Nine Perfect Strangers Quotes

He could find hatred in his heart for her, too, if he went looking for it. The secret of a happy marriage was not to go looking for it.

Sometimes your life changes so slowly and imperceptibly that you don't notice it at all until one day you wake up and think, 'How did I get here?' But other times, life changes in an instant with a lightning stroke of good or bad luck with glorious or tragic consequences.

Women and their bodies! The most abusive and toxic of relationships.

The lowest point of your life can lead to the highest.

No one could be expected to give up wine and books at the same time.

You are a woman in the prime of your life! You should march into a room with your head held high! Like you are walking onto a stage, a battlefield!

Men often used that phrase: “drop some weight.” They said it without shame or emotion, as if the weight were an object they could easily put down when they chose. Women said they needed to “lose weight,” with their eyes down, as if the extra weight was part of them, a terrible sin they’d committed.

Time went by so fast these days. There was some sort of malfunctioning going on with how fast Earth was spinning. Decades went by as quick as years once did.

Frances longed to Google it. How was she going to cope for ten days without instant answers to idle questions?

Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it. George Carlin

Relax and enjoy the journey. The stream will carry you this way and that, but will carry you forward to where you need to go.

Carmel experienced another burst of euphoria. She might have lost a husband, but she got herself a wife. An efficient, energetic young wife. What a bargain. What an upgrade.

Heather had grown up starved of love, and when you’re starved of something you should receive in abundance, you never quite trust it.

You never changed your appearance for men. You changed it for other women. Because they were the ones carefully tracking each others weight and skin tone along with their own. They were the ones trapped with you on the ridiculous appearance obsession merry go round that they couldn't or wouldn't get off.

Women and their bodies! The most abusive and toxic of relationships. Masha had seen women pinch at the flesh of their stomachs with such brutal self-loathing they left bruises. Meanwhile their husbands fondly patted their own much larger stomachs with rueful pride.

You suppose you are the trouble But you are the cure You suppose that you are the lock on the door But you are the key that opens it Rumi

He hadn’t left her for something better, but for something new.

She had not realised that grief was so physical. Before Zach died, she thought grief happened in your head. She didn’t know that your whole body ached with it, that it screwed up your digestive system, your menstrual cycle, your sleep patterns, your skin. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.

Don’t let your heart be a casualty of your head.

I don't get the obsession with strangers, her first husband, Sol, once said to her, and Frances had struggled to explain that strangers were by definition interesting. It was their strangeness. The not-knowing. Once you knew everything there was to know about someone, you were generally ready to divorce them.

She generally felt that the advice she offered was superior to the advice she received. Other people’s problems were so simple; one’s own problems tended to be so much more nuanced.

She remembered her first-ever boyfriend of over thirty years ago, who told her he preferred smaller breasts than hers, while his hands were on her breasts, as if she’d find this interesting, as if women’s body parts were dishes on a menu and men were the goddamned diners. This is what she said to that first boyfriend: “Sorry.” This was her first boyfriend’s benevolent reply: “That’s okay.

It looked like girls were controlled by their feelings but the opposite was true. Girls had excellent control of their feelings. They spun them around like batons: Now I’m crying! Now I’m laughing! Who knows what I’ll do next! Not you! A boy’s emotions were like baseball bats that blindsided him.

A well-managed breakdown can turn out to be a good thing,” he told Yao. “Try to see it as an opportunity. An opportunity to grow and learn about yourself.

As she swam she gloried in the fact that there was nowhere to be, nothing to do, no one to worry about. No jazz pickup or karate drop-off, no homework to supervise, no birthday gifts to buy, no doctors’ appointments to book; the endless multitude of teeny-tiny details that made up her life. Each obligation on its own seemed laughably easy. It was the sheer volume that threatened to bury her.

Everywhere Frances looked there were children: children sitting gravely behind news desks, controlling traffic, running writers' festivals, taking her blood pressure, managing her taxes, and fitting her bras.

