Helen Sarah Fields > Quotes

“It was the human condition: the need to know the worst, the destructive desire to see how it feels when you hit rock bottom.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Remains

“There is a moment for women – no more cacophonous than a petal falling from a dying flower – when politeness has cost them their life, and they know it. That moment, so brief it would barely register on any clock, stretches long into the coming void.
Chloe Martin, stuck in her moment of eternal regret, stared at the foot separating her door from its frame as time stood still. You never knew when it was your turn, she thought. How could her day, her boring, run-of-the-mill day, have come to this? Where were the signs from the universe? Where was the sense of impending doom? It didn’t matter, now, that she always carried a rape alarm in her handbag, and it didn’t matter that she never walked home alone in the dark. It didn’t matter that she always put a lid over her drinks to prevent spiking, or that she never engaged in online dating. Because now she was in the thick of it, facing a shadowy figure at her door who had knocked and cried out for help, and she had rushed there so fast, so worried for the safety of a stranger, that she had failed to engage the chain.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Profile K

“George hated suicides. Said it was the cruellest thing to do to another human being. If you’re right and that’s what he did, then I have no idea who the man was I’ve been living with for more than half my life. I’d”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Death

“situation”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Kill

“The worst thing about places like this, like the school you went to, is that you get used to them. You don’t think you ever will, then it slips under your skin like a splinter and you press it for a while just to feel the pain, because pain is right, it’s how you should feel. Then one day you notice that the splinter isn’t pricking your skin any more. It’s gone all the way in, so deep it’s finally painless. You know it’s there but it’s just normal. Then you wake up one day and realise the thought of being anywhere else is terrifying, and that’s the day you finally hate yourself more than you hate all the other people put together, and you hate them a whole fucking lot.”
― Helen Sarah Fields

“He laid out the body with almost fatherly care, stretching each limb wide, allowing air to circulate freely around her skin.”
― Helen Fields, Perfect Remains

“The extent of grief is the marriage of the greatness of the person we’ve lost and the enormity of the love we felt for them. Your grief feels unbearable because the two things combined are a tremendous force. When you’re able, you need to make time to understand how privileged you are to have felt such pain. Too few of us ever find a love that devastates us like that.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, One for Sorrow

“will run the Lott and Balcaskie cases. Limit”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Prey

“He had a policy of enjoying every cup of tea he drank. The way Lively figured it, you never knew which brew might turn out to be your last.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Death

“Death was never so final as when you had to stare it in the face.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Death

“Lily's life was very nearly over, it was just that she didn't know it yet.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Death

“This isn’t a world without colour,’ she corrected softly. ‘It’s a world where I have to paint the colours in with my mind. You’d be surprised how much more you notice when you have to work this hard at it.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, The Shadow Man

“Because women don’t always have to be what we’re told to be. Becoming a mother does not make us maternal. Having a child doesn’t mean we must comply with the standards men unilaterally impose on us. The women of my family have lived their own way for hundreds of years. The boy had a father, with a house and extended family around him. They had a shop, a trade, routines. I wanted none of it. And why should I? Men get to spread their seed and run away. Why do women never feel entitled to make the same decision?”
― Helen Sarah Fields, The Last Girl To Die

“popular”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Remains

“cure was”
― Helen Sarah Fields, The Institution

“shock,”
― Helen Sarah Fields, The Last Girl To Die

“I hate the Chief, though I still miss him,”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Death

“There were worse places to die.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Prey

“blood to”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Remains

“That was the thing about memories. One day they were just ordinary recollections, with more to be made, expectations keeping them in perspective and ready to be replaced. Once death came, those memories were newly precious, gold to be mined and polished at every opportunity, in the knowledge that the total sum of your riches had already been amassed, and that every ounce, every fleck had to be cherished forever.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Kill

“Skin scraped stone.”
― Helen Fields, Perfect Silence

“I have a better idea now of the limitless pain with which we can be tested. It”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Remains

“Gefühle sind wie feuchte Wände, irgendwann dringen die Flecken durch die Tapete.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, The Institution

“The extent of grief is the marriage of the greatness of the person we’ve lost and the enormity of the love we felt for them. Your grief feels unbearable because the two things combined are a tremendous force. When you’re able, you need to make time to understand how privileged you are to have felt such pain.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, One for Sorrow

“don’t want to talk about it,’ Véronique said, smiling gently at him. ‘I don’t want it to be part of my present. It’s the past. I’m sorry that I didn’t have the strength to tell you before. Instead, I ran. Not from you, though. From the memories.”
― Helen Sarah Fields, Perfect Death