Quotes from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“That was the worst thing about having a relationship with someone, even a pretend relationship. You opened up, let someone in, and when it was over, they had all the ammunition they needed to completely destroy you.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“What you look like is just one part of who you are - but it's not all you are.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I guess they're called moments because they don't last very long.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“The thing about love was that it caught you unawares, turned up in the most unexpected places, even when you weren't looking for it.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I suppose the things that you always take for granted, that you don't even notice, are what you miss the most.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“She was so fed up with unrequited love and platonic love and all the other kinds of love that weren’t passionate, romantic, can’t-live-without-you, I-have-to-have-you-right-now, the-beat-of-your-heart-matches-the-beat-of-mine love.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“But Neve, you can’t start a book and leave it halfway through,’ he’d said implacably. ‘It’s almost as bad as turning down the corner of the page, instead of using a bookmark.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Then what he said and how he said it won't be important any more. What will be important are all the things you never got to say.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Each kiss was like biting into the richest darkest chocolate and pausing to savour the taste.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Excuse me?’ she spat, and as Dougie and Celia always pointed out, it didn’t matter that Neve never swore because she could make ‘Excuse me?’ sound like ‘Go fuck yourself.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“You took out a book on blow-job technique from the British Library? They shouldn't have books like that in there!”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“If Madonna loves me, then you will too.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Having a relationship and not even a sexual one is so straight, it's practically perverted.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“We don't stop, not even when we reach the finish line. It's a journey for life, Neve.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Happiness really isn't that hard to find.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I realised something else tonight. Something about pancakes.’

‘What about them?’

‘We both got so obsessed about that first pancake being thrown away that we forgot something really important,’ Max explained. ‘That first pancake tastes just as good as all the other ones. It’s not its fault that it was first in line and the pan wasn’t hot enough so it got a bit lumpy and misshapen.’

‘And when you’re really famished that first pancake tastes better than all the ones that come after it,’ Neve said, and then she couldn’t wait any longer. Her arms were around Max before she’d even finished forming the thought, but his arms were around her too in that exact same moment.

Just having him there to hold, warm and solid and real, was enough for five seconds, and then she was peppering his face with kisses – his forehead, his eyebrows, the tip of his crooked nose, along his cheekbones until she reached the glittering prize of his mouth.

Sometimes Neve thought that her appetite was the most robust thing about her, and she didn’t kiss Max so much as she devoured him. Graceless, messy kisses without any thought or reason, but simply because she hungered for him. Kissed him with everything she had and everything she was, and she didn’t know why she could kiss Max and have him kiss her back with the same fierceness but still be greedy for the next kiss and the one after that and the one after that and the one…”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“It wasn't a perfect body but it was the body she deserved. Not just from every bar of chocolate or bag of crisps or laden plate of food that she'd eaten. This body was also testament to all the hours in the gym and cycling up hills on her bike and glugging down two litres of water a day and learning to love vegetables and fruits that didn't come as optional extra with a pastry crust. She'd earned this body.
This was her body and she had to stop giving it such a hard time.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“How strange that the years and ocean between us have brought us closer together.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“So you don’t fancy meeting up again?’ Max persisted, though Neve didn’t know why, because she thought she’d made her position perfectly clear. ‘Swap war stories?’
‘I don’t have any war stories,’ Neve said, and in that moment she felt that she never would. That every night would be spent creeping round her flat in her socks with the telly turned down so low that she could barely hear it, so in the end she’d have no other option but to escape into the pages of books where there were other girls falling in and out of love but not her. Never her. She stared down at the scuffed toes of her faux Ugg boots in sudden and tired defeat.
‘If you don’t have any war stories, then at least you don’t have any war wounds,’ Max said, so quietly that Neve had to strain her ears to catch his words. ‘Take my number.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I’d think about you and how I didn’t want us to end. It’s complicated…’

Max still held her, his thumbs stroking the spot on her wrists where her pulse was thundering away. ‘Uncomplicate it then. Did you miss me?’

‘Of course I did! I’ve missed you so much, I hurt from it.’

