Gail Honeyman Quotes

I was a human woman, no more and no less.

Well, there was a man that I took a bit of a liking to, a little crush, you might say, and I got slightly carried away, and then I realized that, actually, I’d been a bit silly. We weren’t going to be...

About Author

Gail Honeyman (born 1972) is a Scottish writer whose debut novel, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, won the 2017 Costa First Novel Award.

I felt like a newly laid egg, all swishy and gloopy inside, and so fragile that the slightest pressure could break me.

There is no such thing as hell, of course, but if there was, then the sound track to the screaming, the pitchfork action and the infernal wailing of damned souls would be a looped medley of show tunes...

I did not own any Tupperware, having no need of it until this point. I could go to a department store to purchase some. That seemed to be the sort of thing that a woman of my age and social circumstan...

It fell open at a pivotal scene, the one where Jane meets Mr. Rochester for the first time, startling his horse in the woods and causing him to fall. Pilot is there too, the handsome, soulful-eyed hou...

It is incomprehensible to me now that I could ever have thought that anyone would love this ambulant bag of blood and bones.

I knew that people weren't supposed to exist as I did, work and vodka and sleep in a constant, static cycle in which I spun around on myself, into myself, silent and alone. Going nowhere. On some leve...

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 f...

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.

I realized what I felt . . . happy. It was such a strange, unusual feeling—light, calm, as though I’d swallowed sunshine.

I’m not lonely, Mummy, I said, protesting. I’m fine on my own. I’ve always been fine on my own.

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...

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-sec...

Comprendí que no suelo prestar atención a lo que me rodea. Era como el paseo de esa mañana [...]: cuando te tomas un momento para ver lo que te rodea, fijarte en las cosas pequeñas, te sientes más… li...

She certainly seems to have a life, not just an existence.

I had intended to buy Alphabetti Spaghetti, but, on impulse, chose hoops instead. It’s good to keep an open mind,

Your voice changes when you’re smiling, it alters the sound somehow.

No matter; I didn’t require

I was in a fast-food restaurant for the first time in my adult life, an enormous and garish place just around the corner from the music venue. It was mystifyingly, inexplicably busy. I wondered why hu...