Gail Honeyman Quotes

in principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder

In the end, what matters is this: I survived.

It’s SpongeBob, Eleanor,” he said, speaking very slowly and clearly as though I were some sort of idiot. “SpongeBob SquarePants?” A semi-human bath sponge with protruding front teeth! On sale as if it were something completely unremarkable! For my entire life, people have said that I’m strange, but really, when I see things like this, I realize that I’m actually relatively normal.

When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving through me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life.

If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.

I took one of my hands in the other, tried to imagine what it would feel like if it was another person's hand holding mine. There have been times where I felt that I might die of loneliness.

It wasn't that you could take them for granted, as such - heaven knows, nothing can be taken for granted in this life - it was simply that you would know, almost unthinkingly, that they'd be there if you needed them, no matter how bad things got.

I'm responsible. I chose to put myself in a situation where I'm responsible, wanting to look after her, a small, dependent, vulnerable creature. It's innate and I don't even have to think about it. It's like breathing -- for some people.