Jojo Moyes Quotes

Perhaps we all harbor a perverse need to get close to things that might destroy us. ~ Jojo Moyes

you know", she said, "when you get to my age, the pile of regrets becomes so huge it can obscure the view terribly ~ Jojo Moyes

Who says you failed?" Dad stroked her hair back from her face. His expression was tender. "I'm just thinking of what I know about Will Traynor, what I know about men like him. And I'll say one thing to you. I'm not sure anyone in the world was ever going to persuade that man once he'd set his mind to something. He's who he is. You can't make people change who they are. ~ Jojo Moyes

Psychic." "Thirty pounds a ticket, they're paying, to sit there with a glass of cheap white wine and shout, "Yes!" when someone asks did someone in the audience have a relative whose name began with J. ~ Jojo Moyes

Do you know how stifling it is to be told you are never going to be able to change? For the rest of your life? Because nobody else wants you to? Do you know how awful it is to feel stuck? ~ Jojo Moyes

Moving on doesn't mean you loved my dad any less, you know. ~ Jojo Moyes

Men find it easier to work than to deal with anything else. ~ Jojo Moyes

Don't think of me too often ... Just live well. Just live ~ Jojo Moyes

There is no happiness in this world other than what is achieved by love of one's work ~ Jojo Moyes

Very few troubles in life couldn't be lessened by a nice smile - that was what her mother always said. ~ Jojo Moyes

I was so furious, you see, that all around me were things that could move and bend and grow and reproduce and my son - my vital, charismatic, beautiful boy - was just this thing. Immobile, wilted, bloodied, suffering. Their beauty seemed like an obscenity. I screamed and I screamed and I swore - words I didn't know I knew - until Steven came out and stood, his hand resting on my shoulder, waiting until he could be sure that I would be silent again. He didn't understnad, you see. He hadn't worked it out yet. That Will would try again. That our lives would be spent in a state of constant vigilance, waiting for the next time, waiting to see what horror he could inflict upon himself. We would have to see the world through his eyes - the potential poisons, the sharp objects, the inventiveness with which he could finish the job that damned motorcyclist had started. Our lives had to shrink to fit around the potential for that one act. And he had the advantage - he had nothing else to think about, you see ? Two weeks later, I told Will, "Yes". Of course I did. What else could I have done ? ~ Jojo Moyes

How could you live each day knowing that you were simply whiling away the days until your own death? ~ Jojo Moyes

I placed my face so close to his that his features became indistict, and I began to lose myself in them. I stroked his hair, his skin, his brow, with my fingertips, tears sliding unchecked down my cheeks, my nose against his, and all the time he watched me silently, studying me intently as if he were storing each molecule of me away. He was already retreating withdrawing to somewhere I couldn't reach him.
I kissed him, trying to bring him back. I kissed him and let my lips rest against his so that our breath mingled and the tears from my eyes became salt on his skin, and I told myself that, somewhere, tiny particles of him would become tiny particles of me, ingested, swallowed, alive perpetual. I wanted to press every bit of me against him. I wanted to will something into him. I wanted to give him every bit of life I felt and force him to life.
I held him, Will Traynor ex-City whiz kid, ex-stunt diver, sportsman, traveller, lover. I held him close and said nothing, all the while telling him silently that he was loved. Oh, but he was loved. ~ Jojo Moyes

I realized pretty quickly I couldn't marry a man without a bookshelf. ~ Jojo Moyes

And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn't bear it. I honestly thought I couldn't bear it. ~ Jojo Moyes

Convinced that if she wished hard enough, good things would finally happen. ~ Jojo Moyes

It was indeed a gift to have someone to love. ~ Jojo Moyes

It's quite hard to stay calm and understanding when you see the same faces, the same mistakes made again and again. ~ Jojo Moyes

Ellie's head sinks into her hands, and she weeps for the unknown Boot, for Jennifer, for chances missed and a life wasted. She cries for herself, because nobody will ever love her like he loved Jennifer, and because she suspects that she is spoiling what might have been a perfectly good, if ordinary, life. She cries because she is drunk and in her flat and there are few advantages to living on your own except being able to sob uninhibitedly at will. ~ Jojo Moyes

You said . . . nobody would ever hurt me again. You said that. When you came to New York." My voice emerged from somewhere in my chest. "I never thought for a moment you would be the one to do it. ~ Jojo Moyes

Chick-lit may be staggering on its heels, but women's fiction is alive and kicking. ~ Jojo Moyes

There is nothing more disconcerting to passers-by than to see a man in a wheelchair pleading with a woman who is meant to be looking after him. It's apparently not really the done thing to be angry with your disabled charge. Especially ~ Jojo Moyes

