The Girls in the Garden Quotes

“Adele was struck by how often women undervalued their own efforts while being endlessly impressed by those of their peers.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“with parenting there’s a long game and a short game. The aim of the short game is to make your children bearable to live with. Easy to transport. Well behaved in public places. In other words, to make your own life easier. And, yes, you can achieve that with punishments, with discipline, with a clip here and there. But the aim of the long game is to produce a good human being. And personally, I don’t believe that you need to play the short game in order to win the long game. I genuinely believe you can skip it. That it’s optional.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“with parenting there’s a long game and a short game. The aim of the short game is to make your children bearable to live with. Easy to transport. Well behaved in public places. In other words, to make your own life easier. And, yes, you can achieve that with punishments, with discipline, with a clip here and there. But the aim of the long game is to produce a good human being.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“I’m talking about kids, Mrs. H. Terrible, dreadful, blasted awful kids. They've all got a darkness inside them. They've all got the capacity for evil. Give them free range over a piece of territory, like that out there, and you’ve got Lord of the Flies. You cannot afford to take your eye off the ball for a second. Not for even a second....”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“For days and days on end they could act like everything was normal, like they were on a lovely little adventure together. And then the reality of their situation would crash through the façade and they’d emerge like a straggle of pile-up survivors crawling from the wreckage.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“That’s why she’s always outside because there’s nothing for her at home.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“cats stretched out in puddles of sunshine;”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“There was no irony in her tone and Adele was struck by how often women undervalued their own efforts whilst being endlessly impressed by those of their peers.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls

“If, quite against all of Adele’s naturally held beliefs, it turned out that there was an afterlife, she strongly suspected that in heaven it would always be a Friday night.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“You will stay, won’t you? I have, as ever, royally overcatered.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“Dear Daddy, We moved into the new flat this weekend.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“And she also said that Phoebe was going out with Leo’s (the sisters’ dad) little brother when she died but also people thought she might have been going out with Leo too even though he was four years older than her! And also that Phoebe is Tyler’s mum’s sister! So the girl on the bench is actually Tyler’s aunt.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“was and”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“You know, Gordon, with parenting there’s a long game and a short game. The aim of the short game is to make your children bearable to live with. Easy to transport. Well behaved in public places. In other words, to make your own life easier. And, yes, you can achieve that with punishments, with discipline, with a clip here and there. But the aim of the long game is to produce a good human being. And personally, I don’t believe that you need to play the short game in order to win the long game. I genuinely believe you can skip it. That it’s optional.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“She's jealous. Catkin is jealous because I'm younger then her but I've done more. Because she wants to know how it would be to stop a lift, to undo a fly, to do the thing that I did, to have a boy say I love you in that desperate, strangled voice, as though you had unlocked the very essence of him and given him the key. She wants to know and she doesn't and she can't because she is trapped here in this park. Trapped in this place that has not let her grow, has not given her the space to be something more than her parent's daughter, her sisters sister. And she is scared. Because she knows all this. And here am I, thinks Grace-thirteen years old. Thirteen years old.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden

“Terrible, dreadful, blasted awful kids. They've all got a darkness inside them. They've all got the capacity of evil.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Girls in the Garden