If the counselor ever wrote a book about her experience as a marriage counselor she would probably mention it: I once had a patient who treated his car more tenderly than he treated his wife. (No need to mention the car was a Lamborghini, otherwise all the male readers would say, “Oh, well, then.”)

When Frances was eight years old, a man patted her mother's bottom as he walked past them on a suburban street. "Nice arse," he said in a friendly tone. Frances remembered thinking, Oh, that's kind of him. And then she'd watched in shock as her five-foot-nothing mother chased the man to the corner and swung a heavy handbag full of hardback library books at the back of his head.

only difference between fear and excitement is the exhalation?

She sucked in her stomach, ready to take it like a man, or at least like a romance novelist capable of reading her own royalty statements.

I'll never be a normal person ever again. You took that away from me. You made me ABNORMAL and it's lonely being abnormal.

The risks were calculated. The risks were justified. No one ever ascended a mountain without risk.

Please release your expectations and open yourself to all possibilities.

Like so many things in life, it had seemed like an excellent idea at the time.

You’re allowed to grieve your loss even if it’s embarrassing.

Sometimes your life changes so slowly and imperceptibly that you don’t notice it at all until one day you wake up and think: How did I get here?

The thought of separating from Jessica was like having his guts ripped out, but these days being married to Jessica was like having his guts ripped out. Whatever way you looked at it: guts ripped out.

An endless gossamer-like sentence embroidered with jewel-like metaphors, far too many clauses, and a meaning so obscure it had to be profound wrapped itself around Frances’s neck, but it really didn’t suit her, so she wrenched it off and flung it into space, where it floated free until at last a shy author on his way to a festival to accept a prize grabbed it from the sky and used it to gag one of his beautiful corpses. It looked lovely on her. Gray-bearded critics applauded with relief, grateful it hadn’t ended up in a beach read.

It looked like girls were controlled by their feelings but the opposite was true. Girls had excellent control of their feelings. They spun them around like batons: Now I'm crying! Now I'm laughing! Who know what I'll do next! Not you! A boy's emotions were like baseball bats that blindsided them.

Zach was still there. He wasn’t going anywhere. He was going to stick around while she finished uni and traveled and got a job and got married and got old. Just because he chose death didn’t mean Zoe couldn’t choose life. He was still there in her heart and her memory, and he was going to stay beside her, keeping her company right until the end.

There was no point saying, You mustn't feel responsible. Of course she felt responsible. Denying her regret would be like denying her loss.

when you’re starved of something you should receive in abundance, you never quite trust it.

Detoxing is a myth, darling, it’s been debunked! Your liver does it for you. Or maybe it’s your kidneys. It’s all taken care of somehow.

Each obligation on its own seemed laughably easy. It was the sheer volume that threatened to bury her.

Reader, she didn’t marry him,

She would have thought she was too old to worry about her body being observed and judged in a swimsuit, but apparently this neurosis began at twelve years old and never ended.

He was a good man, but they brought out something terrible in each other, like allergic reactions.

She didn't believe in alternate realities. She believed in the transcendent power of love, memory and imagination. 'Anything is possible.

Do you know the only difference between fear and excitement is the exhalation?

The more earnest people got, the more flippant she became. It was a flaw.

She was a woman with the strength to move mountains. She was a woman as weak as a child.

For the first time ever, she saw her mother as just a girl: a girl like her who made mistakes, who screwed things up, who was just making it

For the first time ever, she saw her mother as just a girl: a girl like her who made mistakes, who screwed things up, who was just making it all up as she went along.

Scans showed that the brain activity of someone who had taken psilocybin bore striking similarities to the brain of an experienced meditator during deep meditation.

I’m only temporarily tragic, she told herself

She couldn't shake the feeling that if she didn't record this moment on her phone then it wasn't really happening, it didn't count

Stay still. Stop talking. Stop wanting. Just be. You’ll hear it, or feel it. Close your eyes and you’ll see it.

Only those who have feared they will lose everything feel true gratitude for their lucky lives.

There was no point saying, You mustn’t feel responsible. Of course she felt responsible. Denying her regret would be like denying her loss.