Will's eyes locked onto mine and despite everything, ~ Jojo Moyes

She gave me another hard look, the kind that can only travel from mother to daughter ~ Jojo Moyes

There were many ways in which I disliked my sister. A few years ago I could have shown you whole scribbled lists I had written on that very topic. I hated her for the fact that she's got thick, straight hair, while mine breaks off if it grows beyond my shoulders. I hated her for the fact that you can never tell her anything that she doesn't already know. I hated her for the fact that for my whole school career teachers insisted on telling me in hushed tones how bright she was, as if her brilliance wouldn't mean that by default I lived in a permanent shadow. I hated her for the fact that at the age of twenty-six I lived in a box room in a semidetached house just so she could have her illegitimate son in with her in the bigger bedroom. ~ Jojo Moyes

He doesn't have to actually do anything, but it's about widening his horizons, right? We ~ Jojo Moyes

You don't ever do something just because it makes you feel good?" The assistant shrugs. "Mademoiselle, you need to spend more time in Paris. ~ Jojo Moyes

We want a macho high-earner - with the sensitivity of Gok Wan. We want a man with Brad Pitt's six-pack - but one who's prepared to overlook our own muffin top. No wonder most men don't know if they're coming or going. ~ Jojo Moyes

So once upon a time Ed met a girl who was the most optimistic person he had even know. A girl who wore flip-flops in the hope of spring. She seemed to bounce through life like Tigger; the things that would have felled most people didn't seem to touch her. Or if she did fall, she bounced right back. She fell again, plastered on a smile, dusted herself off, and kept going. He never could work out whether it was the single most heroic thing or the most idiotic thing he'd ever seen. ~ Jojo Moyes

He kissed her, and knew he was trying to tell her the depth of how he felt. Even as he lost himself in her, felt her hair sweep across his face, his chest, her lips meet his skin, her fingers, he understood that there were people for whom one other was their missing part. ~ Jojo Moyes

I kissed him and let my lips rest against his so that our breath mingled and the tears from my eyes became salt on his skin, and I told myself that, somewhere, tiny particles of him would become tiny particles of me, ingested, swallowed, alive, perpetual. ~ Jojo Moyes

Time seemed to have stretched and become meaningless anyway, its passage blurred by endless drinks and meandering conversations. ~ Jojo Moyes

I tried - not because I really had an appetite for genetics - but because I couldn't bear the thought that Will would go on and on at me if I didn't. He was like that now. He was actually a bit of a bully. And, really annoyingly, he would quiz me on how much I had read of something, just to make sure I really had. ~ Jojo Moyes

Did I imagine it all? Sometimes I think I've made what happened between Will and me so much bigger in my head. Like how can I have loved someone that much in such a short time? And all these things I think about the two of us - did we actually feel what I remember? The further we get from it, the more those six months just seem like this weird... dream. ~ Jojo Moyes

Tanzie knew Nicky was thinking what she was thinking - that Mum had finally gone mad. But she had read somewhere that mad people were like sleepwalkers - it was best not to disturb them. So she nodded really slowly, like this was all making good sense. ~ Jojo Moyes

You have to decide to let yourself be happy. ~ Jojo Moyes

The young are right to be fearless, she reminded herself. Remember yourself at that age. ~ Jojo Moyes

When you looked at me with those limitless, deliquescent eyes of yours, I used to wonder what it was you could possibly see in me. Now I know that is a foolish view of love. You and I could no more not love each other than the earth could stop circling the sun. ~ Jojo Moyes

I told him something good. ~ Jojo Moyes

A whirl of thick flakes emerged from an irony-grey infinity, almost obscuring Granta House. ~ Jojo Moyes

Do you know something?" I could have looked at his face all night. The way his eyes wrinkled at the corners. That place where his neck met his shoulder. "What?" "Sometimes, Clark, you are pretty much the only thing that makes me want to get up in the morning. ~ Jojo Moyes

On evenings like this, when the streets below were filled with couples strolling, and laughing people spilled out of pubs, already planning meals, nights out, trips to clubs, something ached inside me; something ~ Jojo Moyes

This is the story of a family who didn't fit in. A little girl who was a bit geeky and liked maths more than makeup. And a boy who liked makeup and didn't fit into any tribes. ~ Jojo Moyes

I'm not going to try and change your mind."
"If you're here, you accept it's my choice. This is the first thing I've been in control of since the accident."
"I know."
And there it was. He knew it, and I knew it. There was nothing left for me to do. Do you know how hard it is to say nothing ? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite? I just tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to imprint what I had left of him on myself. I did not speak ... ~ Jojo Moyes

