Louise O'Neill > Quotes

“They are all innocent until proven guilty. But not me. I am a liar until I am proven honest.”
― Louise O'Neill, Asking For It

“We teach our girls how not to get raped with a sense of doom, a sense that we are fighting a losing battle. When I was writing this novel, friend after friend came to me telling me of something that had happened to them. A hand up their skirt, a boy who wouldn’t take no for an answer, a night where they were too drunk to give consent but they think it was taken from them anyway. We shared these stories with one another and it was as if we were discussing some essential part of being a woman, like period cramps or contraceptives. Every woman or girl who told me these stories had one thing in common: shame. ‘I was drunk . . . I brought him back to my house . . . I fell asleep at that party . . . I froze and I didn’t tell him to stop . . .’ My fault. My fault. My fault. When I asked these women if they had reported what had happened to the police, only one out of twenty women said yes. The others looked at me and said, ‘No. How could I have proved it? Who would have believed me?’ And I didn’t have any answer for that.”
― Louise O'Neill, Asking For It

“We are who we are. Sometimes, no matter how much someone might want to, they can’t escape that.”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“I'm beginning to wonder that if, when we call a woman crazy, we should take a look at the man by her side, and guess at what he has done to drive her to insanity.”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks

“My body is not my own any more. They have stamped their names all over it.”
― Louise O'Neill, Asking For It

“It is your father who has insisted on calling me a 'witch'. That's is simply a term that men give women who are not afraid of them, women who refuse to do as they are told.”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks

“I am not falling apart. I am being ripped at the seams, my insides torn out until I am hollow.”
― Louise O'Neill, Asking For It

“I want to hide, fold into the shadows and become invisible so no-one can look at me any more.”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“We have never had a class on how to say no to men while simultaneously never saying no to them.”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“We are women. And women are warriors, after all.”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks

“When did we all become fluent in this language that none of us wanted to learn?”
― Louise O'Neill, Asking For It

“Why, isabel? Why are you doing this to yourself? To your body?'
And why are you doing this to me? is the awful, selfish thought that is left unsaid.
'Because I can,' she answers, and I shiver as she unconsciously echoes chastity-ruth.
'But-'
'Because it's my body,' she cuts in. 'Isn't it?”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“I want you to remember always how powerful you are. Never allow anyone to take that away from you, or try and make you feel small.”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks

“I like it better when my room is pitch black, when the dark is so thick it swallows me up and I feel as if I could drown in it.”
― Louise O'Neill, Asking For It

“I dream of things I know nothing about.”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“For now they are just girls who are making the wrong choices. They’re ‘whores’. But what if they don’t realize that they’re making the wrong choices? What if the path they are on just has different signposts to ours?”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“She's beautiful, but it's a faded beauty now, as if she's been washed too many times.”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“Is it possible to want everything to change and nothing to change, all at the same time?”
― Louise O'Neill, Asking For It

“What's wrong with what I'm wearing?"

"I don't know, Em." Bryan takes a gulp from his water bottle. "It's a bit slutty, isn't it?"

I stare pointedly at the FHM poster Blu-Tacked on the wall opposite the bed, of some topless model, one finger in her mouth, the other hand reaching into her knickers.

"That's different.”
― Louise O'Neill, Asking For It

“She catches sight of herself in her video-feed, her face contorted with fury. Wiping spittle from the sides of her mouth, she reaches behind her to grab her lip gloss and reapplies it. “And don’t even start thinking about what a bitch I am,” she says. Her eyes are steady, the heat receding from her skin. “This is not my fault. I’m just doing what we have been trained to do. This is who we are, freida. This is who we were designed to be.”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“I don’t know how people pretend to be something they’re not; it takes so much effort. That was always my problem, ever since I was your age. I didn’t care about what people thought of me. I only wanted to be true to myself.”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks

“How is it that two eyes, a nose and a mouth can be positioned in such varying ways that it makes one person beautiful, and another person not?”
― Louise O'Neill, Asking For It

“That voice… My voice, it was my voice. How did Flora have my voice? How could I have thrown it away? The only time I was ever happy under the sea was when I was singing, and I sewed my mouth shut in the hopes that a boy I barely knew could kiss it open again.”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks

“I do the splits perfectly in PE. I lose half a pound in two days. I get the spinach and pig-meat frittata from the lo-carb section for lunch. And no-one else knows. I mentally construct a MyFace status, polishing the memories carefully until they shine. The need to record my life is as fundamental as my need to breathe. Without MyFace, I'm floating. I have nothing to anchor me down, to prove I exist.”
― Louise O'Neill

“All eves are created to be perfect but, over time, they seem to develop flaws. Comparing yourself to your sisters is a useful way of identifying these flaws, but you must then take the necessary steps to improve yourself. There is always room for Improvement.”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“I was born in the water and I was born of the water.”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks

“I can't even remember the first time I saw a porno. I presume I must have been shocked, frightened even, but after watching another and another and another they sort of blend into nothingness.”
― Louise O'Neill, Only Ever Yours

“That which we take for granted can so easily be taken away from us, if we do not remain vigilant.”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks

“No one ever calls her husband "unnatural" for abandonning his children; no, instead they whisper that Lorelai must have failed to satisfy him".”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks

“The women always get blamed. Have you noticed that? The wives are nags. The mistress is a bitch for betraying the sisterhood. And the men just fall through the cracks in between. We expect so little from our boys, don’t we, Grace?”
― Louise O'Neill, The Surface Breaks