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758acdd
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The only criterion I have is that the books must look clean, which means that I have to disregard a lot of potential reading material in the charity shop. I don't use the library for the same reason, althought obviously, in principle and reality, libraries are life-enhancing palaces of wonder.
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Gail Honeyman |
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971a806
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As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe.
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Gail Honeyman |
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f8594d1
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Tiny slivers of life--they all added up and helped you to feel that you too could be a fragment, a little piece of humanity who usefully filled a space, however minuscule.
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Gail Honeyman |
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767aee6
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Sport is a mystery to me. In primary school, sports day was the one day of the year when the less academically gifted students could triumph, winning prizes for jumping fastest in a sack, or running from Point A to Point B more quickly than their classmates. How they loved to wear those badges on their blazers the next day! As if a silver in the egg-and-spoon race was some sort of compensation for not understanding how to use an apostrophe.
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Gail Honeyman |
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224099f
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She only really enjoyed her own company. She tolerated mine, but fundamentally she was a recluse at heart, like J.D. Salinger or the Unabomber.
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Gail Honeyman |
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58c289f
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I understood that assisted conception was the antithesis of careless, spontaneous or unplanned parenthood, that it was the most deliberate of decisions, undertaken only by women who were serious and dedicated in their quest to be mothers.
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Gail Honeyman |
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de739a5
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learned, could be very demanding; I still had limited direct contact with them, which suited me just fine. From what I could gather, they would routinely be completely unable to articulate their requirements, at which point, in desperation, the designers would create some artwork for them based on the few vague hints they had managed to elicit. After many hours of work, involving a full team of staff, the work would be submitted to the clie..
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Gail Honeyman |
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9e88254
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I wasn't good at pretending... I could see no point in being anything other than truthful with the world... But, by careful observation from the sidelines, I'd worked out that social success is often built on pretending just a little. Popular people sometimes have to laugh at things they don't find funny, do things they don't particularly want to, with people whose company they don't particularly enjoy. Not me. I had decided, years ago, tha..
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Gail Honeyman |
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4eeb0a7
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Moments later, I received a response: :D Twenty-first-century communication. I fear for our nation's standards of literacy.
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Gail Honeyman |
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92d22ec
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A human hand was exactly the right weight, exactly the right temperature for touching another person, I realized. I'd shaken hands a fair bit over the years--more so recently--but I hadn't been touched in a lifetime.
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Gail Honeyman |
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4dae52b
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When you're struggling hard to manage your own emotions, it becomes unbearable to have to witness other people's,
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Gail Honeyman |
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46a7a49
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How marvelous to be able to read someone's skin, to explore the story of his life across his chest, his arms, the softness at the back of his neck. The barman had roses and a treble clef, a cross, a woman's face . . . so much detail, so little unadorned flesh.
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Gail Honeyman |
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02dc1e9
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I have yet to find a genre of music I enjoy; it's basically audible physics, waves and energized particles, and, like most sane people, I have no interest in physics.
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music
relate
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Gail Honeyman |
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22c8d85
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My hair was mousy brown, parted in the center, straight and not particularly thick. Human hair, doing what human hair does: growing on my head.
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Gail Honeyman |
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134a1e3
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Whilst I am neither stylish nor fashionable, I am always clean; that way, at least, I can hold my head up when I take my place, however unexalted, in the world.
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Gail Honeyman |
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f993e8a
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you're a bit bonkers-but in a good way. You make me laugh...you don't give a ____ about any of the stupid stuff...you just do your own thing, don't you?
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Gail Honeyman |
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1dd4f18
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When I answered the door, he was holding a bottle of Irn-Bru and a bag of jelly babies.
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Gail Honeyman |
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aced0ec
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After the shampoo was rinsed away, the girl performed a 'shiatsu head massage'. I have never known such bliss. She kneaded my scalp with firm tenderness and precision, and I felt the hairs stand up on my forearms, then a bolt of electricity run down my spine. It ended about nine hours before I would have liked it to.
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Gail Honeyman |
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16cc07c
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music. It was a cacophonous din, with too many guitars and not enough melody. It was, I thought, the sound of madness, the kind of music that lunatics hear in their heads just before they slice the heads off foxes and throw them into their neighbor's back garden. "I've"
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Gail Honeyman |
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0e251f7
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that palpable sense of Friday joy, everyone colluding with the lie that somehow the weekend would be amazing and that, next week, work would be different, better. They never learn.
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joy
learn
lie
never
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Gail Honeyman |
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565dfe9
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All of the seats already had an occupant, which meant I was going to have to position myself next to a stranger. In a different mood, I enjoyed this game: one had ten seconds to scan the occupants and select the slimmest, sanest, cleanest-looking person to sit next to.
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Gail Honeyman |
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0d31bff
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It often feels as if I'm not here, that I'm a figment of my own imagination. There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar.
