The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle Quotes

“But if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that trying to be anyone other than yourself will never make you happy. Any road, how do you know people won’t like you if you don’t ever show them the real you?”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“And if I love him a little bit more today, I’ll love him a whole lot more tomorrow.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“But he reminded himself that everyone was busy steering a course through their own dramas, that everyone was grappling with their own challenges in life. They're all busy coloring themselves in.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“Yeah, but one thing I've learned is that if you try to do that, you never do put the past behind you - it just tags along in the present. And it burrows into you like some kind of poison. It's only by facing up to it and dealing with all the feelings it brings up that we can learn from it and move on.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“Come on, we only get one chance at life. This isn't a dress rehearsal.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“He’d survived by keeping the experiences that had most affected him to himself.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“Because he could see now that, just by being open about their feelings, every single person had the chance to change the world.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“He remembered comparing himself to one of Reenie’s pictures that was still being coloured in; he could see now that he’d always be colouring himself in, just as everyone else was. But that was fine. Because the picture he was working on was much richer and much more colourful than it used to be.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“I love you a little bit more than yesterday and a little bit less than tomorrow.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“He wondered if it ever occurred to all those people who socialised without any unease at all just how torturous it was for someone like him to be thrust into that kind of situation.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“If only all my life could be like this. If only I could always feel this free.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“No one ever stops to think I might have lived through experiences that have left me wary of opening myself up.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“How could the world learn to accept people like me if we all stayed hidden away? If we all continued to hide away our love like it’s something to be ashamed of?”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“We have been taught to hide. We have been taught to remain invisible. We have been taught to be ashamed. It is time to get visible, stand up, and be proud.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“as he’d entered his sixties, noticed that people paid him less and less attention anyway.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“He really didn’t understand why he now needed three remote controls, a mobile phone, and a consistent Wi-Fi signal just to watch TV. Is that supposed to be progress?”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“as a young black woman, all she had to do was be slightly standoffish and white people assumed she was angry and aggressive.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“she’d made one single—polite—enquiry about why there weren’t any sessions dedicated to Afro hair, and her tutor had accused her of “threatening behavior.” But why couldn’t people see that she wasn’t aggressive but shy? No one ever stops to think I might have lived through experiences that have left me wary of opening myself up.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“He doesn’t understand how they can all be so horrible to George, how it doesn’t occur to a single one of them that he’s a human being who must be feeling broken and humiliated.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“I can’t go on living like this. I might have thirty years left. I want them to be happy.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“And they dream that—one day—they too will find a place where their love can be accepted, a place where their love can be free.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“Maybe because straight people have never been made to feel ashamed of who they are. Maybe because it’s never been illegal to be straight.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“love you a little bit more than yesterday and a little bit less than tomorrow.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“there’ll always be small-minded people like that taxi driver. There’ll always be small-minded people like Jack Brew.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“There was no question that his feelings had shaped who he was; they were a huge part of his identity. And this may have been the source of shame to him in the past, but now he felt ashamed of himself for hiding it. He didn’t want to hide it any longer.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“how can I expect George to accept me if I’m not brave enough to accept myself?”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“Even though decriminalization happened in 1967, it only applied to people over the age of twenty-one, and they still weren’t allowed to meet in public places—so the police carried on raiding bars and cruising grounds for years. In fact, there were more prosecutions carried out against gay men in the seventies than there were in the sixties. And those who were convicted would end up on the sex offenders’ register, alongside rapists and pedophiles. They’d often lose their jobs; the law offered gay people no protection from discrimination in the workplace.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“It’s so upsetting to think people could be so horrible to you, that they could want to hurt you, to just hack away at your happiness—and your own parents too. They’re supposed to be the ones who look after you and love you just the way you are. They’re supposed to want you to be happy.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“Albert remembered reading somewhere that you could pick up more germs during a short journey on the London Underground than you could from licking a toilet bowl.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle

“learn to love his true self for the first time in his life.”
― Matt Cain, The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle