Jennifer McMahon Quotes & Sayings

Lisa smiled. 'You know how sometimes, you catch the faintest hint of movement in the corner of your eye, then you blink and it's gone? That's them. — Jennifer McMahon

Sometimes I wonder if you remember things the way they really were. — Jennifer McMahon

And, as in all fairy tales, there was bloodshed, there was loss. — Jennifer McMahon

Marriage is full of such cut-and-dry arrangements, Rhonda thought,then felt that small ache she sometimes got at the back of her skull-the one that told her she might be alone forever, not a fate that she chose but rather a fate that seemed to have been chosen for her. — Jennifer McMahon

The thing that drew them to her was the thing that had made all of them come to Sexton in the first place: they were all outsiders, people on the fringe. And no one, it seemed, understood this better than Suz. She turned her difference into a source of power, power that radiated from her, humming, a live thing that sent sparks out to anyone who listened. — Jennifer McMahon

She swore she was breathing 1971 air - it smelled like dust and cigarettes and long-faded perfume. Like ghosts, if ghosts had a smell. — Jennifer McMahon

I found many treasures in the woods over the years: shotgun shells, empty Colt 45 bottles, old railroad spikes, orange and black beetles eating a dead mouse, pebbles that looked just like teeth, old stone walls and cellar holes, a rusted out frying pan, the skull of a cat. — Jennifer McMahon

Think of me. Remember me. Love me. — Jennifer McMahon

Honestly, I feel pretty awed anytime I meet just about any writer. I get how hard it is to write and make a living from it, but there's also this almost magical force you need to tap into, and I'm amazed by anyone who can do it. — Jennifer McMahon

I believed then - in a deep, easy way that is impossible for me as an adult - that there was more to this world than meets the eye. Trees had spirits; the wind spoke. If you followed a toad or a raven deep into the heart of the forest, they were sure to lead you to something magical. — Jennifer McMahon

I guess you never know what other people are thinking, do you? — Jennifer McMahon

One exercise I always do when I'm getting to know a character is ask her to tell me her secrets. Sit down with a pen and paper, and start with, 'I never told anybody ... ' and go from there, writing in the voice of your character. — Jennifer McMahon

I absolutely love writing about the things that scare me, the things that keep me up at night. I don't quite know why. Perhaps because so many things do scare me, and this is my subconscious way of trying to exercise some control over things that go bump in the night! — Jennifer McMahon

Here she was at eight, with the chemistry set she'd begged for at Christmas. Her father was beside her in this one, showing her a picture of the periodic table, explaining how everything on earth, everything in the universe, even - people, starfish, cement, bicycles, and far-off planets - was made up of a combination of these elements. "Isn't it amazing to think of, Ruthie?" he'd asked. Ruthie had found the idea that we were only a series of neatly constructed puzzle pieces or building blocks vaguely unsettling - even at eight, she wanted there to be more to it than that. — Jennifer McMahon

In all honesty, I didn't love reading when I was a kid. I'd rather be running around in the woods or doing my best to scare the pants off all the children in the neighborhood by pretending my house was haunted or making them play Bloody Mary in the bathroom. — Jennifer McMahon

You never know who you'll meet. The world is about connections, Regina. Not just who you know, but who they know. It's all one big web, everything interconnected, everyone tugging on each other's strings. — Jennifer McMahon

Oh my God! Sam said again, his voice shaking. I've given birth to something inhuman, Phoebe thought. A lamprey with row after row of teeth. — Jennifer McMahon

we all do what we think is best. Sometimes we make terrible mistakes, sometimes we do the right thing. Sometimes we never know. We just have to hope — Jennifer McMahon

My grandmother was a psychiatrist and had shelves full of medical books - I was constantly sneaking looks at some of those. I was fascinated by the descriptions of illnesses and diseases. — Jennifer McMahon

You can have the greatest characters in the world and write beautifully, but if nothing's happening, the story falls on its face pretty quickly. — Jennifer McMahon

thoughts and words have power, and if you allow your worst fears to form fully, you run the danger of bringing them to life. As — Jennifer McMahon

I have a friend who calls me the queen of the nightmares because I've always had really bad nightmares. I keep a notebook by the side of my bed, so I'll wake up in the night from a bad dream, and my heart's pounding, and I'm really scared, but I write it down, and sometimes I get ideas for books that way. — Jennifer McMahon