For her, the smell of cigarettes smelled like love. She dated far too many smokers for this reason.

Don’t let your heart be a casualty of your head.” She wanted Masha to understand that her state of mind was just as important as the state of her body.

Time went by so fast these days. There was some sort of malfunction going on with how fast the earth was spinning. Decades went by as quick as years once did.

They probably felt like it was the end of the world. But it turned out to be the making of them. The lowest point of your life can lead to the highest.

Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow death comes.

All babies had that same wise look, as if they’d just come from another realm where they’d learned some beautiful truth they couldn’t share. Every day brought an endless stream of new life.

It’s excellent.” Lars took another sip, trying to get the full picture. Wine could fool you: all sunshine and apples and spaghetti and then nothing but sour disappointment and empty promises.

When he first met her odd, detached parents he understood that Heather had grown up starved of love, and when you're starved of something you should receive in abundance, you never quite trust it.

And then she felt it. It was like when you burn yourself on a hot plate and at first you think, Huh, that should have hurt more, and then it does hurt more, and then all of a sudden it hurts like hell.

There's not a damned thing wrong with your body. You are average-sized, you deluded fool! You are an attractive, intelligent woman, you idiot! You should spend January lying in a hammock and eating cheese.

She looked at her nine guests, all of whom had their eyes obediently closed as they waited her instructions. Their destinies were in her hands. She was going to change them not just temporarily, but forever.

You suppose you are the trouble But you are the cure You suppose that you are the lock on the door But you are the key that opens it Rumi Just when I discovered the meaning of life, they changed it. George Carlin

Sometimes there are no signs. That’s what he told the newly grieving parents at the Tuesday night group. He told them there was research to suggest that teenage suicide was often the consequence of an impulsive decision.

She had no idea of her weight and no interest in learning it. She knew she could be thinner, and of course when she was younger she was indeed much thinner, but she was generally happy with her body as long as it wasn’t giving her pain, and bored by all the different ways women droned on about the subject of weight, as if it were one of the great mysteries of life. The recent weight-losers, evangelical about whatever method had worked for them, the thin women who called themselves fat, the average women who called themselves obese, the ones desperate for her to join in their lavish self-loathing. “Oh, Frances, isn’t it just so depressing when you see young, thin girls like that!” “Not especially,” Frances would say, adding extra butter to her bread roll.

She had not realized that grief was so physical. Before Zach died, she thought grief happened in your head. She didn’t know that your whole body ached with it, that it screwed up your digestive system, your menstrual cycle, your sleep patterns, your skin. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.

It wasn't that she'd found any solutions or experienced any earth-shattering revelations, but the act of observing her looping thoughts seemed slow them down until at last they came to a complete stop, and she'd found that for moments of time she thought... nothing. Nothing at all. Her mind was quite empty. And those moments were lovely.

She is at her son’s funeral and her daughter is delivering a eulogy, and afterward people keep touching Heather, so much touching, everyone wants to paw at her, it is repulsive, and they are all saying, Oh, you must be so proud, Zoe spoke so beautifully, as if it’s fucking school speech night, not her son’s funeral, and can’t you see my daughter is alone now, how can she live without her brother, she never even existed without him, and who cares if she spoke beautifully, she can’t even stand, her father is holding her upright, my daughter can’t even walk.

They used to be particularly hideous if they’d recently won a literary prize. Their dialogue was so powerful and impenetrable it didn’t require punctuation! So naturally they didn’t require permission to slip-slide their hairy hands over the body of a young writer of genre fiction. In their minds, Frances virtually owed them sex in return for her unseemly mass-market sales of “airport trash.

He was so tall the dressing gown was more like a miniskirt, revealing knobbly knees and very white, very hairy legs. They were the sort of male legs that made you feel uncomfortable, as if you were looking at a private part of the body.

Frances made a tremendous effort not to comment on his height, as she knew from her six-foot friend Jen that tall people were well aware they were tall.

