Lucy Clarke > Quotes

“Life was fragile and fleeting and mostly out of your control, and all you could do was surround yourself with good people, do your best.”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“You know that feeling when you read a good book, and you’re totally transported to the world within those pages? Your imagination has travelled there – and yet your body is not fooled: it knows you haven’t left the sofa.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Castaways

“You don't know how much you love someone until you realise you're never going to see them again. That you must live in a world where they no longer are.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“Loneliness wasn’t the absence of people, she realized. It was the absence of people who understood you.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“Life shouldn’t be reduced to filtered images and captions, should it? It’s about birth and death and that beautiful, brutal stretch of time between.”
― Lucy Clarke, You Let Me In

“The whole world fizzed. Kissing Fen was like sinking beneath the surface of the sea, but instead of it being airless and dark, it was lit with phosphorescence so luminous that she knew she’d never see the world the same way again.”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“Who I was in my twenties isn’t who I am right now. And who I am right now probably isn’t going to be who I am next year, or even next month. I don’t have to be one thing the whole time.”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“The problem with night was that all the things you avoided thinking about during the day gave you a knowing wink – See you tonight, then! – and there they were, as soon as you closed your eyes. Except at night it was even worse, because by then you were too tired to think rationally and everything became magnified, distorted.”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“That's what life gets reduced to in those final moments - the person you choose to hold hands with.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“There is no meant to when it comes to feelings. You feel what you feel.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“To me, a friend is someone who is there when it counts: when a parent dies; when you’re going through a divorce; when life isn’t shiny and bright. Not for the holidays and the high days, or when you need a place to crash to try on a family Christmas for size.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“Don’t trust any thoughts you have between two a.m. and five a.m. It’s like listening to your drunk self.”
― Lucy Clarke, You Let Me In

“Loneliness wasn’t the absence of people, she realised. It was the absence of people who understood you.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“She yearned to press Pause, to freeze this exact point in her life and hold on to it tightly.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Blue

“she”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“All morning he’s had a strange plunging, lurching sensation in his gut – like he’s at the top of a rollercoaster and is tensing, ready for the drop.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“beautiful cocktail of our happy hormones – oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin – elevates our mood. Studies”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“You don’t know how much you love someone until you realise you’re never going to see them again. That you must live in a world where they no longer are.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“After six months of writing to one another, they met.
It was like nothing she’d ever experienced. Like magnets finding their opposing force. It was love in all the ways she had never known.
There was everything to learn about each other.
Everything to unlearn about herself.”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“You start choosing the parts of someone that you’d change or alter, and you realize those very parts are what also makes you love them.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“Belongings made her feel secure. She was one of those people who always carried a huge handbag without ever quite knowing what was in it.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“Wasn’t it that joy and struggle were so deeply enmeshed that you couldn’t experience one without the other?”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“We journeyed from different corners of the country to be there. We came together for her. Because we loved her. In a hundred different ways we adored her. We wanted her light to shine on us. We wanted to make it special for her, so she’d see how much we loved her. At a hen party, the bride-to-be takes on an almost celestial, golden status. That weekend, she was the celebrity, and we were her fans and paparazzi.”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“Good swim?’ Robyn asked as Fen approached, her skin wet and glistening.
‘Glorious.’ She pulled on her top, not bothering with a bra. ‘Worth the scramble down, right?’
Water droplets were caught in the ends of Fen’s lashes, sunlight glinting off the perfect clear beads, making her green eyes look like they were sparkling. Robyn felt a fresh charge of energy in her chest. ‘Absolutely.”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“If the mountains had taught Liz anything, it was that the journey was never about reaching the peak. You climbed – and kept climbing – to push through the struggle and experience the glimpses of beauty along the way. For how the climb made you feel.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Hike

“Robyn felt warmth bloom in her cheeks, heat rising from the very centre of her. Fen’s gaze skirted across her face, as if reading something in her expression. Robyn could feel the sun hot against her scalp, hear the gentle lap of the sea at the foot of the cliffs.”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“She lifted the bottle of vodka to her lips and took a heavy gulp, the alcohol burning her throat. Then she laid the blanket across the foot of the boat and arranged herself on top, making a pillow of her arms.
The stars. All the stars.”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls

“She stares beyond the window, thinking about how regrets can burrow under your skin, take root inside you, so that there is no escaping them.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Blue

“Hope is all that remains when concrete, tangible facts have scattered.”
― Lucy Clarke, The Castaways

“Bella’s lips were exquisitely soft and full. Robyn had kissed lots of boys. That was not what kisses were supposed to be like. They were harder, urgent. Bella’s mouth was cushiony and sweet; she wanted to sink into it.”
― Lucy Clarke, One of the Girls