Think of me,' she said because it seemed like something a girl in a fairy tale might say. Think of me. Remember me. Love me. Turn me into a story you tell again and again. The sister who was good as gold and became a queen. — Jennifer McMahon

There are angels walking among us. — Jennifer McMahon

I think people see what they want to see ... But think about it: if you'd lost someone you love, wouldn't you give almost anything to have the chance to see them again? — Jennifer McMahon

Some people say, 'Write what you know.' My thing is, 'Write what scares you.' — Jennifer McMahon

At the heart of every story is conflict - whether external or internal, make it a good one, and remember that this problem is going to shape your character, leaving her forever changed. — Jennifer McMahon

I studied poetry in college and for a year in an MFA program. As time went on, my poems got more and more complicated. What I was really trying to do was tell stories. — Jennifer McMahon

All great heroes have a flaw. It's one of the things that makes them heroes. — Jennifer McMahon

I've never done a sequel - so far, there have been too many new stories and characters calling my name. — Jennifer McMahon

Storytelling wasn't about making things up. It was more like inviting the stories to come through her, let themselves be told. — Jennifer McMahon

No one sees the world like you do, Emma. Creating art is about sharing your own personal vision with the world. Taking something no one else can see and bringing it to life. — Jennifer McMahon

Poetry taught me a great deal about language and images, but when it came to plotting, I was stumped. It's been very much a learn-by-doing thing for me. — Jennifer McMahon

Tara grinned. "Funny how things work out, — Jennifer McMahon

Do me a favor - right now, today, start a list of all your crazy obsessions, the things that get your heart pumping, that wake you up in the middle of the night. Put it above your desk and use it to guide you, to jumpstart your writing each and every day. — Jennifer McMahon

Q: Bury deep, Pile on stones, Yet I will Dig up the bones. What am I? A: Memories - A FOLK RIDDLE — Jennifer McMahon

And, as Rhonda told the story, she thought: this is how the past gets passed down. This is how memories are made. Half-invented, embellished, given a touch of whimsy. — Jennifer McMahon

But Tess always wondered - maybe people were better off with the watered-down version of life, life with blinders, filters, cars that ran and buildings that went up on time, simple, stupid, mindless jobs. Maybe they were happy. — Jennifer McMahon

I wrote my first short story in third grade. — Jennifer McMahon

She places the orders for cases of frozen meat, huge cans of wax beans. She makes sure they stay — Jennifer McMahon

You're facing your demons. You'll come out stronger. — Jennifer McMahon

You can sink a thing deep, weight it down with stones, but eventually, it will surface. — Jennifer McMahon

If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow? — Jennifer McMahon

Some things, I think, like fairy books and secret doors, are only meant to be found by children. — Jennifer McMahon

Call me a skeptic, but I've always thought that it takes more than organic vegetables and talking circles to make an ideal society. Raven — Jennifer McMahon

Reggie's earliest memory of her mother began with her mother balancing an egg on its end and ended with Reggie losing her left ear. — Jennifer McMahon

Reggie was so sick of it all. The things people knew (or thought they knew) about other people. Maybe everyone had a secret life, not just Vera. She suddenly hated all of it. She wanted people to be as see-through as fish tanks, no more murkiness, no misdirection. No lies and bullshit. No secret rooms or lies about being the star of some goddamn play that didn't even exist. — Jennifer McMahon

I practically lived in the woods when I was a kid, avoiding grown-ups and my dysfunctional family, pretending I was half-wolf, a feral child who napped in nests made out of ferns, ate wild blueberries, and wove sticks and feathers into her hair. — Jennifer McMahon

And deep down, she felt like maybe she didn't deserve it-that she belonged with the petty thieves and guys who drank Pabst Blue Ribbon for breakfast — Jennifer McMahon

What if things happened to you - special, magic things - because you'd been preparing for them? — Jennifer McMahon

Madness is always a wonderful excuse, don't you think? For doing terrible things to other people. — Jennifer McMahon

Ain't no point worrying about what's been or what's gonna be. You just gotta do your best right now. And trust everyone else is doing the same. — Jennifer McMahon

I think we all have a kind of dark side, and that's what keeps life - and characters - interesting. That's one of the things that I'm drawn to write about again and again, the secrets we keep and how they shape us. — Jennifer McMahon

The world was full of dangers now that she was pregnant: mercury in tuna, hot tubs, beer, secondhand smoke, over-the-counter medicine. Not to mention crazy baby-abducting fairy kings. — Jennifer McMahon

