Eleanor Oliphant Quotes

“I pondered what else I should take for him. Flowers seemed wrong; they're a love token, after all. I looked in the fridge, and popped a packet of cheese slices into the bag. All men like cheese.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“I had no idea how to respond, and opted for a smile, which serves me well on most occasions (not if it's something to do with death or illness, though -- I know that now.)”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“My eye was drawn to a bright green hue, the same shade as a poisonous Amazonian frog, the tiny, delightfully deadly ones.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“The gilded confines of the Beauty Hall were not my preferred habitat; like the chicken that had laid the eggs for my sandwich, I was more of a free-range creature.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“People don't like facts. If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“She only really enjoyed her own company. She tolerated mine, but fundamentally she was a recluse at heart, like J.D. Salinger or the Unabomber.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“She was, quite simply, a nice lady who'd raised a family and now lived quietly with her cats and grew vegetables. This was both nothing and everything.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Could I ever become a Musician's muse, I wondered? What was a muse, anyway?”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“I realized that such small gestures - the way his mother had made me a cup of tea after our meal without asking, remembering that I didn't take sugar, the way Laura had placed two little bisquits on the saucer when she brought me coffee in the salon - such things could mean so much.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“I felt a warmth inside, a cosy, glowy feeling like hot tea on a cold morning.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Who was this stranger, and why had I chosen him, of all the men in this city, this country, the world, to be my saviour?”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“What they fail to understand is that there's something very liberating about it; once you realize that you don't need anyone, you can take care of yourself. That's the thing: it's best just to take care of yourself. You can't protect other people, however hard you try. You try, and you fail, and your world collapses atound you, burns down to ashes.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

“I go over most Sundays,' he went on. 'She doesn't get out much - I'm sure she'd love to see a new face.'
'Even one like mine?' I said.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Human hair, doing what human hair does: growing on my head.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“The ugliness didn't matter - after all, there was no one to see me.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“You can make anything happen, anything at all, inside a daydream.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Another bad sign - someone or something had turned vodka into water. This was not my preferred kind of miracle.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Asking for help was anathema to me. I'd told Maria that. 'And how's that been working out for you so far?' she'd said. I didn't appreciate her somewhat pointed tone, but she was quite right. That didn't, however, mean that it was easy.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“It was surprising that he should bother with me, especially given the unpleasant circumstances in which he’d found me after the concert. Whenever I’d been sad or upset before, the relevant people in my life would simply call my social worker and I’d be moved somewhere else. Raymond hadn’t phoned anyone or asked an outside agency to intervene. He’d elected to look after me himself. I’d been pondering this, and concluded that there must be some people for whom difficult behavior wasn’t a reason to end their relationship with you. If they liked you—and, I remembered, Raymond and I had agreed that we were pals now—then, it seemed, they were prepared to maintain contact, even if you were sad, or upset, or behaving in very challenging ways. This was something of a revelation.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine