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

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

“she’s positive she has never in her life felt this utterly, profoundly alone.”
― 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

“there’s nowhere left to run.”
― 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

“They lived in a world that was designed and run and ruined by men.”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“It all comes down to having the right to make the choice.”
― 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

“The scars and the memories they hold are a part of her. Even if she tried, they wouldn't ever actually be erased. She would still see them beneath the surface.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

“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

“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

“Looking for Jane is about motherhood.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“She always likes to explore other people's book collections; it says so much about a person, the books they choose to read, and - perhaps even more revealing - the books they choose to keep. The ones they continuously hold on to, even after spring cleanings, moving houses, downsizing, divorce, and decluttering. The books they curated from their life's collection.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

“No offence intended, my dear, but your generation seems particularly fixated on individual emotion. On processing everything, like you're an assembly line for feelings. A person could spend their life obsessing over the past. Seems rather exhausting and dramatic to me. In my day, we just got on with it. Kept on keeping on, as they say.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

“that she wasn’t even aware she was pregnant when Leo had the heart attack.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“There is nothing like clearing out your dead mother’s house to make you wonder whether you ever knew her at all.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane

“But never let petty circumstance and disagreement separate you; life is too short to let pride get in the way of love.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

“Tell people about them. Tell these stories. When we are the only ones left to remember someone, we have a responsibility to let them live on through our memories, our stories.”
― Heather Marshall, The Secret History of Audrey James

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

“no light. The darkness will linger. For some, only months. For others, years. And others still will never see the light again.”
― Heather Marshall, Looking for Jane