If you'd bothered to ask me, Clark, if you'd bothered to consult me just once about this so-called fun outing of ours, I could have told you. I hate horses, and horse racing. Always have. But you didn't bother to ask me. You decided what you thought you'd like me to do, and you went ahead and did it. You did what everyone else does. You decided for me. ~ Jojo Moyes

Just hold on. Just for a minute."
"Are you all right ?"
I found my gaze dropping towards his chair, afraid some part of him was pinched, or trapped, that I had got something wrong.
"I'm fine. I just ... I don't want to go in just yet. I just want to sit and not have to think about ... I just ... want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more ... ~ Jojo Moyes

Sometimes just getting through each day requires almost superhuman strength. ~ Jojo Moyes

I had liked men, sure, and wanted to sleep with them, but sometimes I wondered if I was missing some sensitivity chip. I couldn't imagine crying over anyone I'd been with. ~ Jojo Moyes

I remembered Agnes's words: that we who traveled far from home would always have our hearts in two places. I placed my hand on the candlewick bedspread. And, finally, I wept. ~ Jojo Moyes

Um, Jess?"
"Not now, Nicky."
The police car was pulling over, too. Tanzie's palms had begun to sweat. *It will all be fine.*
"I guess this isn't the time to tell you I brought my stash with me. ~ Jojo Moyes

He talked to her in the way that people tell lifelong secrets to fellow passengers in railway carriages. ~ Jojo Moyes

I'm giving you this because there is not much that makes me happy any more, but you do. ~ Jojo Moyes

I felt the music like a physical thing; it didn't just sit in my ears, it flowed through me, around me, made my senses vibrate. It made my skin prickle and my palms dampen. ~ Jojo Moyes

You just need to find your people ~ Jojo Moyes

I am not designed to exist in this thing- and yet for all intents and purposes it is now the thing that defines me. It is the only thing that defines me. ~ Jojo Moyes

I drew the world he had created for me, full of wonder and possibility. I let him know a hurt had been mended in a way that he couldn't have known, and for that alone there would always be a piece of me indebted to him. And as I spoke I knew these would be the most important words I would ever say and that it was important that they were the right words, that they were not propaganda, an attempt to change his mind, but respectful of what Will had said. ~ Jojo Moyes

...But one of the things you learn in therapy is that there comes a point when you have to take care of yourself. ~ Jojo Moyes

It was only when we brought Will back home, once the annex was adapted and ready, that I could see a point in making it beautiful again. I needed to give my son something to look at. I needed to tell him, silently, that things might change, grow, or fail, but that life did go on. That we were all part of some great cycle, some pattern that it was only God's purpose to understand. I couldn't say that to him, of course - Will and I have never been able to say much to each other - but I wanted to show him. A silent promise, if you like, that there was a bigger picture, a brighter future. ~ Jojo Moyes

And there is the bare truth of it, for her and all the women around here. Doesn't matter how smart you are, how clever, how self-reliant - you can always be bettered by a stupid man with a gun. ~ Jojo Moyes

To fish someone out of the men's loos. ~ Jojo Moyes

You said you were good with people. And you seem to like ... theatrical ... clothing. He glanced at my tights, which were green and glittery. ~ Jojo Moyes

Do you know what my name is, converted to binary code?"
He looked at her. "Is Tanzie your full name?"
"No. But it's the one I use."
He blew out his cheeks. "Um. Okay. 01010100 01100001 01101110 01111010 01101001 01100101."
"Did you say 1010 at the end? Or 0101?"
"1010. Duh. ~ Jojo Moyes

How come you always make everything better?'
'I just don't like seeing you sad. ~ Jojo Moyes

I felt everything more intensely, saw everything as if a filter had been removed. ~ Jojo Moyes

Sometimes you need time away to sort things out in your head. It makes everything clearer. ~ Jojo Moyes

Losing him was like having a hole shot straight through me, a painful, constant reminder, an absence I could never fill. ~ Jojo Moyes

known as Ward G had been moved back ~ Jojo Moyes

I liked the exoticism his travels gave him, the unknownness. He had blown in with the soft breezes of a wider world, and it was weirdly seductive. ~ Jojo Moyes

I thought about him trying not to laugh at the 'Molahonkey Song' on a night when the snow drifted gold past the window. I thought about the warm skin and soft hair and hands of someone living, someone who was far cleverer and funnier than I would ever be and who still couldn't see a better future than to obliterate himself. And finally, my head pressed into the pillow, I cried, because my life suddenly seemed so much darker and more complicated than I could ever have imagined, and I wished I could go back, back to when my biggest worry was whether Frank and I had ordered in enough Chelsea buns. ~ Jojo Moyes

Yes, I handed in my notice. Yes, I know Mum and Dad are not too happy about it. Yes, yes, yes to whatever it is you're going to throw at me. ~ Jojo Moyes

She seemed to bounce through life like Tigger; ~ Jojo Moyes

He smelt of the sun, as if it had seeped deep into his skin, and I found myself inhaling silently, as if he were something delicious. ~ Jojo Moyes

He was met by a collective shriek as the brides parted like biblical waves around him. ~ Jojo Moyes

She is in Paris, in Parisian clothes, getting ready to go out with a Frenchman she picked up in an art gallery!