Ben took a giant bite of the apple. Jessica couldn’t do that anymore, not with her new capped teeth. The dentist wanted her to wear some sort of a mouth guard at night to keep her expensive crowns all safe. It was annoying that the better stuff you got, the less relaxed you could be about it. It was like the new rug in their hallway. Neither of them could bear to walk on something so astoundingly expensive. They shuffled down the sides and winced when their guests marched straight down the middle in dirty sneakers.

so easily have said no. But she and her husband Sam said yes, and now they can never change what they did and didn’t do that

You never changed your appearance for men, you changed it for other women, because they were the ones carefully tracking each other’s weight and skin tone, along with their own, they were the ones trapped with you on the ridiculous appearance obsession merry-go-round that they couldn’t or wouldn’t get off.

The problem was that she wanted to convey strength in all her future interactions with this man, and her soft white body, especially when compared to Masha’s Amazonian example, damn her, didn’t convey anything much except fifty-two years of good living and a weakness for Lindt chocolate balls.

They were all just sitting here. Waiting. What were they meant to be doing? The desire to interact was an irresistible itch.

This was more like a funeral, although even funerals weren't this silent as people murmured their condolences. She was paying to be here and it was worse than a funeral.

There was some sort of malfunction going on with how fast the earth was spinning. Decades went by as quick as years once did.

the screen. “Let me leave you with these words: ‘Ardently do today what must be done. Who knows? Tomorrow death comes.’ The Buddha.” She

I don’t want any more children,” said Carmel. “I just want to go back in time to when everything was beginning. Pregnancies are the ultimate beginnings.

You never changed your appearance for men, you changed it for other women, because they were the ones carefully tracking each other’s weight and skin tone along with their own; they were the ones trapped with you on the ridiculous appearance-obsession merry-go-round that they couldn’t or wouldn’t get off. Even if she’d been a perfectly toned and manicured gym junkie, Joel would still have left her. His “lack of attraction” had nothing to do with her. He hadn’t left her for something better, but for something new.

list.

Sometimes she exhausted herself.

stars were a million darting eyes on the lookout for rule-breaking in her story: sexism, ageism, racism, tokenism, ableism, plagiarism, cultural appropriation, fat-shaming, body-shaming, slut-shaming, vegetarian-shaming, real-estate-agent-shaming. The voice of the Almighty Internet boomed from the sky: Shame on you!

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

maybe wishes do come true because this is family, this is what she never had, never knew, never dreamed, this is a moment so perfect and funny and this is her life now, just a string of perfect, funny moments one after the other, like a string of beads that will go on forever.

How was she going to cope for ten days without instant answers to idle questions?

just not possible.’ She touched her lips and looked down at her boobs, which were objectively awesome. Would her defence case be better if she didn’t look like this? If she hadn’t spent so much money on her body? ‘Why would you want to look like one of those dreadful Kardashians?’ her mother had once asked her. Because Jessica thought those dreadful Kardashians were stunning. It was her prerogative to think so. Before the money Ben had drooled over images of luxury cars and Jessica had drooled over pictures of models and reality stars, who were maybe photoshopped, but she didn’t care. He got his car, she got her body. Why was her new body more superficial than his new car? ‘Sorry.’ She looked back up at Zoe, and remembered that this girl’s brother had committed suicide. Zoe had probably never met anyone as superficial as Jessica in her life. ‘None of that helps you build my case, does it? Why should this girl live? Oh, because she tried really hard when she won the lottery.

sounded so sure of herself, as if she knew Lars

But Napoleon was deeply respectful of road signs and tiny clauses on bureaucratic forms. For him, rules were about politeness and respect and ensuring the survival of a civilized society.

Napoleon talked on and on about how the minerals in the water would help their circulation and reduce their stress levels and so on and so forth; she couldn’t really remember what he’d said. Napoleon’s conversation was like background noise in her life, a radio permanently on talk-back, only random phrases making their way into her subconscious.

Sometimes it felt like Zoe was just waiting out her life now, enduring it, ticking off events and days and months and years, as if she just had to get herself through something unspecified and then things would be better except she never got through it and it never got better and she would never forgive him.