Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from Behind Her Eyes:
“There's no right and wrong with feelings. There is only what there is.”
“Everyone has secrets, Lou,” she says. “Everyone should be allowed their secrets. You can never know everything about a person. You’d go mad trying to.”
“It's strange how different we all appear to who we really are.”
“Sharing a secret always feels great in the moment, but then becomes a burden in itself. That gnawing in the pit of your stomach that something has been set free and you can’t call it back and now someone else has that power over your future.”
“Secrets, secrets, secrets. People are filled to the brim with them if you look closely.”
“Then she said that truth was all relative. Truth often came down to what is the most believable version of events.”
“Three can keep a secret if two are dead. —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN”
“If you love someone, set them free. What a load of bollocks.”
“It's not that difficult, I want to say. People cheat all the time. The reasons are always selfish and base, it's the excuses we make that are complicated.”
“An ending and a beginning now knotted up forever. He expected the hues of the world to change to reflect that, but the earth and heavens remained the same muted shades, and there was no tremble of anger from the trees. No weeping whisper of wind. No siren wailed in the distance. The woods were just the woods, and the dirt was just the dirt.”
“The past is as ephemeral as the future—it’s all perspective and smoke and mirrors.”
“A home needs to be filled with love, and some houses--her own, as it had been, included--don't have enough heat in their love to warm them.”
“There’s no right and wrong with feelings. There is only what there is.” She”
“...people don't ever really trust each other enough to not have doubts. No one ever truly thinks the best of anyone else.”
“Love dies hard, you know?”
“Carbs are the devil’s work. Save them for treat days.”
“To trust the truth of a thing, you have to suffer the thing. You have to get mud on your hands and dirt under your fingernails. You have to dig for it.”
“everyone’s life is probably a mess of secrets and lies when you boil them right down.”
“Also,” Louise continues, and I pay attention now I’m sure I have everything securely logged in my head, “this sitting-still business is always preferable to the gym. I’m going to ache tomorrow.”
“I think back to my own short-lived marriage. The lust didn’t die with us. But that didn’t stop him leaving after four years to be with someone else when our son was barely two years old. Maybe she has a point. I don’t think I ever saw my ex, Ian, as my best friend.”
“I was his practice wife, I realize. Adam and I were his practice family. When the story of his life is spun, we will simply be the early threads. We will not be the color.”
“If you can’t laugh at your own fuck-ups, what can you laugh at?”
“In that moment, we were happy, the happy that radiates and changes the atmosphere of a room. The happy that feels bottomless and covers faults. The happy that makes you believe you will be able to withstand everything.”
“The past is as ephemeral as the future—it’s all perspective and smoke and mirrors. You can’t pin it down, can you? Let’s say two people experience exactly the same thing—ask them to recount the event later and although their versions might be similar there will always be differences. The truth is different to different people.”
“Pinch myself and say I AM AWAKE once an hour. Look at my hands. Count my fingers. Look at clock (or watch), look away, look back. Stay calm and focused. Think of a door.”
“She'd been stillborn into the waters of this society.”
“When the story of his life is spun, we will simply be the early threads. We will not be the color.”
“Don’t shit on your own doorstep,”
“People respond to beauty. It sounds vain, but it's true.”
“Sometimes true love needs a helping hand.”
