The Happy Couple Quotes

“Loneliness wasn’t having no one. Loneliness was the gap between what you hoped for and what you got.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“If asked ‘Why don’t men commit?’, you’ll say ‘They will, just not to you’; if asked ‘Why don’t women commit?’, you’ll say ‘Commit what, suicide?”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“The lie is that women are good at feelings. The truth is that they’re good spectators of other people’s, and good coaches and good referees. They can advise from the sidelines. But if you drag them out to play, don’t be expecting miracles.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“In heterosexual monogamy, the woman forfeits at least as much freedom as the man—but her agency isn’t valued enough to be considered a loss.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“It's only clichéd if you're boring', Celine said. 'If you can't think new thoughts about old things.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“The need to be chosen will fuck you over. Because if you need to be chosen, you'll keep going after people who'll never choose." He put his beer down. "Not the most expedient course of action, but that's what I do. I pick a person who hates deciding and I beg him: decide on me. Maybe it's that I hate choosing too. Maybe I don't want to be chosen after all, and if he ever did choose me, I'd leave.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“Still, that’s what I mean when I say I like Grellan. He can show me how to be a man without having this destroy-or-be-destroyed thing. And once you know how to do it, it doesn’t take much work. It’s intrinsically rewarding, so it runs itself: being nice. I look at Grellan and on some level I think, if I were to decide the meaning of life is happiness, and if I stopped trying to be better than people, and if I tried to love them instead – it would be an investment. I’d get to be Grellan by Grellan’s age.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“But isn’t that the point of an affair? To kid yourself it would be different with someone else?
Just long enough to escape. Then back to your real life.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“Life offers few unambiguous red flags. More often, you see specks of crimson dye. They could form a pattern. Or they could just be dots.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“As far as I know, Archie was your first serious relationship,’ Vivian continued. ‘And Archie thought you should put up with his nonsense, because that’s love. Love is letting people hurt you. Archie must have learned it from someone, too. We’re all taught it. But some of us get over it – and some of us terrorise the general population well into our twenties and beyond.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“When I was at Oxford, I tried to top myself, and I was comically bad at it. An utter clown. Then afterwards, whenever something felt nice, or even if it felt okay, I took the effort to pause. I thought: is this specific moment better than nothing? And it usually was. Once I started looking out for that sensation, I stopped wanting to die.’
‘Got you,’ Phoebe said. ‘Your cure for being suicidal is: don’t.’
‘You’re less likely to see something if you’re not looking for it, is all I mean.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“To Maria, Celine had been a mirror. Luke looked at Celine without needing to see himself.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“Celine believed things for exactly as long as she wanted to. Being smart, being logical, didn't help her. It just enabled her baroque self-deceit. Phoebe took the simpler route of putting no consideration into her life choices, but both sisters wound up equally mired in their own bullshit. Celine's decision-making required more cognitive energy, but not necessarily more thought.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“Let me drum this into your eejit head. The good Lord gets us over people when we get the fuck away. Cut ties. Stop dilly-dallying into their lives like a semi-neglectful godparent. Foolishness.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“She'd learned by that point that she couldn't fix people. All she needed to know, really, in any human transaction, was wether it was right for her; wether it fit. That was why she'd dumped Luke when they were twenty. `Why doesn't he text?´was none of her business. The fact was, he didn't text, and she wanted someone who did.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“She had survived to age twenty-two with only the usual signs of wear: mild nutritional deficiencies, self-diagnosed anxious attachment style, self-diagnosed avoidant attachment style, stiff neck from excessive phone use. She googled things like “wildfires europe” and “heat wave crop failure famine” and “when will dublin underwater” and “will england fuck ireland over” and “will WHAT IS HAPPENING IN england fuck ireland over” and “why am i lonely” and “why do i hate existing” and “how many painkillers to die” and “how much carpet cleaner to die” and “why wont the government let me die.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“I'm the man I was four years ago when she stood on that stepladder. I still want her to hand me the Mozart mug. I want to feed the cat in our hideous green-and-yellow kitchenette, and to say pointless things at each tram stop. And I was lying when I said I didn't love her hands. They're my favorite part of her. They tell you who she is, what she does. Eyes, lips, the focal points of sonnets-- that's sheer genetics. But her hands--”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“And Celine gives you culture. Without her, your life appears barren.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“and she'd never met business she couldn't make her own.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“Nobody knew anyone, not fully. Her loneliness wasn’t special. Pick a human—any human—anyone you know: we’ve all felt there’s too much of us for a fellow individual to comprehend. That’s why you need people, plural: so that between them, they’ll understand all of you.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“Tanja was a sensible person (when she wasn’t saying “You need to watch this right now” and then showing you a Simpsons clip from 1998), so this take on matters convinced Celine that something should change.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“The longer I'm alive, the more I think you can tell fuck-all about a person from what someone else says about them."
"But you can tell plenty about the person saying it," Vivian said. "You know, you handled today quite well."
"Did I?" Phoebe said. "I envied you. Not getting involved."
"I don't tend to. Sometimes I think I should."
"Not with Luke. Promise me not with Luke."
Vivian laughed. "Luke should get involved with Luke. He's spent decades putting that one off." She stubbed her cigarette. "Unless I'm really saying that about me.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“See Luke," Archie said, "the idea of you, I loved. He was an idiot, but he cared. You? You're nothing. You don't mind if I'm hurt. You just mind being blamed. So in deference to your wishes, I'll think of you as a tapeworm. The tapeworm did nothing wrong. The tapeworm can't conceive of wrong. But if a tapeworm kept fucking me over, I'd get rid of it.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“I'm sorry."
"Only because you're finally having to decide."
Now Luke could no longer contain his panic. "But if we didn't have to choose--"
"Too late. Where I was a few months ago, or even a few weeks ago-- you could have met me there. Even this morning, you could have had me. But nobody stands still forever. Maybe one day you'll learn that everyone else is just as interesting as you, or maybe you won't. I don't care.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“What I worked out about you at Oxford," Vivian told Luke on the hotel bed, "is that you want to be loved in your entirety. That's not Luke-specific. The Luke-specific thing is you treat people like shit to see if they'll still love you after.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“I don't want her hands. I don't want her daily practice. I don't want her constant financial uncertainty, refusal to go anywhere for longer than two days if there's no piano, and willingness to drop all plans when some pissant orchestra rings her up saying "Please can you learn some Tchaikovsky-ass bullshit in a week?" And the thing about protecting her hands-- I don't know. I get it. But who took out the bins before she had me?”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“Fine,” Celine said. She was violently allergic to two things: logistics, communications.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple

“Luke had been twisting his engagement ring. As Vivian spoke, it slipped and fell on the bedside table. The metal clanged. It was cold and hard and gold. A circle, a line without end.”
― Naoise Dolan, The Happy Couple