Ghosts Quotes
"Living in suburban North London was nothing but an act of pragmatism for my parents."
"It was one of my least favourite things about him – the way he lazily outsourced his integrity to Yorkshire."
"Young adulthood had quickly turned into just plain adulthood."
"Mum answered the door like she always answered the door – in a way that demonstrably made the point that her life was very busy."
"‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, flicking it gingerly. ‘You don’t need some mop on your head for that, you just need some effective foundation.’"
"There was seventeen years’ difference in age between Mum and Dad."
"From here, he was still just my dad as he’d always been, reading the Observer, ready to tell me about where rubbish goes in China or ten things I may not have known about Wallis Simpson."
"‘I think you’re right,’ he replied. ‘Maybe they think we’re edging too close towards being the old man to enjoy the old-man pubs.’"
"The saddest category I’d noticed was the Left-Behind Guys."
"None of us would ever fully grasp the extent of our magnificent unoriginality."
"‘And in between we’re stuck in a hell of gastropubs serving £9 sausage rolls.’"
"The most simultaneously reassuring and unsettling discovery I made in those first few intense weeks of compulsive right- and left-clicking on Linx, was just how unimaginative humans are."
"‘What happened?’ ‘She went back home, tried to beg for forgiveness, explain that she’d temporarily lost her mind. But her husband wouldn’t let her in.’"
"‘You can’t plan your social life around opportunities to meet men,’ I reasoned. ‘That’s so grim.’"
"‘I’m worried I haven’t made the most of it.’"
"‘Lando!’ the man bellowed again, chasing the errant hat. ‘Lando, I mean it, stop running RIGHT NOW or there will be NO MORE MEDIA all week.’"
"‘I’ve noticed women using gin as a personality replacement before. There’s an implied sophistication with gin. A woman who is of another time.’"
"‘Heterosexual women should be decorated like war heroes just for loving us,’ he said with a sigh, his fingers gently separating the strands of my hair. ‘I don’t know how you all do it.’"
"I can’t stop thinking about you. That’s next-level fancying, isn’t it? Wanting to kiss the backs of someone’s arms."
"I think having twenty years to get used to how you look is no bad thing. It’s freed up a lot of energy to be other things."
"You can communicate and synchronize with each other in a way men never will be able to. You’re nurturing and magical and supernatural and sci-fi."
"The last time I saw him he said: 'If you fancy a weekend away from London, I’d love for you to come meet my parents.' Then he kissed me goodbye and I never heard from him again."
"You’re a very important person in my life. Probably the most important person in my life, other than Lucy."
"I wish I could let myself believe he’s blissfully unaware, but I can’t. How awful and confusing for him, Max. He must be so scared."
He's still online," Lola said, throwing her bag on the bed and staring at her phone screen. "I mean – what woman has the time to sit on WhatsApp all day talking to him endlessly? It’s an uneconomic use of time. They should just meet up and shag.
I don’t want anything like that when I get married," Lola said as we sat opposite each other on the train and looked out on the nondescript fields of Home Counties England. "You’ll be organizing it all, so just to let you know I don’t want anything like that.
No, I do, I do," Mum said, aggressively stoic. "How’s Gloria?
"If I were you," Claire chimed in, "I would just enjoy being single and relax. There’s no rush for starting a family." I don’t think there’s anything I found more galling than an expectant mother of three in a long-term relationship telling single women in their thirties to relax about starting a family.
"It’s just so strange for our generation. In my day – if you said you were going to be somewhere, you were going to be somewhere. You’d say, 'I’ll meet you outside Woolworths at seven,' and if you weren’t outside Woolworths at seven, you’d leave the other person standing in the cold."
"Men just have to be reminded of how lucky they are all the time."
"Are you both putting yourself out there?" Ruth asked. "Yes," we said in unison.
"I’m going to get you to take a really flattering photo of me tomorrow morning when the light’s good so I can post it on Instagram."
"I don’t want to make him think I’m trying to control his sex life or be possessive."
"I don’t think I have been taken out on a date for about twenty years, Nina," Alma said as she held on to the bannister and walked down the stairs to my flat.
"You can't change the course of history because it suits your own story."
"I would strap you up, but don’t worry baby, you know I wouldn’t hurt you 'less you wanted me to."
"It’s like I’ve woken up and everything is technicolour."
"I’m fiscally conservative but socially liberal."
"I’m enjoying it! You’re so good up there in your room, revising and revising. It will all pay off on results day, promise."
"You can’t pass grade seven in all this."
"Sometimes when your ex-boyfriend gets back in touch, really, he's just trying to take you down with him to the grave."
"We’re doing it together. It’s going to be traumatic and stressful and sometimes it’s going to be very fucking weird and funny."
"We are not living in a dystopian science fiction."
"I realize now that the future might strip him of his self, but something mightier remains. His soul will always exist somewhere separate and safe."
"It’s like we just share a house and a schedule. Maybe that’s having kids."
"I think about it all the time. I would have been absolutely devastated, obviously."
"I have wanted to, so much. Just because I haven’t called you doesn’t mean I haven’t wanted to every day."
"I'm scared, Nina. I just got so, so scared and so confused."