The Island of Lost Girls Quotes

“We were so bound up in ourselves and our petty resentments that we forgot all about her. And now she’s gone, and I will never be able to say how sorry I am.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“hate them, she thinks, as she crosses the tacky carpet to fill her bucket at the kitchenette sink. They’re disgusting. Wicked, and disgusting. They deserve everything that will happen to them. Everything. This job will take at least two hours. When she’s finished, she’ll put the plug into the sink, turn the tap on and close the door.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“We’re just slaves, really, from the day we’re born. All the trappings of freedom, but none at all, in reality. Our lives are his, to dispose of as he wants, and she’ll never be forgiven for showing him who he really is.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“Might as well, thinks Gemma. She likes cocaine. Likes the way it makes her feel sharp, alert and yet pleasingly numb. She takes it and bends to take her turn.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“They’re picking which fillet steak they want to share, and the doors are locked. If I screamed, she wonders, would anybody hear me? And if they heard me, would they come to help? Tatiana claps her hands”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“Never, ever do this again!’ he shouts. ‘Get it? No one comes in here. No one!’ He turns on Mercedes. ‘Get out. Jesus. Get the hell out of here, you stupid little bitch! Forget you ever saw this place. Capisce?”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“Oh, Felix,’ she says. ‘They’re always here, with the internet. You know those cameras? All over the house?’ He nods. ‘The security.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“The dilettante Englishman abroad, selling wines to the dodgy rich, getting access to their houses. Recording all the boasting that rings around the tables at Mediterraneo, the diners convinced that exclusivity is the same as privacy.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“Mercedes had shrugged. Of course she has. Fraud. Drugs. Heads of broken states, securing their share of the embezzled tax. Plunderers of natural resources, making sure their owners never see the benefit. Any number of crimes and moral misdemeanours, really; not just tax evasion. The Bank of Kastellana doesn’t ask questions. But its fees are astronomical, and the people love their new-found comforts.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“She wouldn’t go so far as to think of him as a friend. Knows that theirs is a relationship based on mutual benefits rather than affection.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“Felix stops on the corner, looks her up and down. ‘That’s what we thought,’ he says. He walks on. ‘Your father’s a piece of work,’ he says. ‘I can’t believe he’d actually sell his own daughter.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“Mercedes very much doubts that. It’s a small island, and she’s passed former sirenas in the street many times. They never look as though they’ve forgotten it. Not even the old ones. You just have to see their eyes to know that they have been broken forever.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“Choices?’ ‘Money,’ says Tatiana complacently, ‘gives you choices. I can basically be anything I want. Live anywhere I want, do anything I want.’ ‘And you chose La Kastellana!’ says Paulina Marino, sarcastically, from behind them. ‘Well, isn’t that fine!”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“People have been avoiding the Grota for a thousand years. Who is he to laugh at myths and legends?”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“That tinkling socialite laugh that tells you that the laugher has no sense of humour. My greatest power, Mercedes thinks, is my talent for being underestimated. Tatiana would never think I had the imagination to betray her.”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls

“What if they come out, with their muscled tails and their sea-wrack hair and their thousand silver teeth, and pull me down with them forever?”
― Alex Marwood, The Island of Lost Girls