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Gail Honeyman |
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b4430d4
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All you hear these days is that everything's going to hell in a handcart, how everybody's a pedophile or a crook, and it's not true. You forget that the world is full of ordinary decent people like yourselves, Good Samaritans who'll stop and help a soul in need.
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Gail Honeyman |
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e4e7ff6
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Time only blunts the pain of loss. It doesn't erase it.
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Gail Honeyman |
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89431cb
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Eyelids are really just flesh curtains. Your eyes are always 'on', always looking; when you close them, you're watching the thin, veined skin of your inner eyelid rather than staring out at the world.
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Gail Honeyman |
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6e73bfa
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Why is it that client-facing jobs hold such allure for misanthropes?
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Gail Honeyman |
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d912ec2
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I feel sorry for beautiful people. Beauty, from the moment you possess it, is already slipping away, ephemeral. That must be difficult. Always having to prove that there's more to you, wanting people to see beneath the surface, to be loved for yourself, and not your stunning body, sparkling eyes or thick, lustrous hair.
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Gail Honeyman |
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99ee104
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I talk to her sometimes, I'm not ashamed to admit it. When the silence and the aloneness press down and around me, crushing me, carving me like ice, I need to speak aloud sometimes, if only for proof of life. A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who's wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable? I'm confident that it is perfectly no..
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Gail Honeyman |
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0dd4dab
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Then I felt bad. Even alcoholics deserve help, I suppose, although they should get drunk at home, like I do, so that they don't cause anyone else any trouble. But then, not everyone is as sensible and considerate as me.
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Gail Honeyman |
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26f01bc
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During the next free-form jigging section, I started to wonder why the band was singing about, presumably, the Young Men's Christian Association, but then, from my very limited exposure to popular music, people did seem to sing about umbrellas and fire-starting and Emily Bronte novels, so, I supposed, why not a gender- and faith-based youth organization?
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Gail Honeyman |
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1aa1b9e
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After much reflection on the political and sociological aspects of the table, I have realized that I am completely uninterested in food. My preference is for fodder that is cheap, quick and simple to procure and prepare, whilst providing the requisite nutrients to enable a person to stay alive.
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Gail Honeyman |
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10e6955
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I stared at the floor, my mind racing. Did I . . . did I look like the kind of person who ought to be avoided in a game of bus seat selection? I could only conclude, in the face of the evidence, that I did. But why? I would have to reason my way to the answer. I wasn't overweight. I didn't smell--I showered daily, and I laundered my clothes regularly. That left madness, then. Was I mad? No. No, I wasn't. I was suffering from clinical depres..
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Gail Honeyman |
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e9a1ae7
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and I'd lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.
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Gail Honeyman |
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1e8a170
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nebulous and milky, like light from an old, old star.
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Gail Honeyman |
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f98f0da
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Eyelids are really just flesh curtains.
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Gail Honeyman |
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1b093a2
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Raymond hadn't phoned anyone or asked an outside agency to intervene. He'd elected to look after me himself.
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Gail Honeyman |
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0a559b3
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There are days when I feel so lightly connected to the earth that the threads that tether me to the planet are gossamer thin, spun sugar. A strong gust of wind could dislodge me completely, and I'd lift off and blow away, like one of those seeds in a dandelion clock.
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Gail Honeyman |
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960eb8a
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Based on past experience, I'd be more likely to end up living in Dante Lane or Poe Crescent.
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Gail Honeyman |
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5a1494d
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purchased my laptop. It was 5:20 p.m., and the store would close in less than an hour. Womenswear was on the first floor (when did Ladieswear become Womenswear? I wondered) and I took the escalator, being unable to find the stairs. The shop floor was vast, and I decided to request assistance. The first woman I saw was matronly, and did not seem well placed to dispense fashion advice. The second was in her late teens or early twenties, and t..
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Gail Honeyman |
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08a0711
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Sometimes you're too quick to judge people. There are all kinds of reasons why they might not look like the kind of person you'd want to sit next to on a bus, but you can't sum someone up in a ten-second glance. That's simply not enough time.
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Gail Honeyman |
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39b2ac7
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What, after all, is the point of eating out if you have to clear up yourself? You might as well have stayed at home.
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Gail Honeyman |
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49f0484
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When you're struggling hard to manage your own emotions, it becomes unbearable to have to witness other people's, to have to try and manage theirs too.
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Gail Honeyman |
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9b51c08
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The barman was well over six feet tall and had created strange, enormous holes in his earlobes by inserting little black plastic circles in order to push back the skin. For some reason, I was reminded of my shower curtain.
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Gail Honeyman |
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171cef9
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I had intended to buy Alphabetti Spaghetti, but, on impulse, chose hoops instead. It's good to keep an open mind,
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Gail Honeyman |