Jen Williams > Jen's Quotes

“Hell is Whole Foods on a Sunday. It’s hordes of moms in lightweight fleeces pushing one another out of the way to get to bins of dry lentils.”
― Mindy Kaling, Why Not Me?

“Because it’s true: more than the highlights, the bright events, it was in the small and the daily where she’d found life.”
― Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

“There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“One friend with whom you have a lot in common is better than three with whom you struggle to find things to talk about.”
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

“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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, 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

“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, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“I did not own any Tupperware, having no need of it until this point. I could go to a department store to purchase some. That seemed to be the sort of thing that a woman of my age and social circumstances might do. Exciting!”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“You can't protect other people, however hard you try.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“I have often noticed that people who routinely wear sportswear are the least likely sort to participate in athletic activity.”
― Gail Honeyman

“You can't have too much dog in a book.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Did you have a good time on Saturday, then?” he asked. I wished it had been between mouthfuls, but it was, in fact, horrifically, during one. “Yes, thank you,” I said. “It was the first time I’ve tried dancing, and I quite enjoyed it.” He kept forking the food into his mouth. The process, and the noise, seemed almost industrial in its relentlessness.”
― 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

“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

“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, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine