Graham Norton Quotes

The rooms weren't empty, they were filled with the absence of someone.

she needed to anchor herself to something or she might fly around the room screaming out her pain like a hysterical balloon.

Funerals see the end of a life but at the party afterwards, it is like a form of resurrection: the person we have just said goodbye to is back in the room as people share their tales. The

Life had taught them well. Feelings were to be feared, pain was to be avoided at all cost, and if that meant not experiencing joy, then so be it.

Always remember, if you decide to come to the showbiz party the dress code is ‘Thick Skin’. Our

Small, shiny and exquisite, she was like a Fabergéegg with tits. Although

This is what homecoming meant. Arriving in a place to discover you’re fluent in a language you’d forgotten you ever knew.

I've always found there are far fewer answers than there are questions.

Duneen had somehow managed to slip through the World Wide Web. No 4G, no 3G, no signal.

Sometimes knowing where or when things went wrong didn’t mean you could fix them. It just meant you could beat yourself up over them more effectively.

At the house, Margaret was lying on the sofa. She was exhausted. Helen did not know why. Nobody got jet lag flying in from London.

My point is that there is nothing tragic in me knowing that the best days of my life are behind me.

He remembered that it had been a warm evening in early September. He had made his way up past the school but was beginning to regret his route. The road was much steeper than he had imagined and he was getting quite short of breath and was coated in a slick of sweat that was making his clothes stick to him.

he decided that if there was a God, he was an awful bollocks.

had

The dead don't vanish, they leave a negative of themselves stamped on the world.

sugar-free daddy. A job seemed like quite a smart move.

Slán abhaile,

Happiness is not spending a single second reading endless—and I mean, endless—shitposts in 'The Guardian' masquerading as reportage about the kind of very, very boring morons you actively go out of your way to never meet. Happiness is The Wellcome Collection, but never the Hayward. Happiness is Kylie Minogue and Graham Norton because they're both dope, but not Dua Lipa or Calvin Harris because even though they both seem to be everywhere, all the time, I swear I cannot for the life of me name a single song of theirs.

sharp wings could have done a great deal

Some marriages combust, others die, and some just lie down like a wounded animal, defeated.

Living in London, it’s easy to forget that people can talk to each other. I walk my dogs around Wapping past hundreds of people on pavements and in parks and it is very rare a smile is exchanged or the silence broken. I occasionally get ‘Are you Graham Norton?’ ‘Love the show’ or a simple ‘Faggot!’ but for most people making their way through the capital, you soon learn that people generally only speak to you when they are (a) crazy, (b) want money, or (c) both. We quickly learn the rules and for the most part they work. In Ireland it is impossible to imagine not saying hello or commenting on the weather. When I first started going back home again, it would always take me a day or two to stop thinking everyone I met was trying to sell me something or explaining why they needed £2 to get the train. I know this is true of rural communities the world over, but talking seems to be something we in Ireland are especially gifted at. There are nights in the pub when my friends look on in slack-jawed incomprehension as someone opens their mouth and a torrent of words tumble free. Usually they don’t have anything to say. Their gate fell down. Who put it there. The man who fixed it. The general state of gates in the area. I will then remember an ‘interesting’ fact about my own gate. They will know the man who owned the forge where they made it. Are they a relation of the man who delivers the stuff? And so it goes. A seamless gush of phrases and banter as traditional as a sing-song or drink-driving. It is talking for the pure pleasure of it and not to communicate a single thing. It is the human equivalent of barking or birdsong.

A lonely heart will always find a way to fill itself

limp spring onion draped itself over the edge of the wicker basket that displayed the fresh produce in the O’Driscolls’ shop, café and post office. It shared the space with a shrivelled red pepper, while the basket above it held a few sweaty-looking bags of carrots. On the ground was a large sack of potatoes. Brown paper bags dangled from string to allow eager shoppers to make their own selection from the enticing display.

Well, I always did like Graham Norton.

I don’t want to be a prick about it but I’m Irish. I’m not a paddy. OK?

Crottie

fetid

to.

the veins

hard to think of things to talk about. She’d know me, but that’s about it. I find if I talk about things

where Aunt Gillian kept her Waterford crystal, so special that it wasn’t used even for special occasions.

She had been a primary school teacher for thirty-nine years. So much talking. Parents and pupils always wanting something. Now it was her time to sit and read.

questions outside

he could see that he had hidden behind his size and used it as an excuse so he didn’t have to compete in all the trials of adolescence. No need to summon up the courage to ask a girl out on a date, because which of the Margarets or Fionas with their long pale necks and shiny hair would want his warm clammy hands holding them on the dance floor? The other boys tried to outdo each other

The investigation had begun. ‘It might be nothing. Some of the lads said work on, but myself and the foreman thought somebody better have a look.’ ‘Right so, I’ll head on up. Will you sit in with me?’ ‘Oh thanks. I will

We live in our stories, and the best stories go on. Funerals see the end of a life but at the party afterwards, it is like a form of resurrection: the person we have just said goodbye to is back in the room as people share their tales.

[...] I discovered that in death the person you have lost is revealed to you in a way they never could be in life.

[...] embracing one thing doesn't automatically mean rejecting another. We can be a member of more than one tribe. The people who don't understand that are the bullies, the homophobes and the racists... small minds thrive in small worlds.

Lives not lived are always so appealing.

The Books Lucia’s birthday gifts for September 1st: The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and Peter Pan and Wendy by J. M. Barrie 2nd: Burglar Bill by Janet and Allan Ahlberg 3rd: Dogger by Shirley Hughes 4th: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll 5th: Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter 6th: The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame 7th: The Borrowers by Mary Norton 8th: A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett 9th: Black Beauty by Anna Sewell 10th: Matilda by Roald Dahl 11th: Little Women by Louisa M. Alcott 12th: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 13th: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 14th: Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman 15th: Fingersmith by Sarah Waters 16th: Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen 17th: Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson 18th: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 19th: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri 20th: Passing by Nella Larsen 21st: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë 22nd: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood 23rd: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell 24th: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie 25th: The Other Side of the Story by Marian Keyes 26th: Atonement by Ian McEwan 27th: Small Island by Andrea Levy 28th: Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray 29th: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson 30th: Harvest by Jim Crace 31st: A Secret Garden by Katie Fforde 32nd: Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel From Lucia’s life Bird at My Window by Rosa Guy Of Love and Dust by Ernest J. Gaines Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle The Owl Service by Alan Garner The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault Story of O by Pauline Réage Illustrated Peter Pan by Arthur Rackham Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J. M. Barrie Marina’s recommendation Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder The book club at September’s house The Color Purple by Alice Walker Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Silas Marner by George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss also mentioned) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith The book club’s birthday books for September’s 34th birthday Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters We Are Displaced by Malala Yousafzai To Sir, With Love by E. R. Braithwaite Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton Ready Player One by Ernest Cline Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

There are moments in any life that are to be treasured, but only sometimes are they recognised as they happen.

Ellen decided that being unhappy was a choice and she was no longer going to make it hers.

It was extraordinary to Ellen that something as unremarkable as a window with a different view could make the whole world seem so changed, but it was true.

People were different with children back then. You forget. We all forget. A good parent was one who managed to keep their child alive. Nobody wondered what their child was feeling. You were told how you felt.

Finding something that she was good at was like discovering a key, one that could at last unlock the mystery of her future.