The Party Quotes

“That’s the problem with charm. It means you get away with stuff. It means you never have to develop a real character because no one remembers to look for one. They’re too busy basking in the glow of your attention. They’re too busy being impressed.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“One half of the table was arguing with the other half about the rights and wrongs of the Iraq war, in that semi-detached, earnest way that moneyed people do, always safe in the knowledge no political outcome will really affect them.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“joint opposition to something can be almost as unifying as mutual passion.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“Don’t be silly. It’s lovely to have someone normal here.’ What a strange thing to say to me, I thought. I’m the least normal person I know.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“She was of a different time. Part of her still is. I have never worked out which time, exactly. It could be that the one she belongs to hasn’t been invented yet.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“That made me look like a boy who didn’t have a home full of packed bookshelves but who instead relied on his mother’s Reader’s Digest for reading material.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“Like every conventional woman, Lucy likes to pretend she is unconventional by buying attention-seeking shoes.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“But other people’s money has a narcotic quality. It makes you high. It makes you forget your misgivings. You feel privileged, somehow exceptional to have been invited, as though the tiniest fleck of gold leaf from a giant glittering statue has smudged off on you and you can kid yourself you belong. That you are, for a single night, indubitably One of Them.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“All this time, I’ve been playing the cards without remembering the deck was stacked against me.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“a lie which dropped like a stone through water and sent out ever-widening circles of cause and effect.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“I don’t quite know how they managed it, but I suppose money and power and a hint of aristocratic presence will go a long way. They could be very impressive, that family.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“I wanted above all not to be alone and simultaneously I desired nothing so much as solitude.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“I wondered if she were only able to show herself in writing, when there was a gap between delivery and receipt.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“We are so desperate to think ourselves empathetic these days, as if the exercise of tears is proof of our elevated humanity. In truth, our over-emoting is a selfish endeavour. We cry because we want to be seen to cry.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“And, later in life, I have come to find there’s a certain usefulness in observing from the outside. It allows you space to listen and examine and understand. And, once you understand a group dynamic, you can control it without anyone suspecting”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“I thought of him like a languorous cat: elegant but distant.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“Her hair has been dyed that indeterminate colour inexplicably beloved of middle-aged women, which is neither brown nor blonde but somewhere in between. A kind of beige.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“That’s the problem with charm. It means you get away with stuff. It means you never have to develop a real character because no one remembers to”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party

“It was around the time certain politicians started eschewing the glottal stop in order to demonstrate their man-of-the-people credentials.”
― Elizabeth Day, The Party