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Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors is one of those books that just stays with you.
I loved it so much – it’s a beautiful story about sisterhood, family, and the kind of growth that comes from facing life’s hardest moments.
The characters felt so real, and there were so many quotes that made me stop and think (or cry, if I’m being honest).
It’s heartfelt, emotional, and full of the messy, wonderful love that comes with being part of a family.
If you haven’t read it yet, here are some lovely quotes that’ll convince you to give it a try, but before we start, here’s an actual summary.
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What is Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors about?
Three sisters, all very different, return to their family home in New York after their sister Nicky’s death.
Avery, a lawyer in London, is recovering from addiction. Bonnie, a bouncer in Los Angeles, is coping with a big loss in her boxing career. Lucky, a model in Paris, is running from her wild lifestyle.
A year after Nicky’s passing, they must reunite to save their childhood apartment.
But being back home brings up old memories, hidden secrets, and the pain of losing the sister who held them together.
This one is a story about grief, family, and finding out who you really are.
Best Quotes from Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors
1. “But Chiti didn’t understand what it was like to have sisters. Against their parents, against the world at large, they were fiercely allied. But among themselves, everything was a competition. There was never enough attention, never enough money, never enough love to go around. So they fought for every scrap.”
2. “Life’s random and unfair and sometimes it’s random and more than fair. That’s it.”
3. “You never have to explain yourself to sisters.”
4. “I believe that everything happens,” she said. “Period. Or full stop, as you would say. That’s it. Things happen and we have to learn to live with them, as long as suicide is off the table, that is. If we can find meaning in them, fine, but even if we can’t, we still have to live with them. The meaning is an afterthought, an anesthesia.”
5. “Most of my clients are what we call the worried well, people like you or me who don’t have serious underlying mental illness but are looking for someone to talk to who can offer a more objective insight than they might find from a partner or a friend.”
6. “Things happen and we have to learn to live with them, as long as suicide is off the table, that is. If we can find meaning in them, fine, but even if we can’t, we still have to live with them. The meaning is an afterthought, an anesthesia.”
7. “Once you get to my age, you will learn that you can take a lot of wrong turns and still end up in the right place.”
8. “A lot was written about romantic love, Avery thought, about the profundity of that embrace. But this, too, was deserving of rapture, of song. Before she ever knew a lover’s body, she knew her sisters’, could see herself in their long feet and light eyes, their sleek limbs and curled ears.”
9. “Could you fall out of love with life if you were never in love with it?”
10. “Her life had been reduced to two days, the day Nicky was still alive and the day she died. The rich and subtle patchwork of years and seasons that made up her life before was gone.”
11. “But the brain, as every boxer knows, is another story. It injures faster than any other organ. Without special treatment, full recovery after more than three minutes of death is rare.”
12. “True sisterhood, the kind where you grew fingernails in the same womb, were pushed screaming through identical birth canals, is not the same as friendship. You don’t choose each other, and there’s no furtive period of getting to know the other. You’re part of each other, right from the start.”
13. “But their family wasn’t normal. Addiction whirred through all of them like electricity through a circuit.”
14. “They would perform Herculean feats in the next hours, then melt into the background, as if they had never been there at all, so silk-clad Lucky and her ilk could float above a sea of spectators on their handiwork.”
15. “Around her sisters, she was always the eldest, which meant, in comparison to them, she was never young. But she was tired of being the grown-up. She was tired of being herself.”
16. “I think you’re the opposite of insufferable, I suffer you gladly.”
17. “Calling her felt like being an amputee who, believing she still has legs, keeps trying to stand.”
18. “The nurses in the hospital treated her like a criminal. They thought she was there for the drugs. All she was asking for was comfort, a little relief.”
19. “Not because they don’t care as much as you do, but because it’s too painful to hold on.”
20. “She wished she would just be a good mother or a bad one; this vacillating in between was unbearable.”
