The Silent Patient

Remember, love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.”

“A baby cannot hate the mother, without the mother first hating the baby.”

I mustn’t put strangeness where there’s nothing. I think that is the danger of keeping a diary: you exaggerate everything, you are on the lookout, and you continually stretch the truth.

That’s the truth. I didn’t kill Gabriel. He killed me.

All I did was pull the trigger.

Once you name something, it stops you seeing the whole of it, or why it matters. You focus on the word, which is just the tiniest part, really, the tip of an iceberg.

Remember, love that doesn’t include honesty doesn’t deserve to be called love.”

I felt an unfamiliar happiness just being in her company, as though a secret door had been opened, and Kathy had beckoned me across the threshold—into a magical world of warmth and light and color, and hundreds of orchids in a dazzling confetti of blues and reds and yellows.

There was no way out. And the strangest thing is, I felt relieved.

That’s the terrible irony: I did all this to keep Kathy—and I’ve lost her anyway.

That’s the terrible irony: I did all this to keep Kathy—and I’ve lost her anyway.