The Spare Room Quotes

“However,’ Aled went on, ‘I’d consider myself lucky if she did have a “thing” for me. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because you don’t recognise her value, other people won’t see it. Plenty of us do, myself included.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“… I started reading all the time when I realised that living in my own head was easier than trying to fit in.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“I’d consider myself lucky if she did have a “thing” for me. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that just because you don’t recognise her value, other people won’t see it. Plenty of us do, myself included.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“You have kids, you love them. For who they are, not who you imagine they should be.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“Yeah. Like, I’ve been knocked down and something I cared about’s been taken away. But I’ll survive. And … I dunno. Maybe the thing I lost was heavier and more unwieldy than I thought. Perhaps I’d just got used to carrying it.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“When was the last time you read a book that didn’t include explicit shagging?’ ‘You will pry my Kindle from my cold, dead hands,”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“I had it all planned out – I knew exactly how the next few years were going to go. And now … now I’m here.’ She smiled weakly and tried to look stoical. ‘Here is good,’ said Rosie. ‘Here is great, actually. But you don’t have to stay here. When you feel like your world’s blown up, it hurts – but afterwards, you don’t have to live in the place where you land.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“Being around people who loved her made liking, respecting and expressing herself that much easier. It was a truth she intended to hold onto.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“He could make a killing narrating erotica on Audible.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“He’s mistaken having an amazing, supportive girlfriend for someone who’s weighing him down or hampering his potential.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“Maybe the thing I lost was heavier and more unwieldy than I thought. Perhaps I’d just got used to carrying it.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“Dear lord, she was an idiot. In fairness, though, this wildly handsome stranger seemed to have had the power of speech knocked out of him by her earlier impact – and surely someone had to speak?”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“Herrr – what, now? What does it mean?’ Rosie asked, on tenterhooks. ‘Hiraeth,’ Aled repeated. ‘It sort of means longing. Wistfulness. Yearning, tinged with nostalgia. It’s like a special, specifically Welsh homesickness, muddled with grief for lost things that can’t ever come back.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“when are you going to stop letting life just happen to you? When are you going to start living with intention?”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“Thank you,’ Rosie said softly, as she and Aled made their way towards home. ‘What for?’ he asked, as Rosie pressed their palms together. ‘For doing what you always seem to,’ she replied. ‘For breaking my fall.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“uttering the words aloud had lifted a burden she hadn’t even known she was carrying.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“Here is great, actually. But you don’t have to stay here. When you feel like your world’s blown up, it hurts – but afterwards, you don’t have to live in the place where you land.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“a failure to value someone who loved him for what lay beneath the less-than-perfect surface – a laser focus on the superficial that she’d never seen in him before.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“She’d helped to ensure that didn’t happen to a person who, in a small but significant way, had mattered to her.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“Rosie couldn’t think of anything sadder than leaving the world unnoticed, unremarked and unmissed.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“Hiraeth,’ Aled repeated. ‘It sort of means longing. Wistfulness. Yearning, tinged with nostalgia. It’s like a special, specifically Welsh homesickness, muddled with grief for lost things that can’t ever come back.”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room

“You will love again the stranger who was your self … Sit. Feast on your life. Derek Walcott, Love After Love”
― Laura Starkey, The Spare Room