Gail Honeyman · 327 pages
Rating: (111.6K votes)
“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, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“in principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who's wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable? I think that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It's not as though I'm expecting a reply. I'm fully aware that Polly is a houseplant.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“Sometimes you simply needed someone kind to sit with you while you dealt with things.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“Although it’s good to try new things and to keep an open mind, it’s also extremely important to stay true to who you really are.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“I simply didn't know how to make things better. I could not solve the puzzle of me.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“Some people, weak people, fear solitude. What they fail to understand is that you don't need anyone, you can take care of yourself.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“I find lateness exceptionally rude; it’s so disrespectful, implying unambiguously that you consider yourself and your own time to be so much more valuable than the other person’s.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I’d lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock. The threads tighten slightly from Monday to Friday.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving through me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“She had tried to steer me towards vertiginous heels again - why are these people so incredibly keen on crippling their female customers? I began to wonder if cobblers and chiropractors had established some fiendish cartel.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“I wasn't good at pretending, that was the thing. After what had happened in that burning house, given what went on there, I could see no point in being anything other than truthful with the world. I had, literally, nothing left to lose. But, by careful observation from the sidelines, I'd worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little. Popular people sometimes have to laugh at things they don't find very funny, or do things they don't particularly want to, with people whose company they don't particularly enjoy. Not me. I had decided, years ago, that if the choice was between that or flying solo, then I'd fly solo. It was safer that way. Grief is the price we pay for love, so they say. The price is far too high.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“LOL could go and take a running jump. I wasn’t made for illiteracy; it simply didn’t come naturally.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“There was nothing to tempt me from the choice of desserts, so I opted instead for a coffee, which was bitter and lukewarm. Naturally, I had been about to pour it all over myself but, just in time, had read the warning printed on the paper cup, alerting me to the fact that hot liquids can cause injury. A lucky escape, Eleanor! I said to myself, laughing quietly. I began to suspect that Mr. McDonald was a very foolish man indeed, although, judging from the undiminished queue, a wealthy one.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“When you're struggling hard to manage your own emotions, it becomes unbearable to have to witness other people's, to have to try and manage theirs too.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“Did men ever look in the mirror, I wondered, and find themselves wanting in deeply fundamental ways? When they opened a newspaper or watched a film, were they presented with nothing but exceptionally handsome young men, and did this make them feel intimidated, inferior, because they were not as young, not as handsome? Did they then read newspaper articles ridiculing those same handsome men if they gained weight or wore something unflattering?”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“You can't have too much dog in a book.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“I’m not sure I’d like to be burned. I think I might like to be fed to zoo animals. It would be both environmentally friendly and a lovely treat for the larger carnivores. Could you request that?”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“Time only blunts the pain of loss. It doesn’t erase it.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“In the end, what matters is this: I survived.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“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, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“These days, loneliness is the new cancer – a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“The moment hung in time like a drop of honey from a spoon, heavy, golden.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“I have been waiting for death all my life. I do not mean that I actively wish to die, just that I do not really want to be alive.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“You can't protect other people, however hard you try.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“Men like Raymond, pedestrial dullards, would always be distracted by women who looked like her, having neither the wit nor the sophistication to see beyond mammaries and peroxide.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“Free-form jigging, communal shapes in the air; Dancing was easy!...YMCA! YMCA! Arms in the air, mimicking the letters - what a marvelous idea! Who knew that dancing could be so logical? ...From my limited exposure to popular music, people did seem to sing about umbrellas and firstarting and Emily Bronte novels, so, I supposed, why not a gender-and faith-based youth organization?”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“You’ve made me shiny, Laura,” I said. I tried to stop it, but a little tear ran down the side of my nose. I wiped it away with the back of my hand before it could dampen the ends of my new hair. “Thank you for making me shiny.”
― Gail Honeyman, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
“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, quote from Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Gail Honeyman
Born place: Stirling, Scotland, The United Kingdom
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“To multiply forty-six times forty-six, you figure how much greater forty-six is than twenty-five. The answer is twenty-one. Then you figure how much less forty-six is than fifty. The answer is four. You square the four and get sixteen. You put the twenty-one and the sixteen together and the answer is twenty-one sixteen, or 2,116.
To multiply forty-four times forty-four, you figure how much greater forty-four is than twenty-five. The answer is nineteen. Then you figure how much less forty-four is than fifty. The answer is six. You square the six and get thirty-six. You put the nineteen and the thirty-six together, and the answer is nineteen thirty-six, or 1,936.”
― Frank B. Gilbreth Jr., quote from Cheaper by the Dozen
“I'm beginning to think cookies is a code word for something else."
"Maybe it is." He tugged on my bag again as he took a confident step back, forcing me down another step. "And just think about it. If cookie was a code word, whatever it symbolizes, it's been in your mouth, sweetheart.”
― J. Lynn, quote from Wait for You
“Later, Bishop Crandall dropped by
The house to give me a stern
reprimand. He sat across
the cluttered table,
playing with a paper clip.
'Your parents are worries about you, Pattyn.'
I was worried about myself.
But I wasn't about to let him
know it. "Really?"
'Really. What have you got to say for yourself? You've always been such a good girl.'
Good girl. Sit. Stay. Fetch.
Bristles rose up along my
spine. "Define good."
'I don't appreciate your attitude,
Pattyn. Fast and pray. Search your
soul for the inequities in your life.'
"Any inequity in my life
began when I was born
female. Can you fix that?"
'You'll have to fix that yourself,
by concentrating on the things
God expects of you.'
His two-faced rhetoric
was pissing me off. "You
mean like kissing your ass?"
He slammed his hand on the table.
'I will not listen to that sort
of language. Apologize!'
Behind me, I hear Mom
gasp. But I was on a roll.
"I'm sorry, Bishop
I'm sorry I ever believed
you might have something
worthwhile to say.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Burned
“El día empieza a medianoche, en mitad de la oscuridad. Y luego todo es luz.”
― Juan Gomez-Jurado, quote from The Traitor's Emblem
“Six years previously, Miss Brodie had led her new class into the garden for a history lesson underneath the big elm. On the way through the school corridors they passed the headmistress's study. The door was wide open, the room was empty.
'Little girls,' said Miss Brodie, 'come and observe this.'
They clustered round the open door while she pointed to a large poster pinned with drawing-pins on the opposite wall within the room. It depicted a man's big face. Underneath were the words 'Safety First'.
'This is Stanley Baldwin who got in as Prime Minister and got out again ere long,' said Miss Brodie. 'Miss Mackay retains him on the wall because she believes in the slogan "Safety First". But Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first. Follow me.”
― Muriel Spark, quote from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
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