Dawn Goodwin > Quotes

“One thing my recent experiences had taught me was to never assume that the mask we show in public is the same face we wear behind our own front door.”
― Dawn Goodwin, The Accident

“The best thing about being a writer is the ability to live vicariously through your own imagination, with no boundaries as to how you behave on paper. And having a good excuse to read as many books as you like in the name of "research".”
― Dawn Goodwin

“That was the lesson she was trying to teach Sophia - that money wasn't everything. Being happy was all that mattered. And to be happy, you had to find your passion.”
― Dawn Goodwin, Like Mother, Like Daughter

“She knew what she had done, had managed to squash the guilt into a tiny box and put it high on a mental shelf, but the box had fallen off the shelf and the guilt was seeping out”
― Dawn Goodwin, When We Were Young

“Once, she had thought that being surrounded by people was the most important thing in the world. Now she knew solitude was safer”
― Dawn Goodwin, When We Were Young

“And just like that we are talking about fictional problems in fictional worlds, where there is usually a happy ending and narrative growth for the protagonist; not sadness, solitude and more of the same as far as the eye can see”
― Dawn Goodwin, What I Never Told You

“It is hard for me to see myself if those who are supposed to love me the most don't see me either. But now it is time I do start acknowledging my strengths and recognising my weaknesses not as failure, but as potential. It is time to stop doing everything I can to get them to notice me and start doing everything I can to notice myself”
― Dawn Goodwin, What I Never Told You

“Nothing good had ever happened to her here. And yet, she couldn't pull herself away. It was her home. As simple and as complicated as that”
― Dawn Goodwin, What I Never Told You

“But it would seem out of sight was not out of mind after all and some men didn't like to be told no. They didn't like to have their cake taken away from them when they were still hungry. They were like toddlers in that respect”
― Dawn Goodwin, What I Never Told You

“Maddie understood that level of desperation all too well. That feeling of clinging onto something with the very edges of your fingernails and the fear as you feel your grip failing.”
― Dawn Goodwin, The Pact

“Sophia had learned over the years that her mother only heard what she wanted to hear, selectively ignoring the parts that she didn't find relevant”
― Dawn Goodwin, Like Mother, Like Daughter

“Gemma's tastes may be material, but they were easy needs to meet. Maddie wanted something he couldn't provide - and for a man who liked to fix problems, that became untenable. If only he could combine the best of both women into one, he would be a happy man.”
― Dawn Goodwin, The Pact

“Teenagers these days were such a juxtaposition of extreme control and wild excess”
― Dawn Goodwin, Like Mother, Like Daughter

“You should just make stuff up like everyone else. It’s all make-believe, all those status updates about how amazing their kids and husbands are, when in actual fact most of them are miserable, their kids are underachieving brats and their partners are having affairs. It’s all about one-upmanship, another way for us all to feel inadequate”
― Dawn Goodwin, The Accident

“Jade had a brittle sense of humour that had had Maddie in fits of giggles all night. Her tongue was so sharp it could clip a hedge and she was quick to share her strong opinions on most things, like she had a childish need to show off for her new friend.”
― Dawn Goodwin, The Pact

“Some women just seemed to wake up on the right side of the bed every day, while Lisa felt like she was tumbling out of the wrong side more often than not, then putting he knickers on inside out and struggling through the day trying to work out why she felt off kilter”
― Dawn Goodwin, Like Mother, Like Daughter

“The polite ignorance of the middle classes.”
― Dawn Goodwin, The Pact

“These were the people who should know her best. Her daughter, her stepchildren, her husband. But of course they only knew what she had chosen to let them see. And Helen was not a huge fan of the truth”
― Dawn Goodwin, What I Never Told You

“He is such a hypocrite, sitting there, spooning scrambled eggs into his tight mouth. His lips are so used to being pursed, I'm surprised he can get the fork in”
― Dawn Goodwin, What I Never Told You

“Today had been a day for old wounds to itch, but scratching would only leave a scar”
― Dawn Goodwin, When We Were Young

“She sometimes wondered what could've happened if they had talked about it afterwards calmly, rationally, but when it came to your kids, there was no sense of calm when you thought they had been wronged. Christina had seen it one way and Lisa another. It was as simple and as complicated as that”
― Dawn Goodwin, Like Mother, Like Daughter

“She was faulty, broken, defective. Yes, she'd been here before. The dull, numbing stillness that followed another shock, another disappointment, another sadness. She could feel herself settling into autopilot, letting her mind take over the logistics while her heart scrambled to repair itself. Except this time, she didn't think she would come back from it.”
― Dawn Goodwin, The Pact

“do something”
― Dawn Goodwin, The Accident

“I wish you could take your time, slow down, see that everything doesn't have to be immediate. Good friends will come; your reason for being will present itself. And sometimes, the best friend you can have is yourself”
― Dawn Goodwin, Like Mother, Like Daughter

“But she couldn't be angry at Greg, mostly because she didn't feel much other than sadness when she thought about her marriage. The whole experience of it was cloaked in a thin, grimy layer of disappointment like a lingering bitter aftertaste from a pill. There had been so much promise that it had left a gaping hole when it all collapsed in on itself. All of it had engulfed Maddie for so long that she felt hollow. It took a moment to fall apart, but a lifetime to pick yourself up from it.”
― Dawn Goodwin, The Pact

“One of the most enjoyable parts of being a writer is being able to take the darker side of human nature and explore it to the full, allowing myself to inhabit the mind of a villain and take the driving seat. I certainly wouldn’t think to behave in public the way some of my antagonists do, but it can be fun to imagine what it would be like”
― Dawn Goodwin

“Christina lets Sophia be herself, who she wants to be, not some sad version of what she wishes she had become”
― Dawn Goodwin, Like Mother, Like Daughter

“Lately she was starting to realise that she had spent too much time worrying about what others thought of her and had lost sight of who she was, what she even liked. She had a vague recollection of herself before she met Greg, but then she'd put on a fancy dress costume of the perfect wife, with the sensible clothes and controlled mannerisms, and eventually found she couldn't take it off again, like the zip had got stuck and there was no one there to help her out of it.”
― Dawn Goodwin, The Pact

“Let us be who we are. let us make mistakes. We've heard you; now hear us”
― Dawn Goodwin, Like Mother, Like Daughter

“If he had learned anything from recent events, it was that you couldn't avoid a problem forever. Eventually it would grow, taking up all available space until it demanded your attention”
― Dawn Goodwin, Like Mother, Like Daughter