Best 38 quotes of J. P. Delaney on MyQuotes

All these men who loved Emma, I think. For all her problems, men were fixated on her. Will anyone ever feel like that about me?

And I smile at him, happy. Because it turns out the only thing better than sharing your own worst secrets is when the person you love shares his with you.

And when I realized you had secrets too, I was glad. I thought we could be honest with each other. That we could finally rid ourselves of all the clutter from our past. Not our possessions, but the stuff we carry around inside our heads. Because that's what I've realized, living in One Folgate Street. You can make your surroundings as polished and empty as you like. But it doesn't really matter if you're still messed up inside. And that's all anyone's looking for really, isn't it? Someone to take care of the mess inside our heads?

Because if a woman can't trust the man who said he'd love her forever, who in this world can you trust?

But don't you see, I say, I don't care. I don't care what you've done or how bad you are. Edward, we belong together. We both know it. Now I know your worst secrets and you know mine. Isn't that what you've always wanted? For us to be completely honest with each other?

But I know he loves me. I know he needs our games, that they answer some deep-seated hunger in him.

But one day, when Toby is old enough, I will take down a shoe box from a shelf where it is kept, and I will tell him again the story of his sister, Isabel Margaret Cavendish, the girl who came before.

Don't think. Acting isn't faking or impersonating. The clue is in the world. Acting is doing.

He was heartbroken, I say. Heartbroken, he repeats. Of course. That's the great myth Edward Monkford's spun around himself, isn't it? The tormented genius who lost the love of his life and became an arch-minimalist as a result. You don't think that's right? I know it isn't.

How do we ever trust each other again, when we both know how good we are at lying?

I don't want anything from you, Edward. If you'd only told me you were still in love with Emma—' 'You don't understand,' he interrupts. 'It was like an illness. I hated myself every second I was with her.

I know it must look odd, given that I didn't even know Emma. But it seems to me that almost no one really knew her. Everyone I speak to has a different version of what she was like.

I'll tell you something that was unusual, though. When most people are caught lying to the police, they cave in pretty quickly. Emma's response was to tell another lie. It might have been planted in her head by her brief, but even so that's not a common reaction.

I loved Emma.' The words, so flat and final, explode into the air. 'But she lied to me. I thought perhaps I could have the love without the lies. With you, I mean. Do you remember your application letter? How you talked about integrity and honesty and trust? That was what made me think it might work, that it might be better this time. But I've never loved you the way I loved her.

I'm not proud of that stuff I do for Henry. But sometimes I am proud of how well I do it.

In my art history degree course, we did a module on palimpsests—medieval sheets of parchment so costly that, once the text was no longer needed, the sheets were simply scraped clean and reused, leaving the old writing faintly visible through the new. Later, Renaissance artists used the word pentimenti, repentances, to describe mistakes or alterations that were covered with new paint, only to be revealed years or even centuries later as the paint thinned with time, leaving both the original and the revision on view. Sometimes I have a sense that this house—our relationship in it, with it, with each other—is like a palimpsest or pentimento, that however much we try to overpaint Emma Matthews, she keeps tiptoeing back: a faint image, an enigmatic smile, stealing its way into the corner of the frame.

Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life. I take a deep breath and pick up my pen.

I realize something. I haven't had a single flashback or panic attack since I stepped inside the house. It's so cut off from the outside world, so cocooned, I feel utterly safe. A line from my favorite movie floats into my head. The quietness and the proud look of it. Nothing very bad could happen to you there.

Is it just me who does this—who feels they’re constantly watching themselves in the movie of their own life? When I ask my friends, most claim they don’t. But they must be lying. Why else would you become an actor, if not to edit reality?

I think that for Claire Wright, reality is whatever she wants it to be.

It's the sketch Edward did of me before he went away, the one he said was fine but didn't want to keep. It's as if he's drawn me not once but twice. In the main drawing I have my head turned to the right. It's so detailed, you can see the tautness of my neck muscles and the arch of my clavicle. But underneath or over that there's a second drawing, barely more than a few jagged, suggestive lines, done with a surprising energy and violence: my head turned the other way, my mouth open in a kind of snarl. The two heads pointing in opposite directions give the drawing a disturbing sense of movement. Which one's the pentimento, and which the finished thing? And why did Edward say there was nothing wrong with it? Did he not want me to see this double image for some reason?

I’ve seen shy introverts become kings and queens, the ugly become beautiful and the beautiful repulsive. Something happens, something no one can explain. Just for a few moments, you become someone else. And that’s the best feeling there is in the world.

I will take what I can from Edward. And then I will let them fade into history, all the characters in this drama. Emma Matthews and the men who loved her, who became obsessed with her. They're not important to us now.

Love flows from me into him, and his blue eyes crinkle, huge and happy. Such a smiley baby. The midwife says it can't be a real smile, not yet, just some passing gas or a random quiver of his lip, but I know she's wrong.

My vision fades, like a tunnel rushing toward me, like a spotlight dimming, and my head slumps down onto my chest. Cue curtain. Cue applause. Cue oblivion. Fade out.

Oh, hasn't he told you? The ones before. None of them last, you see. That's the whole point.

Saul is as different from Simon Wakefield as it's possible to get, I find myself thinking. And Edward Monkford is utterly different from both of them. It seems incredible that Emma could have had relationships with all three men. Where Simon's eager to please, but also touchy and insecure, and Edward's calm and super-confident, Saul is pushy and brash and loud. He also has a habit of saying 'Yeah?' aggressively at the end of his sentences, as if trying to force me to agree with him.

She’s insecure, impulsive, fragile, emotionally incontinent, can’t handle rejection, and although she tries extremely hard to hide it, she craves approval like a junkie craving a fix. What can I say, Frank? She’s an actress.

Sometimes it's as if I can shrink away to nothing. Sometimes I feel as pure and perfect as a ghost. The hunger, the headaches, the dizziness—these are the only things that are real.

Sometimes, when you wear a mask too long, you find it sticks to the skin.

That feeling I used to have of playing to an invisible audience has been replaced by the consciousness, the ever-presence, of Edward's discerning eye; a sense that the house and I are now part of one indivisible mise-en-scène. I feel my life becoming more considered, more beautiful, knowing that he considers it. But for that very reason, it becomes increasingly hard to engage with the world beyond these walls, the world where chaos and ugliness reign.

That was Emma—she'd have enjoyed knowing she had something like that, something that could blow her whole fucking life and mine apart if it came out. Her little bit of power.

There's a kind of purity to a relationship unencumbered by convention, a sense of simplicity and freedom.

The same goes for Edward Monkford. Yes, based on what you've told me, it seems Emma was the real narcissist, not him. But there's no doubting he's an extreme controller. What happens when a controller comes up against someone who's out of control? The combination could be explosive.

We're all connected now, I think as I send it off into cyberspace. Everyone and everything.

Who is the real Claire Wright? The one sitting here, with her precious green card permit in front of her, exchanging pleasantries with the man who provided it? Or the one who fell for the darkness she sensed deep inside the only man she couldn’t seduce? Which is the performance: Who I was then? Or who I am now?

You are a crazy, evil woman,” Patrick says, staring at me. “You don’t know how crazy,” I promise him. “You haven’t seen anything yet.

You say just, Ellis says flatly. There is no just with Edward Monkford. Nothing's more important to him than getting his own way.