Heather Marshall > Quotes

“It all comes down to having the right to make the choice. Every child a wanted child, every mother a willing mother.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“Do not mistake your humanity for weakness. It is, unfortunately, a common misconception.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“women helping women, allowing us to be at the steering wheel of our own lives for once, right?”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“When you're young, you get to look at time through the reduction end of the telescope. The wrong end, the generous end that makes everything appear so far away, that gives the impression that there are light-years of space between you and those magically distant objects. And then, without warning, time turns it around on you, and suddenly you're looking through the correct end, the end you were always supposed to be looking through, if you were paying attention. The end where everything is magnified and perilously close. The end that zooms in without mercy and forces you to see the detail you should have been focusing on all along.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“people regret the things they didn’t do far more than the mistakes they”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“It's hard to outrun your bad decisions. But you can certainly try.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

“The blows had come in such quick succession, and nothing would ever be the same again. It was as though a permanent night had fallen, cloaking a path that was no longer visible.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

“people regret the things they didn’t do far more than the mistakes they actually made. It’s inaction that causes you to lie awake into the early hours of the morning, second-guessing your own judgment. It’s the what-ifs and should-haves that crouch down deep in that buried chamber of your soul. They latch on tighter; their teeth are sharper.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“They lived in a world that was designed and run and ruined by men.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

“It all comes down to having the right to make the choice.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“Do not mistake your humanity for weakness. It is, unfortunately, a common misconception”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“It’s illegal, full stop, so there will always be a risk, I grant you. But if more women are standing up to the illegality, fighting against it… why not join them? Maybe there is safety in numbers, in a way. You told me they couldn’t arrest you all at the Hill protest. Not enough handcuffs, right?”

Evelyn takes another long draft from her glass, eyeing her irritatingly sensible husband. She nods again. “Not enough handcuffs.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“Because all it took to bring someone down in this Germany was a question mark.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

“she’s positive she has never in her life felt this utterly, profoundly alone.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“I’m writing this on the hot and sunny afternoon of June 25, 2022, the day after women and pregnant people in America were reduced to something less than human. Despicably, you were also reduced to something less than assault rifles. There are few words adequate enough to describe the dehumanization that has occurred for at least half of the American population.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“Because the abortion rights activists didn’t win this fight just for themselves. This fight and this victory was for their daughters, and their daughters’ daughters. To make sure a horrible cycle was broken, and the next generation would be better off than their own. To leave these women a world where no one can tell them that they don’t own their own bodies.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“She looks at her left hand, the diamond ring Adam gave her sitting atop her wedding band. Whatever power or magic or promises the rings once held have blown away like rotted leaves in the aftermath of everything that happened.
She's left London, left Adam. The Oakwood is her fresh start. It's time to let go.
Swallowing hard, Kate wiggles off the rings. The bands have left a divot in her finger, the lingering outline of a previous identity, like new skin cells knitting into a scar. She wonders if it will be visible forever.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

“there’s nowhere left to run.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“It’s a bit of a squeeze in here, I’m afraid. It doubles as a storeroom for the ward.” The nurse”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“right to make the choice.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“...how thrilled she is that her daughter spent her life smiling so much that she now has such generous wrinkles.”
― Heather Marshall

“Life deals out shit to some people and roses to others," Ian says. "There's no cheating it, no making sense of it. Maybe it's easy for me to say, not being in my brother's shoes, but I decided to live like the whole rest of my life was a gift. All of this," he says, pulling his hands from his pockets and opening his arms wide, as though embracing everything around him, "is a bonus I could have easily been denied. So I squeeze everything I can out of it. I try not to live with regrets. I try to just live.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

“All of motherhood is just chronic low-level fear at the best of times.”
― Heather Marshall

“And who could blame them for wanting a sitcom life, scripted and polished to a prime-time shine. But there's always darkness and mess behind the walls of a brightly colored set. Clutter and chaos you don't see on screen.”
― Heather Marshall, Liberty Street

“There’s something about a snowy weekend that feels like a freebie; like the earth is saying, Slow down, enjoy yourself, there’s nowhere to go anyway.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“Eventually Emma's sobs subside, the echoes sinking into the faded wallpaper of the hallway. These walls have absorbed many years’ worth of anguished cries. Whispered pleas and prayers.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“Some relationships were just surface-level, after all. The junk-food version of human connection. Colorful and exciting and fun in the moment, but quickly digested and offering no real nourishment.”
― Heather Marshall, Liberty Street

“She had never wondered why Liberty Village, the area she was now exploring, was so named. Was this some sort of joke? To name the area Liberty when its purpose was to incarcerate?”
― Heather Marshall, Liberty Street

“Fifteen-year-old Louise in the bed across from Evelyn became pregnant by her brother’s friend, who was seven years her senior and full of pretty promises”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“When she was seventeen, not long before her maternal grandmother passed, her dad had taken a photo of her hand on top of her mother's and grandmother's, three layers of generations together, the skin progressively thinner, more mottled. Kate had always liked the photo, but wasn't old enough to fully appreciate that her time with her grandmother - and her parents - was limited. That the opportunities to ask about their lives, hear their wisdom, were withering by the day.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James