Maureen’s Reviews > Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine > Status Update

“I looked out of the window. People were shopping, talking on mobiles, pushing prams. The world just went on, regardless of what happened. That's how it works.”

“I'd tried to cope alone for far too long, and it hadn't done me any good at all. Sometimes you simply needed someone kind to sit with you while you dealt with things.”

“The past had been hiding from me--or I'd hidden from it-and yet there it was, still, lurking in darkness. It was time to let in a little light.”

“The voice in my own head--my own voice--was actually quite sensible, and rational, I'd begun to realize. It was Mummy's voice that had done all the judging, and encouraged me to do so too. I was getting to quite like my own voice, my own thoughts. I wanted more of them. They made me feel good, calm even. They made me feel like me.”

“She certainly seemed to have a life, not just an existence.”

“Tiny slivers of life--they all added up and helped you to feel that you too could be a fragment, a little piece of humanity who usefully filled a space, however minuscule.”

“I suppose one of the reasons we’re all able to continue to exist for our allotted span in this green and blue vale of tears is that there is always, however remote it might seem, the possibility of change.”

“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.”