Cass Green > Quotes

“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well,”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“Somehow the words in her head have freed themselves from the architecture of teeth and tongue pallet”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“In a cottage in a wood A little old man at the window stood. Saw a rabbit hopping by knocking at the door. ‘Help me, help me, help me,’ he said. ‘Before the hunter shoots me dead.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“The stresses of the last few days mean her inner bad genie is dying to get out. Does she really want these locals to see her like that?”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“Steve doesn’t drink much, doesn’t smoke and doesn’t even swear. He runs, he cycles, he plays five-a-side football with people from the large insurance company where he works. He has two comfortably off parents and likes to think of himself as a hands-on dad to his daughters. He is almost completely lacking in a sense of humour. Unfortunately, people like Steve bring out the worst in Neve. The little pursed crease at the corner of his mouth as she sloshes more red wine into a glass, or says, ‘Fuck me, it’s cold,’ only eggs her on.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“Dexter has all sorts of complicated saws and things, not to mention all that plastic sheeting he uses. It’s not exactly what you’d find in the average kitchen.”
― Cass Green, The Woman Next Door

“It’s a habit she hates about herself, this need to be the joker; to always have a quip.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“But she has been alone with herself in this past, strange week, and it’s like something is waiting. Something huge and painful, with the potential to smother her.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“I know now that I will never be free from him because the monster lives inside my head.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“He has that air, the patronizing one a lot of men have, as if she is a bit of a fool. Not a proper person, to be taken seriously.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“And so it is that we have been on this train for three hours. We are”
― Cass Green, The Woman Next Door

“But as time moved on, the nature of the grief changed. In some ways it was almost crueller in the way it took her. She’d find she hadn’t thought about it for a day or so and then it would suddenly bloom painfully in her chest, as violent as a physical assault.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“I’m sorry. Please forgive me. And keep it, if you can bear to.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“Neve has a terrible sense of direction. Several boyfriends, and Lou, have claimed not to believe quite how poor it is, as if getting lost often is some sort of affectation. As if it is a choice, to experience the freefall sensation of panic when you don’t really know where the hell you’re going.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“She can only run. Has to keep moving. It’s the only way to avoid the impact. If she keeps moving, this new knowledge can’t shatter her bones, squash her organs, splatter her blood.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“Lou had been tearful because a special moment – when the family all discovered the presents together – had been ruined. She had been planning to film the whole thing. Lou was, in Neve’s opinion, an obsessive chronicler of her family life. She would have unfollowed her sister on Facebook because of this, had she been able to get away with it.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“feel uncomfortable. You wouldn’t think it was possible to feel”
― Cass Green, The Woman Next Door

“It’s just that mess seems to follow her. She can enter a room and within minutes has laid her keys in one place, her handbag somewhere else and where did she put her phone again?”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“I think I’d have ended up hitchhiking back to Truro this afternoon and probably being murdered.’ Sally gives her a slightly puzzled look at this and Neve reminds herself that not everyone gets her humour. Feeling slightly chastened, she tentatively asks about topping up the electricity key.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“Neve has noticed this, that he manages to live exactly like he had before kids, yet gets praised for the little he does with them.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“The outside of the hotel – which was grandly named the Intercontinental, London – had looked alright with its jaunty blue and white awning, potted plants and fairy-lit windows. Neve has always been a sucker for fairy lights. But the room, with its shabby MDF table and undersized kettle, feels like the kind of place travelling salesmen go to commit suicide.”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood

“He has that air, the patronizing one a lot of men have, as if she is a bit of a fool. Not a proper person,”
― Cass Green, In a Cottage in a Wood