusive lover, treasured and longed for and jealously guarded, and always distant. Always out of reach.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“You think you know now, don't you? But you have no idea what it was like.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“But a lot of water has passed under a lot of bridges now, and I don´t know if that is something I could do.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“The strangest thing was that I felt it, I felt everything. Normally I feel nothing but itching, discomfort, tightness, soreness. The surface of my skin is dulled by scars, lots of it is numb -- nerve damage, apparently. When he touched me, I felt everything. It was like having new skin.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“I might not have behaved the way I did. I might not have gotten drunk every night, slept around, done drugs, woken up in strange houses wondering where I was and what I’d done the night before.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species at that.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“I lay back down, fitting myself into the curve of his body, pulling his arms around me, protecting me, keeping me sage.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“I raised my wine glass to him and sipped a toast to the future, to what lay ahead.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“You head back outside, leaving the door unlocked. Better get used to it, you tell yourself. One of the dogs barks as you walk across the yard towards the main house. It’s an excellent warning, of course. You knock on the front door. ‘You don’t need to knock,’ she says, opening the door. ‘You can come straight in.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Never Alone

“She can’t quite bring herself to say more than that. And even when Jim had been alive and well, despite being happy and settled and everything else that came with a twenty-year marriage, it had been Aiden she’d thought about before falling asleep, Aiden she’d fantasised about when the mood took her.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Never Alone

“Yes,’ he says. ‘It’s great. Very… quiet.’ This makes her laugh. ‘What about your job?’ ‘I need to make some new contacts up here, but yes –that’s looking good.’ ‘What is it you do again?’ There is a pause while he waits to turn into the car park and she thinks maybe he wasn’t listening, but then he says, ‘It’s like a therapy business. Setting up franchises, that kind of thing. Facilitation.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Never Alone

“He would let himself in whenever he felt like it, come and go as he pleased. I remembered when this was such a big deal for me, not so long ago. I’d wanted my own space, my front door that I could lock behind me and know for sure that nobody was going to be inside there without me. I remembered telling him that I wanted that space back. I remembered asking him for the key, and him walking away from me. I remembered him simply walking away and leaving, without so much as an argument.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into The Darkest Corner

“There were times Flora wanted to slap her mother, hard. She went to make toast for everyone, not least to soak up the brandy. The plainclothes police officer who’d been assigned to them was leaning against the breakfast bar, fiddling with her mobile phone. “Would you like me to do that?” she asked, when Flora came in.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Under a Silent Moon

“As my English teacher used to tell me, if you can’t think of the right thing to say, say nothing at all.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“Then for some reason I’ve not done it properly one day, and that’s no good at all, because if you’re going to do something that’s for your own benefit, you’ve got to do it properly or there’s no point.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Into the Darkest Corner

“I wasn’t worried, but I thought I should know something that didn’t seem to be there anymore. It was gone, whatever it was, fleeting and slippery like a fish darting through silky weeds. From”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“This isn't normal. This isn't how normal people think.
Fuck off, world--what the hell is normal anyway?”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Bookclub in a Box Discusses A Student of Weather, written by Elizabeth Hay

“Good-bye. Good luck.” “You too.” I watched Sam walk away, and then I turned and pressed the button for the crossing, waiting for the traffic to stop so I could cross and go in to work.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“specifically instructed, moving from one model that”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“said there was a light on . . .” “Yes. In the dining”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“If people stop looking at you, do you cease to exist? Does it mean you're not a person any more? Does it mean you're already dead?”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“the way she said it that told him she was telling the truth.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, You, Me & the Sea

“I was a grown woman, an old woman, and while I still had all my marbles I wanted to be able to choose to finish this life that had become so wearing, so empty. But of course that’s not done, is it? If I wanted to end things, then I must be ill or depressed or something, and therefore I needed help to cope, help to find new ways of enjoying the world. This is how the young see it, from their position of complete and utter ignorance. I wished for someone to help me. I wished for someone I could trust who would make sure that it happened, that I wasn’t left half-dead—to make sure that I couldn’t change my mind.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“Maitland had associates who were known to be involved in organized crime in Briarstone and London. He’d been brought in for questioning on several occasions for different reasons; each time he’d given a “no comment” interview, or one where he stuck to one-word answers,”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains

“And then the purring began again—the goddamned cat—and I looked down to see her rolling on the carpet beside the dark mess, as if the smell were catnip to her, and not the stench of the putrefying bodily fluids of a decomposing corpse.”
― Elizabeth Haynes, Human Remains