The Guest List by Lucy Foley is wild.
A wild setting, a wild group of characters, a wild plot, and all trying to neatly confine themselves to the socially polite confines of a society wedding.
The Guest List Quotes
The Guest List was my Christmas holiday guilty reading pleasure while I was vacationing with 12 other family members in a cabin nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. The Guest List was a divine escape. While I did see some of the plot twists coming, that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy being right about them when they came true.
So, if you’re looking for a murder mystery escape, where Agatha Christie meets Glass Onion on the cold unforgiving western coasts of Ireland, then you’re going to want to read this book. The Guest List was my first book by Lucy Foley, and I look forward to reading more from her.
I felt quite a few similarities and agreements with one of the main characters, Jules the bride, and having moments of shared recognition is one of my favorite things about the act of reading another’s ideas and fiction.
Many of the quotes I underlined are from her character, which strikes me as odd actually because I’m not into weddings or bride stereotypes. I find it all horribly stressful and unfair to put that much emphasis on a single day, and the typical wedding seems like the ultimate win for marketing.
Nevertheless, Jules’s personality resonated with me; however, there are quotes listed below from all the female characters as well to fully capture all the insight and energy the book has to offer. In retrospect, the male characters apparently weren’t worth quoting, which is its own psychologically intriguing issue.
Is it that the women have more to say of note, or that the men prefer to be inscrutable perhaps even to the point of blandness?
The Guest List Quotes
30 The Guest List Quotes by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
1. “But it’s all about the moment, a wedding. All about the day. It’s not really about the marriage at all, in spite of what everyone says.” Pg. 6, “Aoife” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
2. “But no matter what happens, life is only a series of days. You can’t control more than a single day. But you can control one of them. Twenty-four hours can be curated. A wedding day is a neat little parcel of time in which I can create something whole and perfect to be cherished for a lifetime, a pearl from a broken necklace.” Pg. 6, “Aoife” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
3. “Our room is on the western side of the building and this is the westernmost island off this part of the coast, so there is nothing, and no one, for thousands of miles between me and the Americas. I like the drama of that.” Pg. 16, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
4. “I’m not interested in fashion for its own sake, but I respect the power of clothes, in creating the right optics.” Pg. 17, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
5. “I am nothing if not practical. I have always, always got a plan; have done ever since I was little.” Pg. 17, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List
6. “And groups of women together remind me too much of the bitchy clique of girls at my school who never accepted me as their own.” Pg. 18, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
7. “I’m not going to pretend it’s not part of the thrill, imagining how we might appear to the outside world––and to our guests tomorrow. I think of the girls at school who once teased me for being a chubby nerd (I was a late bloomer) and think: Look who’s having the last laugh.” Pg. 19, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
8. “People are, generally, scared of me.” Pg. 22, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
9. “But it’s possible to hate your body when you’re thin, too. To feel like it’s kept secrets from you. To feel like it’s let you down.” Pg. 36, “Olivia” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
10. “Love is what teenagers think has happened when actually they’re just stuffed full of hormones.” Pg. 41, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
11. “But around my family I find myself regressing, letting all the old pettiness and envy and hurt come rushing back until I am teenage Jules, plotting to get away.” Pg. 44, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
12. “I must be bigger than this. I have forged my own path. I have built it all on my own, something stable and powerful. And this weekend is a statement of that. My victory march.” Pg. 44, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Guest List Quotes
13. “I can see that she looks immaculate: the only person who could wear all white in a place like this and not immediately stain her clothes.” Pg. 47, “Hannah” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
14. “When he broke up with me, he told me that he would love me forever. But that’s total crap. If you love someone, really, you don’t do anything to hurt them.” Pg. 57, “Olivia” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
15. “Nowhere on earth could possibly live up to those halcyon days. But that’s nostalgia for you, the tyranny of those memories of childhood that feel so golden, so perfect.” Pg. 59, “Aoife” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
16. “It’s a strange thing when you consider that the dead on this island far outnumber the living, even now that some of the guests have arrived. Tomorrow will redress the balance.” Pg. 60, “Aoife” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
17. “I’m not worried about it being haunted. I have my own ghosts. I carry them with me wherever I go.” Pg. 60, “Aoife” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
18. “A cormorant on a steeple: that’s an ill omen. The devil’s bird, they call it in these parts. The cailleach dhubh, the black hag, the bringer of death.” Pg. 61, “Aoife” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
19. “It’s a heady experience, being so close to someone you’ve seen on your TV screen. This feeling of familiarity and strangeness at the same time.” Pg. 67, “Hannah” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
20. “It only dawned on me, when I stopped feeling them on me, that I had taken men’s glances for granted. That I enjoyed them.” Pg. 67, “Hannah” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
21. “He’s one of those people who makes you feel wittier and more attractive than normal.” Pg. 68, “Hannah” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
22. “There’s something exotic about being all dressed up with only other adults for company, a plentiful supply of booze, no responsibility.” Pg. 69, “Hannah” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
23. “It’s like everyone has understood the rules of whatever is happening. Everyone but me. Afterward, they cheer. But I don’t think they’re cheering me. They’re congratulating themselves.” Pg. 75, “Hannah” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
24. “Mum has never let inconvenient facts get in the way of a good story.” Pg. 84, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
25. “I know some women complain about not being able to get people to take them seriously. If anything, I have the opposite problem.” Pg. 85, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
26. “This place is enough to make you believe in ghosts.” Pg. 101, “Hannah” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
27. “It’s still there, I think. He must feel it too. But then attraction never really goes away, does it?” Pg. 117, “Jules” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
28. “In my experience those who have the greatest respect for the rules also take the most enjoyment in breaking them.” Pg. 124, “Aoife” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
29. “It’s simply that when the worst has happened, you rather lose your fear of anything else.” Pg. 124, “Aoife” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
30. “I stand there and sip my drink, trying not to poke myself in the eye with the rosemary. I wonder how everyone else with a gin and tonic is managing it without injuring themselves. Maybe that’s a thing you get taught at private school: how to drink cocktails with unwieldy garnishes. Because everyone here, without a shadow of a doubt, went to private school.” Pg. 175, “Hannah” The Guest List by Lucy Foley
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