She'd been cross so much of the time and often about small things. Looking back at herself, she thought that her crossness was like a shapeless overcoat, covering loneliness, and it wasn't the old loneliness she'd felt after her mother died, or even an adult version of it, but something different and more punishing.

— Rosamund Lupton

Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch, so the patient can see the person they really are.

— Rosamund Lupton

The ghastliness of nothing. Because I was nobody's sister now.

— Rosamund Lupton

Things are embarrassing, best to avoid them. But since your death I prefer a naturalist style of conversation. Let's strip it down to what matters. Let's have emotions and beliefs on show without the modest covering of small talk.

— Rosamund Lupton

Usually time alters and affects everything, but when someone you love dies time cannot change that, no amount of time will ever change that, so time stops having any meaning.

— Rosamund Lupton

When I saw your strand of hair I knew that grief is love turned into an eternal missing.

— Rosamund Lupton

When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; an abusive father doesn't return the innocent open love of his young child. But grief is the ultimate unrequited love. However, hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels...

— Rosamund Lupton

When someone dies they can be any age you remember can't they' she asked. As I tried to think of a reply she continued 'You probably think about the grown-up Tess because you were still close to her. But when I woke up I thought of her when she was three wearing a fairy skirt I'd got her in the Woolworth's and a policeman's helmet. Her wand was a wooden spoon. On the bus yesterday I imagined holding her when she was two days old. I felt the warmth of her. I remembered all her fingers clasped around my finger so tiny they didn't even meet. Furthermore, I remembered the shape of her head and stroking the nape of her neck till she slept. Furthermore, I remembered her smell. She smelled of innocence. Other times she's thirteen and so pretty that I worry about her every time I see a man look at her. All of those Tenses is my daughter.

— Rosamund Lupton

Your coffin reached the monstrous hole. And a part of me went down into the muddy earth with you and lay down next to you and died with you.

— Rosamund Lupton

Your paintings are staggeringly beautiful. Did I ever tell you that, or was I just too concerned that you weren't going to earn a living? I know the answer... I worried that the paint was so thickly applied that it might snap off and ruin someone's carpet, rather than realizing that you'd made color itself tactile.

— Rosamund Lupton