Lisa Jewell > Quotes

“When I read a book it feels like real life and when I put the book down it's like I go back into the dream.”
― Lisa Jewell, Then She Was Gone

“They weren’t bad books,” Phin countered patiently. “They were books that you didn’t enjoy. It’s not the same thing at all. The only bad books are books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that has been published is going to be a ‘good book’ for someone.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Upstairs

“A man who can’t love but desperately needs to be loved is a dangerous thing indeed.”
― Lisa Jewell, Then She Was Gone

“As the father of your children, as a friend, as someone who shared a journey with you and as someone who loves you and cares about you. I don’t need to be married to you to be all those things. Those things are deeper than marriage. Those things are for ever.”
― Lisa Jewell, Then She Was Gone

“It's the people who seem weak who are always suprisingly strong, and the ones who seem strong who are unexpectledly weak.”
― Lisa Jewell, Ralph's Party

“Stories,” she says, “are the only thing in this world that are real. Everything else is just a dream.”
― Lisa Jewell, Then She Was Gone

“May was like the Friday night of summer: all the good times lying ahead of you, bright and shiny and waiting to be lived.”
― Lisa Jewell, Then She Was Gone

“Friends can be a pain. They can be demanding and hard work. But maybe that's because they're the wrong friends. I read a quote once, can't remember who by, but they said that your friends aren't necessarily the people you like best, they're just the people who got there first.”
― Lisa Jewell, Ralph's Party

“When she doesn’t like the reality of things, she finds a reality she prefers.”
― Lisa Jewell, None of This Is True

“I'd subliminally determined at this point that the only way to really know what was going on in the world was to listen to women talk. Anyone who ignores the chatter of women is poorer by any measure.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Upstairs

“If she could rewind the timeline, untwist it and roll it back the other way like a ball of wool, she’d see the knots in the yarn, the warning signs. Looking at it backward it was obvious all along.”
― Lisa Jewell, Then She Was Gone

“I know as well as you do that only the individual has the key to change themselves. It’s buried deep inside each and every one of us and although someone else can help us to find the key, we’re the only ones who can use it.”
― Lisa Jewell, The House We Grew Up In

“All men are weak,' said Phin.
'That's the whole bloody trouble with the world. Too weak to love properly. Too weak to be wrong.'
My breath caught at the power of this statement. I immediately knew it to be the truest thing I'd ever heard. The weakness of men lay at the root of every bad thing that had ever happened.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Upstairs

“Because that's the thing with getting what you want: all that yearning and dreaming and fantasizing leaves a great big hole that can only be filled with more yearning and dreaming and fantasizing.”
― Lisa Jewell, Watching You

“I remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know that me is fluid and shape-changing.”
― Lisa Jewell, Then She Was Gone

“I loved her more than she loved me, that was the problem. A basic imbalance. Relationships like that never last, however hard you try. And now she's pregnant and in love with a man who'll never love her the way she loves him. It's a series of vicious circles, and the only way to stop it is to find someone who loves you the same. No power struggle. No insecurities. Just friendship. Because you can never be friends with someone if you love them too much.”
― Lisa Jewell, Vince and Joy

“But I suppose the problem is that people often don’t realize that their lives are changing for the better until after the event, when they stop to look back.”
― Lisa Jewell, None of This Is True

“All books are good,' he said...
'They weren't bad books,' Phin countered patiently. 'They were books that you didn't enjoy. It's not the same thing at all. The only bad books are books that are so badly written that no one will publish them. Any book that has been published is going to be a 'good book' for someone.'
I nodded. I couldn't fault his logic.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Upstairs

“Adele was struck by how often women undervalued their own efforts while being endlessly impressed by those of their peers.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“Do not claim that you are anything other than what you are. An evil motherfucking basic bitch. ‘My name is Alix Summer.”
― Lisa Jewell, None of This Is True

“And there it is, the point which it all boils down to eventually. The point where there are no words, no theories, no explanations for behaviors that baffle and infuriate and hurt. Just that. Men.”
― Lisa Jewell, None of This Is True

“Men don’t know, she thinks, they don’t know how having a baby makes you protective of your skin, your body, your space. When you spend all day giving yourself to a baby in every way that it’s possible to give yourself to another human being, the last thing you want at the end of the day is a grown man wanting you to give him things too. Men don’t know how the touch of a hand against the back of your neck can feel like a request, not a gesture of love, how emotional issues become too cumbersome to deal with, how their love for you is too much sometimes, just too much. Kim sometimes thinks that women practise being mothers on men until they become actual mothers, leaving behind a kind of vacancy.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Night She Disappeared

“The blame game could be exhausting sometimes. The blame game could make you lose your mind . . . all the infinitesimal outcomes, each path breaking up into a million other paths every time you heedlessly chose one, taking you on a journey that you’d never find your way back from.”
― Lisa Jewell, Then She Was Gone

“The human memory is such a cruel, frustrating thing, the way it just discards things without asking permission, precious things.”
― Lisa Jewell, The House We Grew Up In

“Cooking doesn’t just nurture the recipient, it nurtures the chef.”
― Lisa Jewell, Then She Was Gone

“She wondered if that was how it worked, that while most women spent their lives searching for the perfect man, men sat around waiting to be chosen and then made the best of it.”
― Lisa Jewell, Watching You

“Moving on is something that happens to you, not something you do. That's what people don't realize. Moving on is not proactive. It's organic. Be kind to yourself.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“And as awful as it sounds, death is a clean break. There are no gray areas. No ambiguity. It’s like a blank canvas in a way.”
― Lisa Jewell, None of This Is True

“she was only here because she didn’t have the guts to be anywhere else. Because she felt like the last guest at an unsuccessful party, too guilt-ridden to leave.”
― Lisa Jewell, The House We Grew Up In

“with parenting there’s a long game and a short game. The aim of the short game is to make your children bearable to live with. Easy to transport. Well behaved in public places. In other words, to make your own life easier. And, yes, you can achieve that with punishments, with discipline, with a clip here and there. But the aim of the long game is to produce a good human being. And personally, I don’t believe that you need to play the short game in order to win the long game. I genuinely believe you can skip it. That it’s optional.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden