The Third Wife Quotes

“Moving on is something that happens to you, not something you do. That's what people don't realize. Moving on is not proactive. It's organic. Be kind to yourself.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Listen, Dad, in a family like this, the wife without a child is at the bottom of the heap. Everyone comes before them. Everyone.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Same reason she didn't tell you how hard she found it, being the spare part in your great dynasty. She obviously didn't feel like she could talk to you.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“He repainted his world only in colors that he found palatable. That way, whatever happened, whatever bad decisions he made, he would always look out upon a perfect world.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“It’s always the house,” he’d said, “that’s where the rot sets in. When women start to care more about cushions than they do about love.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“And she took her wash bag through to the tiny shower room around the corner from her room and brushed her teeth in water that tasted of being away from home and then she put on her pajamas and laid herself under the overfilled duvet that a hundred other people had already lain under and she stared at the dusty beams in the ceiling and wondered what she was doing here.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“He hadn’t appreciated it when that was his life; he’d mooched about and moaned and gone to the pub under duress, talked to these people out of a sense of duty. He’d always felt there was somewhere else he was supposed to be, other friends he should be hanging out with, some amazing life he was supposed to be living. And now that he was living a different life, the one he’d left behind glittered in his wake like dropped diamonds.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“remembering things is not the same as caring about them.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Adrian gazed past Susie and out at her beautiful garden. He saw ghosts of old afternoons out there, the shadowy echoes of small children, the shrieks of dips in icy paddling pools, the twang and thwack of a ball going round a swing-ball post, half-melted snowmen, barbecue parties that went on into the early hours, failed attempts at handstands, the sand that had sat year after year getting filthy in a plastic trough full of dead leaves and broken toys. Its energy was all still there, hiding among the manicured bushes and shrubs.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Time and grief were cruel at any age, but particularly at this middle point of physical flux, when the face became like a flickering image in a pretentious video art installation, in and out of focus, young-old, young-old, young again.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“The cat approached him curiously. She rubbed herself against his knees and she issued a vibrato warble.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Ah,” she said, picking up her handbag. “Moving on is something that happens to you, not something you do. That’s what people don’t realize. Moving on is not proactive. It’s organic. Be kind to yourself.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Well, technically, she died of a blow to the head and massive internal bleeding after being knocked down by a night bus on Charing Cross Road at three thirty in the morning. But, officially, we have no idea how she ended up being knocked down by a night bus on Charing Cross Road at three thirty in the morning.” He shrugged. “So it wasn’t suicide?” “Well. The verdict was accidental death, but people like Maya, sensible, moderate people, don’t tend to accidentally get so drunk they can’t stand up and then fall in front of a bus on Charing Cross Road at three thirty in the morning. So…” “A big question mark.” “Yes. A very big question mark.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“the insulation of other lives being lived alongside her, even in her sleep.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“skirt”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Well, actually, Sara was just funny, full stop, one of those “best friends” that had gone kind of past their sell-by date, but you can’t quite bring yourself to throw away.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“She looked around the table again, from happy face to happy face, trying to imagine which one it might be, which person was already planning their next written assault.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“But now she looked at this mess of people from a different point of view. She saw them not as a family, not as enchanted and magical, but as a group of survivors, a support group almost:”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“She resisted the urge to slap him and damped down the familiar sense of irritation that she had not been included in a “wives’ outing,” had not been consulted on a shopping list, had once again been relegated to the status of unpaid au pair girl.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“But no, she’d done this, she’d broken this family on a whim, she needed to deal with all the messy bits she’d left in her wake.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“I know that you and she were more than just stepson and stepmother. More than just friends.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“when she had stared into his eyes and hung on to his every word and brushed his arm gently with her fingertips and shared confidences with him and he’d thought… well, it didn’t matter anymore what he’d thought. The fact was he’d been wrong.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Oh,” Adrian said lightly, “I think you’ll find there’re no dark secrets buried here. I think you’ll find we’re all very open with each other.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Married to Susie at twenty-four. Divorced from Susie at thirty-five. Living with Caroline at thirty-five. Married to Caroline at thirty-six. Divorced from Caroline at forty-four. Living with Maya at forty-four. Married to Maya at forty-five. Widowed at forty-seven.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Adrian stared at her profile, during a lull. She looked so like Caroline: all beauty without any pretty, all lines and angles and carpentry. She’d never been a chatty child, not like Luke and Otis, his big boys, who used to wake each morning with a dozen fully formed questions spilling from their just-opened mouths, who would talk through films and stories and car journeys and not stop until they fell asleep. Cat, his oldest girl, had been more mercurial; sometimes she’d be open and conversational and other times she’d be closed. Beau was just your regular five-year-old. He and Caroline used to say that he was the one they’d bought off the shelf after doing extensive research. The perfect textbook baby and now the sweet, uncomplicated child. But Pearl—she was not like the others. She was the ice queen. Maya used to call her the Empress. Even as a baby she had held herself back from the heat of intimacy and affection, as if it might burn her.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“It hadn’t mattered then. It hadn’t mattered to either of them. Because they were in love. And ugly flats look pretty when you’re in love.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“Moving on is something that happens to you, not something you do. That’s what people don’t realize. Moving on is not proactive. It’s organic. Be kind to yourself.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“phone calls to make. Terrible phone calls.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife

“is a work”
― Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife