The Family Remains Quotes

“And when you hate someone, it leaves deeper scars on your psyche than loving someone ever can.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“the only thing that stands between success and failure is the possibility—”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“But we all behaved badly in that house; not one of us got out of there without a black mark. I’ve come to accept our sins as survival strategies.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“He didn’t wait to be formed by the universe. He shaped the universe to his will.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“I am incomplete. I have always felt incomplete. And I have thought at various points throughout my life that just around the next corner would be the thing that would complete me.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“She read it through just once, before pressing send and propelling it forcefully, wantonly, thoughtlessly into the universe, where it would change the course of her life in ways that she could not possibly have imagined.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“I have done my best with what nature gave me. Money can’t buy you love but it can buy you a chiseled jaw, perfectly aligned teeth, and plumped-up lips.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“I’m a dog person at heart and got the cats only because they’re easier for selfish people to look after.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“How much more of the taxpayers’ money can I throw at this thing? An evil woman. A woman loved by nobody, missed by nobody, a woman with shards of ice in her heart. A case of child abuse where no evidence remains, where numerous people were in the house, where no records of any description exist for an entire six-year period of time, where a family of itinerants moved in and took over without anyone ever knowing. It’s impossible. It’s terrible.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“have done my best with what nature gave me. Money can’t buy you love but it can buy you a chiselled jaw, perfectly aligned teeth and plumped-up lips.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“I have exquisite taste, but I just don’t know how to put tasteful things together in any semblance of visual harmony. No. I am not good at creating visual harmony. It’s OK. I’m good at lots of other things.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“I am a Christian with a small c. I used to be one with a big C, but then life got in the way of the church side of things. Now I am a Christian in my own home, not in God’s home. I believe that he is everywhere, not only inside certain buildings.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“Young hackers trump old hackers.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“That is his job. A dog needs a job to be happy and if they don't know what their job is, they make one up.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“Ah, well, yes. You may think that. But it is easier to keep a living person hidden than a dead body”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“A person who lets you so easily into their home has either nothing to hide, or everything to hide.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“You find that with children who've shared a childhood trauma: it's like a fine wire that runs between you: you can feel the tug on it from time to time.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“This is not a case that has brought about the usual rash of crazies and fantasists and time-wasters. Cold cases don't tend to attract these types. The crazies and the time. wasters like to dance in the burning flames of the moment, when things are fresh and hot and volatile, when every second counts”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“And I know some people might feel like that was some kind of a curse on a house. But I don't believe in any of that. I have a very positive mindset, you see. I have come here to overwrite that bad history. Overwrite it all.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“It’s late and he’s really not in the mood for making small talk with someone called Jeff.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“and they don’t talk about Michael because Michael is dead and they are alive and they are safe and the sun shines on them as the barges pass down below.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“I did not go to the police because for so long I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, because if it had happened then that meant that I wasn’t me anymore, and more than anything I needed to be me. But now I know that the two things can both be true; it can be true that I married a man who violently raped me, and it can also be true that I am strong and special. Just like it was for Lucy.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“Michael. You raped me.” “Oh, come on, Rach. Hardly.” “I was asleep. You put your hand over my mouth. Around my throat. You fucking raped me.” “Rachel. Come on. You and I both know that you’d been waiting for me to take control. To dominate you. It was what you wanted. You know it was.” Rachel pulled in her breath against the wave of pure rage that was throbbing around her rib cage. “Do you understand, Michael, the subtlety, the nuance of BDSM? Soft BDSM in particular? It’s a game between two people who both understand the rules. And you, Michael, did not understand the rules, and what you did to me was not a game. It was violent and it was misogynistic and brutal and animal. It was all about you, Michael, and nothing to do with me, and if you enjoyed what you did to me that night then you are not just a rapist, Michael—you are a fucking monster.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“I am Phin’s living, breathing nightmare and he hates me. And when you hate someone, it leaves deeper scars on your psyche than loving someone ever can.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“She thought of how she’d contorted herself and her habits and her behavior for twenty years to be a person who would not be raped, and now she had been raped in the place where she was meant to be safe, by the person who was meant to protect her. She felt the artifice of the last twenty years of her life, the pointlessness and futility of it. She might as well have taken the shortcut, worn the tarty top, flirted with the shady guy. She might as well have lived her life free.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“I am awash with emotion for which I have insufficient language. A churning in my soul of loss and emptiness and lack and incompleteness. I am incomplete. I have always felt incomplete. And I have thought at various points throughout my life that just around the next corner would be the thing that would complete me.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“I realize that I have been chasing a ghost all these years, living my life in the slipstream of a young man who doesn’t exist anymore.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“You’re the only one, Rachel. The only thing. In the whole world. OK?” She nodded, submitting to his adoration, even as she felt it diminishing her somehow, making her less.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“They fall silent then. Their shared history is so big that it’s sometimes as if mere words cannot contain it and that it exists only in the pauses and the silences and the unfinished sentences.”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains

“swear, Rachel Gold, that I am not what you think”
― Lisa Jewell, The Family Remains