Then, and only then, did Max release her but it was only so Neve could wind her arms around his neck because they were kissing. She couldn’t say who leaned in first, but all of a sudden there was the familiar but shocking touch of lips on lips.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I’m going that way too. I live in Crouch End. Do you want to share a black cab?’
Black cabs were an extravagance that Neve couldn’t afford, not this far away from payday, but that wasn’t the reason why she declined. ‘No,
thank you. I’m perfectly all right with catching the tube.’
‘OK, tube it is,’ Max agreed, because he was quite obviously emotionally tone deaf and couldn’t sense the huge ‘kindly bugger off’ vibes that
Neve was sure she was emitting. ‘You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?’
‘You apologised, why would I still be mad at you?’
‘One day we’ll laugh about this. When little Tommy asks how we met, I’ll say, “Well, son, I threw an ice cube at your mother, then slapped her
arse, and we’ve been inseparable ever since.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“How is dear Charlotte?’ Celia asked sweetly, then launched into an account of how they’d been having their usual ‘Fucking shut up’, ‘No, you fucking shut up’, row a couple of evenings ago, when Yuri had opened the front door of their flat to scream up the stairs, ‘Why don’t both of you fucking shut up?”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“I sat there listening to him talk and talk and I realised something really important.

I thought I was in love with him for all those years but it turned out I was in love with the idea of William. The actual reality was a bit of an anti-climax.

I thought, well, William would never shove the word WAG into pop songs to make me laugh and he wouldn’t bite the chocolate off chocolate-covered strawberries for me and he’d never, ever watch a film with Sandra Bullock in it, unless it was a Shakespeare adaptation and then he’d spend the entire film listing all the historical inaccuracies and he’d never go down on me for half an hour because he’d lost a game of Scrabble. Point of fact, I can’t imagine William doing anything that would mess up his hair, and he’s started popping the collars of his shirts and have I mentioned that he’s not you? He’s not you, Max, and that’s why I’m actually really pleased that he’s engaged and he’s moving to Warwickshire so I don’t have a constant reminder of what an idiot I’ve been.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“When I saw you on the stairs before, I’d forgotten how beautiful you are,’ he whispered against her skin.

‘Spotty, not beautiful,’ she corrected gently, running her finger along his crooked nose. ‘Now you, you’re beautiful.’

‘I even missed your inferiority complex.’ Max smiled and shifted against her.

‘Not being inferior. It’s a point of fact. I’m covered in zits,’ Neve said and she didn’t know why she felt the need to share that with Max but then she was glad that she had because he was kissing each one of the angry red bumps along her forehead and chin and cheeks, even though a few of them were starting to suppurate. ‘Don’t do that, it’s completely unhygienic. Kiss my mouth instead.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“. . . Do you want to share a black cab?’
Black cabs were an extravagance that Neve couldn’t afford, not this far away from payday, but that wasn’t the reason why she declined. ‘No, thank you. I’m perfectly all right with catching the tube.’
‘OK, tube it is,’ Max agreed, because he was quite obviously emotionally tone deaf and couldn’t sense the huge ‘kindly bugger off’ vibes that Neve was sure she was emitting.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“But really it says everything that’s wrong about the publishing industry, that a quarter of a million people bought and read a sex and shopping novel that wasn’t even written by one of those footballer girlfriends, and yet most of the shortlisted titles on the Orange Prize, which is an award for women writers, don’t even sell ten thousand copies. It’s just not right.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Can we have a time-out on the self-criticism for the rest of the evening?"
"Not the rest of the evening. I can do about half an hour and then force of habit takes over.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Max didn't take his hands off her. As they walked to where he'd parked the hired car, he kept his arm round her shoulders, even though he was carrying her cases in his other hand and they kept bumping him.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“—Lo siento —murmuró ella—. Estoy bien si sé de antemano que van a haber alimentos que no puedo comer, pero cuando se me toma por sorpresa... —Decayó, porque nadie realmente entendía que la comida no era sólo el combustible o que no había nada de malo en un poco de lo que imaginaba; cada comida, cada bocado era una batalla, una guerra de nunca acabar.”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

“Now, Neve, are you about to say no to me?' 'Well, it's just that—' 'Because the word "no" is not in my vocabulary, along with the words "can't" and "Victoria Beckham".”
― Sarra Manning, quote from You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

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