J.P. Delaney Quotes & Sayings

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. — J.P. Delaney

If I'd been asked to make a list of what I could do without, I'd never have managed it. But by putting the thought in my head that really none of it's important, I find myself wondering if I can't just shed all my things, my stuff, like an old skin. Maybe — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

Of course I was already familiar with that saying by Mies van der Rohe, Less is more, but I hadn't appreciated before just how sensual less could be, how rich and voluptuous. — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

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

There was a mountain of grief to be climbed, and no amount of talk would help me up it. — J.P. Delaney

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

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? — J.P. Delaney

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? — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

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? — J.P. Delaney

But I see now that our future lies not in building beautiful havens from the ugliness in society, but in building a different kind of society. He — J.P. Delaney

One of the curious aspects of a traumatic experience like the one you've been through, she says at last, is how it sometimes results in a softening of your existing boundaries. Sometimes the changes are temporary. But sometimes the person finds they actually quite like this new aspect of their personality, and it becomes a part of them. — J.P. Delaney

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? — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

Grief, I discovered, feels not so very different from defeat. And — J.P. Delaney

One of the strange things about grief is the way it ambushes you when you least expect it. — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

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

he means. Isn't the — J.P. Delaney

I feel a thrill of excitement at this first tiny glimpse of self-revelation, of intimacy. — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

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

Never apologize for someone you love, he says quietly. It makes you look like a prick. — J.P. Delaney

Please make a list of every possession you consider essential to your life.

I take a deep breath and pick up my pen. — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

Life is simply too short to live it less perfectly than it could be lived. — J.P. Delaney

But it never really occurred to me to ask myself whether this was what I wanted too, — J.P. Delaney

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. — J.P. Delaney

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

People like to talk about clean slates. But the only truly clean slate is a new one. The rest are gray from whatever's been written on them before. — J.P. Delaney