Tom Allen > Quotes

“sometimes it’s simply connections we need; to feel like we’re worth spending time with, even if it’s just for a short time.”
― Tom Allen, No Shame

“Losing a parent is the moment when you truly become an adult. There are other markers of course, turning 18, living away from home, learning how to drive. But none feel as profound as the moment you realise you no longer have the grown-up protection you had when you were a child.”
― Tom Allen, Too Much: the hilarious, heartfelt memoir

“It seems odd to me that schools don’t teach you how to deal with feeling sad; they teach you trigonometry and how to measure a corner using algebra, but seldom how to get yourself out of one.”
― Tom Allen, No Shame

“However, I’ve come to learn that the concept of Pride is perhaps best seen as a goal or even as a verb and something we are all striving for on our personal journeys – to learn that we are all valid, important, and ultimately, enough – while we hopefully work towards achieving this for other people.”
― Tom Allen, No Shame

“it was surprising to see that when the sun goes behind the clouds, a lot of American towns look just like Croydon.”
― Tom Allen, No Shame

“We all experience shame, a product of the moments in our past that make us frightened to live our lives to the full in the present. It hangs around our necks, making us feel less than the person next to us, but if we can drag it out into the open and see what it is and see how we all share in this human experience, maybe we can see that we’re not so bad after all.”
― Tom Allen, No Shame

“He is right here in the vegetable patch, in the time I make to spend with my new families, in the things he said to me, repeating in my head - you can never have too much love.
I had run away but here in the garden he’d found me and found me no longer a boy but now a grown-up man, myself.”
― Tom Allen, Too Much: the hilarious, heartfelt memoir

“It’s quite a broad spectrum though, and to be ‘mugged off’ includes being overcharged by a builder for your loft conversion, getting overtaken on the dual carriageway and stretches all the way to being outright murdered.”
― Tom Allen, No Shame

“The things I did say, and more painfully the things I was unable to say, play over and over again on the movie projector in my head, tinged at times with terrible regret.
These arguments and discords can never be undone now. They were our relationship, our family, our time together despite their faults. But still perfect in their own way. Like a social media page in my mind, these moments will always be there, frozen in time. Imperfect. Perfect, actually.”
― Tom Allen, Too Much: the hilarious, heartfelt memoir