Apple Tree Yard Quotes

“We discovered that safety and security are commodities you can sell in return for excitement but you can never buy them back.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“Self-awareness: it is one of the chief bonuses of advancing age. It is our consolation prize.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“We are taught we can redeem them, she said to me once. We are taught it as soon as we can read. We can turn the beast into a prince, if only we love him enough.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“How many times in a life does a person get to feel an instant attraction for someone one has just met, the eyes locking, the sudden and overwhelming conviction that this is someone he or she is meant to know?”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“The first day without you is painful in a way that is almost exquisite. I imagine quitting smokers must feel like this, or crash-dieters - the early determination, where the loss of what you have given up is replaced with the adrenaline of denial.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“Quando decidi di non dire qualcosa devi continuare a non dirlo. Basta poco, penso. Basta poco per trasformare la tua vita in una menzogna.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“Everything is disproportionate in the middle of the night.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“There's a certain sort of a man whose every charm lies in his predictability.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“gestures”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“Relationships are about stories, not truth.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“Three decades of being the most respectable science professional or suburban mother count for nothing set against one fuck in a doorway.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“febrile even, but happier than I have been in weeks.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“Same reason they always use female defence barristers in rape cases – so the jury thinks, well if that pretty young woman is defending the bloke in the box then he can’t be all bad otherwise she wouldn’t be doing it.’ He takes a sip of coffee. ‘It’s a remarkably successful strategy, I have to say.’ I am unable to keep the ice out of my voice. ‘And if you know this, and everyone in chambers knows it, then presumably the young pretty barristers also know it when they are assigned to defend rape cases?’ I take my own sip. ‘That doesn’t bother anyone?”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“She thinks I am lucky to have him. I do too, of course, but it annoys me how easy it is for a man to look good to those who observe him from outside a relationship. He doesn’t hit you, he’s not an alcoholic, he’s good with the kids – all these things are told to women, even by other women, by way of emphasising just how lucky they are. Guy scores points just for not beating me up. I wonder if anyone has ever said to Guy, ‘Let’s face it, she doesn’t hit you, she’s not an alcoholic and she is really good with those kids. You should be grateful.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“This was the thing he never understood: yes, he would give me time to work when I demanded it, but my time was considered to belong to our family unit unless I signalled that I wanted out. His time was considered to belong to himself and his work unless I demanded that he opt in.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“What amused me as put down my notepad and wrote the place, time and date at the top of it, was the thought that if anyone, let alone me, suggested to these young males that they were responding to me on a sexual level, they would be horrified – I was old enough to be their mother, after all. But even so, they could not stop themselves from rising to the challenge. Here was I, an unknown female in their midst, in a situation in which they were potentially on show. Perhaps some of them, on top of that, were nursing a lurking Mrs Robinson fantasy or maybe some of them were intimidated by young women of their own age and preferred the idea of someone more motherly – but even if neither of these factors came into play, there was something in them that responded to me on a very elemental level, even if all they wanted was the thought of being able to brag about it afterwards: that examiner, thinks she going to fuck me over with her marking pen, well, I’ll fuck her. It was simple aggression on their part – that’s all really, chimpanzee behaviour. It amused me. I was safe, after all, and in a position of power.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“Nessuno si è mai complimentato con me per come mi destreggiavo tra i vari impegni, né l'ho mai preteso. Io stessa, come tutti gli altri, davo per scontata la mia bravura.
Se mi sono lasciata prendere da te, e se ho fatto quello che ho fatto, non era perché avevo smesso di amare Guy. Ero solo stanca, avevo smesso di amare tutto ciò che aveva a che fare con la mia bravura. Avevo smesso di amare me stessa.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“Tutte le relazioni sono fatte di storie, non di verità. Da soli, come individui, abbiamo una nostra mitologia personale, le storie che ci raccontiamo per capire noi stessi. In generale questo funziona, a patto di restare sani di mente e single, ma nell'istante in cui stringiamo un rapporto intimo con un'altra persona scatta una dissonanza automatica tra la nostra storia su noi stessi E la storia dell'altro su di noi.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard

“I wasn’t vulnerable to you, to what I did with you, because I had fallen out of love with Guy. I was weary, and if I fell out of love with anything it was with that competence of mine. I fell out of love with myself.”
― Louise Doughty, Apple Tree Yard