She pulls her hair back into a loose knot, puts on her lipstick, sits down on the bed and laughs. ~ Jojo Moyes

Every time you get a chance to move forward, you just hijack your own future. it's like - you don't actually want to... You're in control of your own life. And yet you act like you're permanently buffeted by events outside your control. ~ Jojo Moyes

He dropped his head and kissed her. He kisses her and it was a kiss of utter certainty, the kind of kiss during which monarchs die and whole continents fall without your even noticing. ~ Jojo Moyes

We were enjoying one of those rare summers of utter freedom – no financial responsibility, no debts, no time owing to anybody. ~ Jojo Moyes

Dear Clark,
This is to show you that I am not an entirely selfish arse. And I do appreciate your efforts.
Thank you.
Will ~ Jojo Moyes

Just live well. Just live ~ Jojo Moyes

I let him know a hurt had been mended in a way that he couldn't have known, and for that alone there would always be a piece of me indebted to him. ~ Jojo Moyes

Hey," he's saying softly, "hey . . . this isn't like you." How would you know? she thinks. Nobody knows what is like me. I'm not even sure I know. ~ Jojo Moyes

My father calls me a 'character', because I tend to say the first thing that pops into my head. He says I'm like my Aunt Lily, who I never knew. It's a bit weird, constantly being compared to someone you've never met. I would come downstairs in purple boots, and Dad would nod at Mum and say, 'D'you remember Aunt Lily and her purple boots, eh?' and Mum would cluck and start laughing as if at some secret joke. My mother calls me 'individual', which is her polite way of not quite understanding the way I dress. ~ Jojo Moyes

Somewhere in this world is a man who loves you, who understands how precious and clever and kind you are. A man who has always loved you and, to his detriment, suspects he always will. ~ Jojo Moyes

You shut down a library Louisa, you don't just shut down a building, you shut down hope. ~ Jojo Moyes

We had not mentioned love, but my every nerve ending throbbed with it, and I carried it in a cloud around me, like sea mist. ~ Jojo Moyes

I told myself firmly that it was just a feeling, the echo of an anxiety. I could overcome it, just as I would overcome everything else. ~ Jojo Moyes

I wrote three books before I got one published. Most writers do. Have faith, and know that with each work you are getting better. ~ Jojo Moyes

I couldn't think. I couldn't feel. I just existed - me, ~ Jojo Moyes

The morning sagged and decided to last for several years. I couldn't remember the last time minutes and hours stretched so interminably. ~ Jojo Moyes

He had always been like that, our son - quite capable of doing the opposite of what was right, simply because he didn't want to be seen to be complying in some way. I don't know where it came from, this urge to subvert. Perhaps it was what made him such a brilliant negotiator. He ~ Jojo Moyes

The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life
or at least, shoved up so hard against someone else's life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window
is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other people. ~ Jojo Moyes

There are no real secrets among the rich, it turns out. Just people paid to keep them. ~ Jojo Moyes

We seem to live in an age where we are quietly appalled by the idea of appetites, whether they be for sex, food or diamonds. ~ Jojo Moyes

But just as nature abhors a vacuum
so does the human heart. ~ Jojo Moyes

Completely insane algebraic equations?" "You know us too well." Jess sat down in her ~ Jojo Moyes

I swallowed. "Mum, you're not going to get divorced, are you?" Her eyes shot open. "Divorced? I'm a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don't divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity." She waited just for a moment, and then she started to laugh. ~ Jojo Moyes

I always say that in any roomful of people, I could hive a novel out of any one person's family or life story. ~ Jojo Moyes

She cried like someone heartbroken. ~ Jojo Moyes

So what was the hardest part?' Mr Gopnik said.
'I'm sorry?'
'Of working for William Traynor. It sounds like quite a challenge.'
I hesitated. The room was suddenly very quiet. 'Letting him go.' I said. And found myself unexpectedly biting back tears. ~ Jojo Moyes

Seeing an endless red stream of tail lights, an automotive blood supply ~ Jojo Moyes