Rachel Abbott > Quotes

“The quiet but inexorable breaking down of self-esteem is much more sinister - it’s violation of the soul.”
― Rachel Abbott, Only the Innocent

“A radio was playing quietly. Nobody was listening. It was there to drown out the silence.”
― Rachel Abbott, The Back Road

“She searched her mind for a single day when it had felt good to be alive. There must have been one, surely?”
― Rachel Abbott, Only the Innocent

“It was as if she would never be whole until the secrets of the past were exposed.”
― Rachel Abbott, The Back Road

“Each time he came he would twist my defenceless body into a different pose, as if I were his very own doll”
― Rachel Abbott, Only the Innocent

“Today is the day after my wedding. And nothing is the way I expected it to be.”
― Rachel Abbott, Only the Innocent

“Within our working lives, and perhaps even amongst friends, we see deceptions played out before our eyes: people who pretend to be happy when they are aching with sadness, or to like each other when they feel nothing but contempt. Perhaps these are actions of self-preservation, driven by a will to hide our pain from a wider audience. Within a relationship, though, pretence is indeed both unreasonable and illogical. Admit to being the person you really are. Never play that deadly game of charades.”
― Rachel Abbott, The Back Road

“I would rather have been with one parent who was genuinely happy than with two who had so many axes to grind you could almost hear them being sharpened.”
― Rachel Abbott, Only the Innocent

“Even those we’ve loved all our lives are highly unlikely to be perfect.”
― Rachel Abbott, Sleep Tight

“When shame is your own, it’s hard enough to bear. When other people are witness to it, it becomes intolerable.”
― Rachel Abbott, Only the Innocent

“Emma wondered not for the first time how silence could vary so much in pitch and tone. This silence held a high-pitched scream at its heart.”
― Rachel Abbott, Stranger Child

“How easy it is to blame the present on the past, and allow history to shape the future. How many of us justify our current behaviour by reference to events long gone? Is this true within your relationship? Are you allowing past mistakes to dictate your destiny? If pain has been inflicted by a loved one, you may search for reasons and explanations that simply can’t be found. You pick away at the scar that is trying to heal, and cause the blood to flow again. You seek reassurances that you may never truly believe. The scar becomes ragged and ugly to all who can see it, and you become the walking wounded, waiting to be hurt again. Accept that your history has changed you. Rejoice in your survival. Let the wounds heal to form a stronger, more resilient you, and remember that forgiveness is not something we do for other people—we do it for ourselves. So forgive yourself for being a victim. Look positively to the here and now. Put the past behind you and think of it as somewhere you once visited, and possibly didn’t like very much. “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” Buddha”
― Rachel Abbott, The Back Road

“Sometimes she thought of David as an ostrich, burying his head in the sand and forcing himself to believe that all would be well. It was one of the few things about him that she found frustrating. It wasn't so much optimism as an inability to face reality and a tendency to look for the easy way out. It wasn't going to work this time. There was no easy way out.”
― Rachel Abbott, Stranger Child

“We all lie. To ourselves and to each other. We make excuses by referring to our untruths as fibs or white lies, trivialising them as harmless. Or we claim they are necessary to shelter others from hurt. However we try to justify them, whatever their shape or form, they are still lies.”
― Rachel Abbott, The Shape of Lies

“How could pain that wasn’t inflicted by a physical assault hurt so much? How could emotional distress turn into this agonising emptiness?”
― Rachel Abbott, Stranger Child

“One of the women was a natural bitch – all women recognise them, but men rarely do.”
― Rachel Abbott, Sleep Tight

“Procrastination, Tom.’ ‘Yes–I know. It’s the thief of time.’ Leo had given him a smug look. ‘I wasn’t going to say that–I was going to say makes easy things hard, hard things harder.”
― Rachel Abbott, Stranger Child

“what that meant. He could spend the night”
― Rachel Abbott, Sleep Tight

“Becky was increasingly of the opinion that people were inherently bad; it was just a matter of how well they controlled their badness.”
― Rachel Abbott, Kill Me Again

“Well, she thought, I made a right cock of that.”
― Rachel Abbott, The Sixth Window

“It’s a concept that some people believe in: that the number three stands for that which is solid, real, substantial, complete – for example the three dimensions of length, breadth and height which are necessary to form a solid. There are three great divisions that complete time: the past, the present and the future. Thought, word and deed complete the sum of human capability; animal, vegetable, mineral – the three kingdoms of the natural world. I could go on. For some people, three is such a powerful number that everything has to be finished in threes for them to feel safe. A famous physicist, Nicola Tesla, was so obsessed with the number that he used to walk round the block three times before he would enter a building.’ She”
― Rachel Abbott, Kill Me Again

“Someone once told me that a pessimist sacrifices potential long-term happiness for immediate certainty,”
― Rachel Abbott, No More Lies

“Has there been in an accident?”
― Rachel Abbott, Sleep Tight

“Think of your heart and your soul as the weather, and listen to what they’re telling you. You are entitled to feel the heat of the sun’s rays, but getting to that warm place may mean you have to survive some rainy days first.”
― Rachel Abbott, The Back Road

“and then there’s the Cameron argument. There would have been so many ways”
― Rachel Abbott, The Shape of Lies

“They couldn’t be more different. Maybe it’s the whole yin and yang thing, because they appear to have totally opposing values.”
― Rachel Abbott, And So It Begins

“My husband was away a lot. I can’t vouch for his behaviour, but he didn’t tell me explicitly about any other women. I would never have had a relationship with another man, principally because it would give Ellis an excuse for leaving me. And then I would lose my children.”
― Rachel Abbott, The Last Time I Saw Him

“In retrospect, I would rather have been with one parent who was genuinely happy than with two who had so many axes to grind you could almost hear them being sharpened.”
― Rachel Abbott, Only the Innocent

“lugubrious”
― Rachel Abbott, The Back Road

“that few things were black and white, and that sometimes good people did bad things.”
― Rachel Abbott, Stranger Child