Laura Marshall > Quotes

“Odd, how you spend five years going to the same place every day, and then it’s over, you never go there again. Almost as if it never existed at all.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Perhaps it’s simply not possible to truly know another person. When it comes down to it, we’re all alone. Sometimes we don’t even know ourselves.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“I know that Facebook offers an idealised version of life, edited and primped to show the world what we want it to see.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“I’m in a hall of mirrors, full of distorted reflections and false endings. I’ve lost track of which way I came in and I have no idea how to get out.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“If one of us falls, then what is left is not a family at all.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Run as fast as you like, Louise. You’ll never escape from me. Every wound leaves a scar. Just ask Esther Harcourt.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“The end of something is always the start of something else, even if you can’t see it at the time.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Maybe it’s only by going back that she will be able to move forward.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“She told me once that there’s a saying, you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child. If that’s true then she must have been pretty fucking unhappy.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“we both know she’d go crazy after just one day of sitting”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Chipped plant pots trail the dead brown remains of my doomed summer attempt at growing my own herbs,”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“1989 I’ve been awake all night in an attempt to maintain some kind of hold on what has happened, on what I have done. My eyes are red and prickling with tiredness, but I daren’t go to sleep. If I sleep, when I wake up I’ll have one blissful, terrible second when I’m unaware –and then it will all come crashing in on me, its power multiplied indefinitely by that one un-knowing second. I think of the last time I saw the dawn in, lying in Sophie’s bed. This time it’s a more tempestuous and bleaker affair. A ceaseless summer rain has been falling all night, and the branch of a nearby tree is thwacking intermittently against my windowpane. It’s not just the chemicals keeping me awake, although I can still feel them coursing, unwanted, around my veins. I’ve been sitting here on the floor for four hours, as my bedroom turns gradually from darkness to a dull grey half-light. I’m surrounded by the debris of my elaborate preparations for the evening that, twelve hours ago, stretched out invitingly, bright with the promise of acceptance and approval. There are three dresses strewn on the bed, with the accompanying pair of shoes for each lying discarded in front of the full-length mirror. My eyes rest dully on the stain on the carpet where Sophie dropped my new bronzing powder and I made a clumsy attempt to wipe it up with a bit of tissue dipped in a glass of stale water. The dress I wore lies in a crumpled heap next to me –I’ve pulled on an old sweatshirt and leggings. There are dark smudges under my eyes and my lips are dry, the remains of my lipstick clinging to the cracks and bleeding into the skin around my mouth. I’ve been sitting here on the floor for so long only because I can’t move. I would have expected my heart to be racing, but in fact an iron fist grips it so tightly that I am surprised it is beating at all. Everything has slowed to a funereal”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“It’s been a fairly unremarkable day up until now. Henry is at Sam’s tonight, so I’ve put in a long day working on some initial plans for a client who wants everything from walls to carpets and sofas in varying shades of beige and taupe, but at the same time doesn’t want the house to look boring. When I saw I had an email, I was glad of the distraction, hopeful of a personal message rather than yet another company trying to sell me something”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“I should know better than anyone that things aren’t always what they seem. It’s like when someone tells a story about something that happened when you were there, and it’s not at all how you remember it. It might be they’re telling it a certain way for effect, to make people laugh, or to impress someone. But sometimes that’s simply how they remember it. For them, it’s the truth. That’s when it becomes hard for you to know whether what you remember is the truth, or whether it’s just your version of it.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Some days she feels like a prisoner in her own home.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“We think that the gulf between living and dying is huge, but on the tube platform I am always reminded that it’s only one little step.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“The rest of the day drags by. This is another part I haven’t got used to: the empty weekends.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“He had really hurt me and he knew it. He was standing just where he is now; penitent, begging me to forgive him. Of course I did. I didn’t know then who I would be without him; if I would even be anyone at all.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Maybe that’s all we have to do, all we can do: face the truth of our lives with equanimity and grace.”
― Laura Marshall, Three Little Lies

“The knife falls from my hand,”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“It’s hard to quantify. Leaving her out of stuff, not telling her about things until it’s too late for her to go, undermining her confidence in the way she looks.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Some days she feels like a prisoner in her own home. There’s no reason why she can’t go out, of course. Nobody could tell from simply looking at her. But on days like today, it feels as though someone has peeled back a layer of skin, leaving her face red raw, offering”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“I am transported back through the years; how quickly that familiar rush of shame washes over me: shame at being left out, being left behind. Still not really one of the gang. An”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“time-wasting vortex where you find yourself poring through the wedding photos of someone you’ve never met instead of meeting a work deadline;”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“I don’t think it’s my imagination that Sophie pales and her eyes widen for a millisecond, before she slips her mask smoothly back into place.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“We all make judgements, all the time. We judge the girl who was silly enough to walk home alone in a short skirt; we judge the girl who got drunk and into bed with someone she didn’t know and then changed her mind; we judge the girl who kissed a famous footballer twice her age and complained when he stuck his hand in her knickers. We do all this as if the men in question had no choice in the matter, no control over their own actions, no responsibility”
― Laura Marshall, Three Little Lies

“Instead I watch from the sidelines on Facebook, liking photos of barbecues, birthday parties, days out, knowing that I only have myself to blame for not being there in the pictures.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“If you get enough people talking about something it gathers its own momentum. And the idea that there’s no smoke without fire is a powerful one.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“As I drive away, I wonder whether I will ever be able to leave Henry with him without this terrible, gnawing sense of dread.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“I try to keep my eyes on the sandwiches, but cannot stop the heat that rises to my cheeks. There’s a harassed woman with two small children whinging for treats to my right, and next to her a greying man in a tired suit looking miserably at the low-fat section. My eyes slide beyond him and land on Tim Weston. He smiles and gives a half-wave, coming around behind the businessman and the woman with the children. ‘Louise, hi. What are you doing here?’ ‘Buying a sandwich?’ I give a breathless laugh, trying to conceal my discomfort. Has Tim been following me? ‘Right. You came all the way to Norwich for a sandwich? They do have Marks & Spencers in London you know.’ His tone is light but there’s an accusation behind his words. I give in. ‘I’ve just been at the police station”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request