Friend Request Quotes

“Perhaps it’s simply not possible to truly know another person. When it comes down to it, we’re all alone. Sometimes we don’t even know ourselves.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Odd, how you spend five years going to the same place every day, and then it’s over, you never go there again. Almost as if it never existed at all.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“I know that Facebook offers an idealised version of life, edited and primped to show the world what we want it to see.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“I’m in a hall of mirrors, full of distorted reflections and false endings. I’ve lost track of which way I came in and I have no idea how to get out.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“If one of us falls, then what is left is not a family at all.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Maybe it’s only by going back that she will be able to move forward.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Run as fast as you like, Louise. You’ll never escape from me. Every wound leaves a scar. Just ask Esther Harcourt.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“The end of something is always the start of something else, even if you can’t see it at the time.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“She told me once that there’s a saying, you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child. If that’s true then she must have been pretty fucking unhappy.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“We think that the gulf between living and dying is huge, but on the tube platform I am always reminded that it’s only one little step.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“The knife falls from my hand,”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Some days she feels like a prisoner in her own home.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“I should know better than anyone that things aren’t always what they seem. It’s like when someone tells a story about something that happened when you were there, and it’s not at all how you remember it. It might be they’re telling it a certain way for effect, to make people laugh, or to impress someone. But sometimes that’s simply how they remember it. For them, it’s the truth. That’s when it becomes hard for you to know whether what you remember is the truth, or whether it’s just your version of it.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Maria Weston wants to be friends. But Maria Weston has been dead for more than twenty-five years.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“If you get enough people talking about something it gathers its own momentum. And the idea that there’s no smoke without fire is a powerful one.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Odd, how you spend five years going to the same place every day, and then it's over, you never go there again. Almost as if it never existed at all.”
― Laura Marshall, Vriendschapsverzoek

“For a second I miss the Facebook reference, and just see ‘Maria Weston wants to be friends’. Instinctively I slam the laptop shut. It feels as though a sponge has been lodged in my throat, soaking up water, swelling and clogging, leaving me struggling for breath. I attempt to breathe deeply, trying to get myself back under control. Perhaps I was mistaken. I must have been mistaken because this cannot possibly be happening. Slowly I raise the lid of my laptop. Hands shaking, I go back into the email and this time there is no denying the bald fact of it. Maria Weston wants to be friends with me.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“The email arrives in my inbox like an unexploded bomb: Maria Weston wants to be friends on Facebook. For a second”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“we both know she’d go crazy after just one day of sitting”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Some days she feels like a prisoner in her own home. There’s no reason why she can’t go out, of course. Nobody could tell from simply looking at her. But on days like today, it feels as though someone has peeled back a layer of skin, leaving her face red raw, offering”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“I try to keep my eyes on the sandwiches, but cannot stop the heat that rises to my cheeks. There’s a harassed woman with two small children whinging for treats to my right, and next to her a greying man in a tired suit looking miserably at the low-fat section. My eyes slide beyond him and land on Tim Weston. He smiles and gives a half-wave, coming around behind the businessman and the woman with the children. ‘Louise, hi. What are you doing here?’ ‘Buying a sandwich?’ I give a breathless laugh, trying to conceal my discomfort. Has Tim been following me? ‘Right. You came all the way to Norwich for a sandwich? They do have Marks & Spencers in London you know.’ His tone is light but there’s an accusation behind his words. I give in. ‘I’ve just been at the police station”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“we were adults, we could look after ourselves; it didn’t matter whether we were happy or not. All that mattered was that Henry was OK. That’s still all that matters to me.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“1989 I’ve been awake all night in an attempt to maintain some kind of hold on what has happened, on what I have done. My eyes are red and prickling with tiredness, but I daren’t go to sleep. If I sleep, when I wake up I’ll have one blissful, terrible second when I’m unaware –and then it will all come crashing in on me, its power multiplied indefinitely by that one un-knowing second. I think of the last time I saw the dawn in, lying in Sophie’s bed. This time it’s a more tempestuous and bleaker affair. A ceaseless summer rain has been falling all night, and the branch of a nearby tree is thwacking intermittently against my windowpane. It’s not just the chemicals keeping me awake, although I can still feel them coursing, unwanted, around my veins. I’ve been sitting here on the floor for four hours, as my bedroom turns gradually from darkness to a dull grey half-light. I’m surrounded by the debris of my elaborate preparations for the evening that, twelve hours ago, stretched out invitingly, bright with the promise of acceptance and approval. There are three dresses strewn on the bed, with the accompanying pair of shoes for each lying discarded in front of the full-length mirror. My eyes rest dully on the stain on the carpet where Sophie dropped my new bronzing powder and I made a clumsy attempt to wipe it up with a bit of tissue dipped in a glass of stale water. The dress I wore lies in a crumpled heap next to me –I’ve pulled on an old sweatshirt and leggings. There are dark smudges under my eyes and my lips are dry, the remains of my lipstick clinging to the cracks and bleeding into the skin around my mouth. I’ve been sitting here on the floor for so long only because I can’t move. I would have expected my heart to be racing, but in fact an iron fist grips it so tightly that I am surprised it is beating at all. Everything has slowed to a funereal”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“nice, normal man would never be interested in me. And even if he was, I wouldn’t know the right way to respond, how to be with him.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Instead I watch from the sidelines on Facebook, liking photos of barbecues, birthday parties, days out, knowing that I only have myself to blame for not being there in the pictures.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“The rest of the day drags by. This is another part I haven’t got used to: the empty weekends.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“As I drive away, I wonder whether I will ever be able to leave Henry with him without this terrible, gnawing sense of dread.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“She told me once that there’s a saying, you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Do I really want to open myself up to the possibility of hurt again?”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request

“Sometimes I wonder what the effect of all this love will be on him later in life. All the experts seem to agree that you can’t give a child too much love, but what if you can? What if you smother him with it, or ruin him for ever by raising his expectations of how other people will feel about him? Nobody will ever love him this much again.”
― Laura Marshall, Friend Request