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21. “Long inhale, long exhale. In the pale evening light, the first cloud of smoke floated away from her like thought. She was never more aware of her breath than while smoking, never more present. It would be a great form of meditation if it wasn’t also killing her.”
22. “You can’t take away my shame, just as I can’t yours.”
23. “True sisterhood is not the same as friendship. You don’t choose each other and there is no furtive period of getting to know each other. You are a part of each other, right from the start.”
24. “She didn’t know that love could feel like this, so honeyed, so sweet. That her body deserved such tenderness. They held each other as the light drained from the room, saliva and sweat cooling on their skin, and Avery felt it then, that longed-for sensation, love, yes, but safety too; she was safe at long last.”
25. “It was easy to love someone in the beginnings and endings; it was all the time in between that was so hard.”
26. “She was always so exasperated when we needed anything. I think I knew, even then, it was better to deal with it myself.”
27. “A shark in a tank will grow eight inches, while a shark in the wild will grow eight feet.”
28. “The sadness from the morning that had covered her like grime was being washed away with each new round.”
29. “You never have to explain yourself to sisters.”
30. “Nicky tried to find the right words, it seemed to change shape. Sometimes she said it was a dull, low ache, foreboding and inevitable, like the darkening of the sky before a storm. Sometimes it was hot electric bursts that shot and pinged through her, leaving her doubled over and gasping for air. Sometimes she said it felt like crashing waves gathering momentum and receding, her insides the beaten and unyielding shore.”
31. “Her life had been reduced to two days, the day Nicky was still alive and the day she died. The rich and subtle patchwork of years and seasons that made up her life before was gone.”
32. “Bonnie and her sisters grew and grew until they could not be contained by that apartment.”
33. “She was home, the only one she knew, not because she’d always lived it in, but because it always lived in her.”
34. “She didn’t know that love could feel like this, so honeyed, so sweet. That her body deserved such tenderness. They held each other as the light drained from the room, saliva and sweat cooling on their skin, and Avery felt it then, that longed-for sensation, love, yes, but safety too; she was safe at long last.”
35. “In England there was a saying used by football fans: It’s the hope that kills you. A loss is always more bitter if you let yourself dream of victory first.”
36. “They say you don’t know your principles until they become inconvenient to you.”
37. “Things happen and we have to learn to live with them, as long as suicide is off the table, that is. If we can find meaning in them, fine, but even if we can’t, we still have to live with them. The meaning is an afterthought, an anesthesia.”
38. “Harmony was the best word she could think of to describe their life together. They had their arguments, like any couple, but their daily life was harmonious. Their natures complemented each other.”
39. “None of us really know what another is going through until that person feels able to share the truth of their lived experience.”
40. “It was easy to love someone in the beginnings and endings; it was all the time in between that was so hard.”
41. “Just like you wouldn’t have a picnic in a hailstorm, you couldn’t do certain things around an angry dad. No bickering over the remote, no chatting loudly with friends on the phone, no crying over a bad grade, no laughing over a silly joke, no whining to their mom that they were hungry. He was the only man in the house, but he also was the house. They lived inside his moods.”
42. “Love and pain, those were the only disciplinarians she knew in the ring and in life. But love had died when Nicky did, then again when her sisters turned on each other, and again when Pavel looked at her as though she were a stranger. Which left her with pain. That, she could deliver from the heart.”
43. “Everything I do is to protect you. I taught you all to swim. You know who taught me? No one! I had to pick it up myself, or I’d drown.”
44. “True sisterhood is not the same as friendship. You don’t choose each other and there is no furtive period of getting to know each other. You are a part of each other, right from the start.”
45. “Having a bad dad was like growing up in a place with a long, rough winter. It hardens you. It also prepares you for reality, which is that summer is a season, not a lifestyle, and most men will hurt you if they get the chance. Or maybe it was only the people who grew up with bad dads who believed that.”
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Have you read Blue Sisters yet, or is it on your list?
Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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