42 Quotes by Joanna Cannon

People tend to believe things just because everyone else does.′ Walter looked at his hands and began biting into the skin next to his fingernails. ‘They don’t search for proof, they just search for approval from everyone else.

The only problem with losing your mind was that you never lost the memories you wanted to lose.

Because sometimes you need to run away. You need to believe in something without looking for proof. You need to enjoy a thing, without finding a need to measure its value. You need to run away from a familiar life, into something quite unfamiliar. Even if you are so old, the only running away you will ever do again is in your mind.

He missed her reassurance. The way she stole his disquiet and diluted it, and how her unconcern would pull him through their day. She never dismissed his worries, she just disentangled them, smoothing down the edges and spreading them out until they became thin and insignificant.

If you ever open a drawer, Florence. If you ever open a drawer and find something there you weren’t expecting, just remember there is so very much more to us than the worst thing we have ever done. Remember that, Florence. Please remember, even when I’m not here to remind you.

I stared at the thick gold cross on the altar. It reflected every one of us: the pious and the ungodly; the opportunist and the devout. Each of us had our reasons for being there, quiet and expectant, and secreted between the pages of a hymnbook. How would God manage to answer us all? “Lamb.

I still hadn’t learned the power of words. How, once they have left your mouth, they have a breath and a life of their own. I had yet to realize that you no longer own them. I hadn’t learned that, once you have let them go, the words can then, in fact, become the owner of you.

It’s the greatest advantage of reminiscing. The past can be exactly how you wanted it to be the first time around.

I thought I would like a job where inquiring about everyone else’s private business was considered perfectly routine.