Abigail Joseph > Abigail's Quotes

“We were born in the '70s, back when twins were rare, a bit magical: cousins of the unicorn, siblings of the elves.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Once you name something, it stops you seeing the whole of it, or why it matters. You focus on the word, which is just the tiniest part, really, the tip of an iceberg.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“Love that doesn't include honesty doesn't deserve to be called love.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“You know, one of the hardest things to admit is that we weren’t loved when we needed it most. It’s a terrible feeling, the pain of not being loved.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“Sometimes it takes courage, you know, and a long time, to be honest.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

“Life is not a paragraph and death is no parenthesis.”
― Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train

“The things I want to remember I can't, and the things I try so hard to forget just keep coming.”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“Watching someone in the throes of raw grief is a terrible thing; the act of watching feels violent, intrusive, a violation. Yet we do it, we have to do it, all the time; you just have to learn to cope with it whatever way you can.”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“I thought how odd it was that parents believe they know their children, understand their children. Do they not remember what it was like to be eighteen, or fifteen, or twelve? Perhaps having children makes you forget being one.”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“But then I suppose I’ve never really lost anyone. How would I know what that kind of grief feels like?”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“She used to think that only parents can understand the sort of love that swallows you up, but now she wondered whether it was only mothers who did.”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust’s jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“The things I want to remember I can’t, and the things I try so hard to forget just keep coming.”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“That seemed a stupid reason, but adult stories were full of stupid cruelties:”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“And unless you mean it, you said, why do it? Don’t be a tourist. No one likes a tourist.”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“no one told you how slow you would become, and how bored you would be by your slowness.”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“Why isn’t he the one who gets shoved off a fucking cliff?”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“Some things you should let go of
Others you shouldn’t
Views differ as to which
—Emily Berry, “The Numbers Game”
― Paula Hawkins, Into the Water

“I think the idea of me is better than the reality of me.”
― Colleen Hoover, Verity

“It’s what you do when you’ve experienced the worst of the worst. You seek out people like you…people worse off than you…and you use them to make yourself feel better about the terrible things that have happened to you.”
― Colleen Hoover, Verity

“Take care of your physical being. Feed it what it needs, not what the conscience tells you it wants. Giving in to cravings of the mind that ultimately hurt the body is like a weak parent giving in to her child. “Oh, you had a bad day? Do you want an entire box of cookies? Okay, sweetie. Eat it. And drink this soda while you’re at it.” Caring for your body is no different from caring for a child. Sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it sucks, sometimes you just want to give in, but if you do, you’ll pay for the consequences eighteen years down the road.”
― Colleen Hoover, Verity

“I needed for the imaginary version of my world to be darker than my real world. Otherwise, I would have wanted to leave them both.”
― Colleen Hoover, Verity

“The only thing she could be absolutely certain about was her own self. But that was a lonely,chilling thought.”
― Lesley Pearse, Gypsy

“My body is not yours. I don't owe you, I don't owe boys some fucked-up compensation for my reputation, I don't owe the public an apology for my personal life, I don't owe anyone a goddamn thing, so get out of my life and stay out!”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“Though I guess if you love someone, the thought of losing their approval is probably twice as terrifying.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“The story pours over me like water, drips down onto my head until I'm immersed head-to-toe, transported between the covers.”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“There’s a point where procrastination turns into resignation that you will never do what you need to do,”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“your silence is more silent than usual silence”
― Riley Redgate, Seven Ways We Lie

“Olive had felt that he was on her side. Over & over, & in ways that could never have anticipated, he had made her feel unjudged. Less alone.”
― Ali Hazelwood, The Love Hypothesis

“Reading about life was no preparation for living it.”
― Alex Michaelides, The Maidens