The best Quotes from On Chesil Beach

This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.

He was discovering that being in love was not a steady state, but a matter of fresh surges or waves, and he was experiencing one now.

It was too interesting, too new, too flattering, too deeply comforting to resist, it was a liberation to be in love and say so, and she could only let herself go deeper.

They regarded themselves as too sophisticated to believe in destiny, but still, it remained a paradox to them that so momentous a meeting should be accidental, so dependent on a hundred minor events and choices. What a terrifying possibility, that it might never have happened at all.

It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.

All she had needed was the certainty of his love, and his reassurance that there was no hurry when a lifetime lay ahead of them.

When they kissed she immediately felt his tongue, tensed and strong, pushing past her teeth, like some bully shouldering his way into a room. Entering her.