S.E. Lynes > Quotes

“Unhappy people can be very dangerous, don't forget that.”
― S.E. Lynes

“Everything was new, everything was exciting. We were playing house, it seemed, playing at being grownups. When you’re in love, I suppose everything feels like a game.”
― S. E. Lynes, Valentina

“Life is the last thing you can ever take from someone. No matter how evil a person, murder is an act that robs us of our humanity and from which there is no return”
― S.E. Lynes, The One to Blame

“Love does not switch itself off; it would be so much easier if it did.”
― S.E. Lynes, The Baby Shower

“I was thinking that hate is turned on people who don’t deserve it, who aren’t responsible for the anger, who have nothing to do with the hate, not really, do you see?”
― S.E. Lynes, Can You See Her?

“But it seems to me a tragedy both specific and cruel that all the things we might do to lift ourselves out of our lowest moments - a long walk, a carefully prepared meal, a favourite piece of music - are, in those moments, all the things we cannot face, while all the things that will make us feel worse, ,much worse - eating crap, drinking too many glasses of wine, staying in a room that vibrates with haunted silence - seem infinitely enticing.”
― S.E. Lynes, The Housewarming

“but she has told herself that this is what marriage is, for most people: a slow peeling-away of layers, the management of inevitable disappointment at the truth beneath. We are all only human, after all.”
― S.E. Lynes, The One to Blame

“That’s the trouble with real friends: they see you whether you want them to or not. They see you plain as day.”
― S.E. Lynes, The Baby Shower

“Maybe she withstood and withstood and withstood until one night she could withstand no more.”
― S.E. Lynes, The One to Blame

“You needed a mum, and I was the best mum I could be. But perhaps I forgot to be a person.”
― S.E. Lynes, The Pact

“That’s what love was – nothing fancy – just two people rooting like hell for one another.”
― S.E. Lynes, Valentina

“To commit murder, to attack someone, you have to really want to, don’t you? You have to be so full of anger, rage, hate that you get to a point of not caring.”
― S.E. Lynes, Can You See Her?

“as you get older, the sight of young people can bring a tear to the eye. Youth: so beautiful, so full of innocence, curiosity and hope. Maybe it’s because I know I’m looking at the blemish-free faces of people who have yet to experience real pain, have yet to have their lives irrevocably compromised.”
― S.E. Lynes, The Pact

“Gaslighting is when you encourage the belief in something you know to be untrue, to the detriment of someone’s mental health.”
― S.E. Lynes, The Housewarming

“I want to walk away with nothing but a suitcase and the shredded remnants of my dignity.”
― S.E. Lynes, Can You See Her?

“Anger gets trapped inside us, becomes hate. If we’re not careful, hate becomes a force often too hard to control and which solves nothing.”
― S.E. Lynes, Can You See Her?

“Yes, this was where I’d got to. Status: doormat. Unable to admit to a mistake for fear of ridicule. Unable to ask for a kindness for fear of refusal.”
― S.E. Lynes, Can You See Her?

“Revenge is not a dish best served cold. It is a dish best served not at all.”
― S.E. Lynes, Can You See Her?

“Ah, how youth is wasted on the young, she says. It is our great shame and tragedy that we don’t see how beautiful we are until later, when it’s gone, and we look back and wonder why we didn’t see, why we didn’t know. Why we didn’t seize it and use it to conquer the world.”
― S.E. Lynes, The Pact

“I was thinking… I was thinking that no matter how much love I had to give, it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.”
― S.E. Lynes, Can You See Her?

“If you see the good in people,’ her mother always told her, ‘they will see it in themselves.”
― S.E. Lynes, The Women

“I find it's often the way that the hopes of someone you love are heavier to bear than your own.”
― S.E. Lynes, Mother

“I just need to believe I can find real love, not fireworks and fancy tricks that end in cruelty. I want kindness. I'm never going to settle for anything less than kindness”
― S.E. Lynes, The One to Blame

“The past is a reminder, good or bad. To destroy it is to destroy its lessons.”
― S.E. Lynes, The Housewarming

“Funny how it’s never bullies who correct their behaviour; it’s the victims who frantically make the changes, who become smaller, quieter. Less.”
― S.E. Lynes, Matchmaker

“well done is better than a well said sort of thing.”
― S.E. Lynes, The Split

“The fire, what came after the fire, the reality of my sister's life, her death - the truth has fallen in slow rain. Even now, I know I have yet to turn my face to its last acid drops”
― S.E. Lynes, The One to Blame

“Valentina gasped. She actually”
― S.E. Lynes, Valentina

“Simply because someone seems genuine doesn’t mean they are. And even if they are genuine in”
― S.E. Lynes, The Women

“He sees now that she stifles laughter almost every time she speaks, as if the gravity of her workplace has her teetering on a brink between hilarity and madness. She is, he realises, quite possibly as shy as he”
― S.E. Lynes, The Lies We Hide