27 Quotes by Nicci French

Within families, you’re stuck with the character they think you are, whatever you do. You become a war hero and all that your parents ever talk about is something supposedly funny you used to do when you were in nursery school.

You become like a ghost in your own life.

It was the most silent, beautiful city I had ever been in, and I found myself wishing, once or twice, that I was here alone, not worrying about our relationship, not having to make an effort. I would have walked and walked along the deserted paths, not speaking, storing everything up. I wouldn’t have minded the rain.

It’s what the loss uncovers in you that brings on despair, not the loss itself.

Maybe I don’t want it to pass because that would mean an acceptance that life is like this: just a gradual process of loss.

No. This is stuff that is from the first half of the alphabet. But I’m not completely consistent. Sometimes I go by the first name and sometimes by the second, then forget which I’ve done.

Pauline had once said to me, after she was through the worst of her stunned unhappiness, that if you behave as if you are all right, then one day you will be.

It made me realize how unimaginative I had always been about battered wives. Disaster creeps up, a tidal wave on the tourist beach. By the time you can see it, you are powerless or unable to resist it and it rolls you up and away.

Better to start too slowly and build up,” said a piece of text in italics, “than start too quickly and give up.