All my life, I had this idea that if I could unravel the mystery that was my mother, then I could help save her. But it didn't really work. We were close, but she struggled with mental illness and alcoholism, and it was rough at times. — Jennifer McMahon

People often ask if my books should be read in any particular order, but they're all standalone novels, so picking up any one of them would be fine. — Jennifer McMahon

For some people, Rose, it's easier to pretend the things that frighten us most don't exist at all. — Jennifer McMahon

Sometimes we're at the mercy of other people. We don't even understand the power they have over us until it's too late. — Jennifer McMahon

I think of setting as almost a character of its own, influencing the other characters in ways they're not even aware of. So much of the success of a good ghost story rides on creating a creepy atmosphere; details of the landscape itself can help create a sense of dread. — Jennifer McMahon

I was born in 1968 and grew up in my grandmother's house in suburban Connecticut, where I was convinced a ghost named Virgil lived in the attic. — Jennifer McMahon

They were exactly what the other needed; the missing piece that made everything else magically click into place. — Jennifer McMahon

I've lived here ... my whole life. It's where I lost all my baby teeth. Where tiny hamster, gerbil, and bird skeletons lie in rotted-out cardboard coffins beneath the oak tree in our backyard. Also where, if some future archaeologist goes digging, they'll find the remains of a plush toy: a gray terrier named Toto I buried after the accident. — Jennifer McMahon

the dead can blame — Jennifer McMahon

The attic smelled like dust and mice. Piper was sure she could hear faint scuttling sounds off in the shadows, feel beady eyes upon her. She hoped it was only mice and not something larger, something more dangerous.
Was it more than rustling?
Was that faint breathing she heard coming from the darkest corner, the place where no light touched? — Jennifer McMahon

I have a pretty open mind about supernatural stuff - I do believe that there's more to this world than what meets the eye. — Jennifer McMahon

How can you dream if you don't have a soul? — Jennifer McMahon

Beautiful building," Phoebe said. Sam nodded. "Classical Revival," he said. It was yet another display of his seemingly unending knowledge that both made her proud and made her feel very small. Maybe if she had gone to college she would have learned about building styles and understand what Classical Revival meant. They could have intelligent discussions about things like rooflines and columns. — Jennifer McMahon

Tracer was a good guy, but Ruthie didn't understand how one individual could smoke the amount of pot he did and still function. — Jennifer McMahon

Over the years, I have been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and counselor for adults and kids with mental illness - I quit my last real job in 2000 to work on writing full-time. — Jennifer McMahon

Phoebe realized how very wrong she'd been about this house, this family. It was far darker, more dangerous than the places she'd grown up in. In the dingy little apartments her mother rented, everything was out in the open. Their lives were dirty and squalid, but they didn't pretend to be anything else. Here, things seemed so normal, so perfect, but it was all a deception. — Jennifer McMahon

I just try to write the best story I can, a story I would love to read, and hope that readers feel the same. — Jennifer McMahon

She closed her eyes. Said the four most comforting words she knew: "Once upon a time."
An incantation. — Jennifer McMahon

Although in my life the level of loss has never reached the extremes it does in 'The Winter People,' I certainly can identify with being both a daughter longing for her mother and being a mother who is almost scared by the intensity of her love for her daughter. — Jennifer McMahon

I graduated with a B.A. from Goddard College in 1991 and then studied poetry for a year in the M.F.A. in Writing Program at Vermont College. — Jennifer McMahon

She was his great adventure; his love for her had taken him places he'd never dreamed of going. — Jennifer McMahon

Reggie smiled. 'You haven't changed at all.' Tara took another pile of clothing from her bag and gave Reggie a sly grin from over the top of it. 'Do any of us really? — Jennifer McMahon

My mother taught me to believe in ghosts: to use a Ouija board, have seances, and leave little offerings out for those who have passed. — Jennifer McMahon

And how that lady Suz was all wrong: art is not all about chaos, about taking things apart. True art, Emma will tell them, is about finding a way to make what's broken whole. — Jennifer McMahon

We can't change things by wishing. Only by doing. It's our actions, Tara, not our thoughts. — Jennifer McMahon

If there was a way to bring someone back, would you do it, no matter what the consequences might be? I know that for me, my logical mind says, 'Of course not!' But the truth is, when you lose someone who is so close to you, it's as if they are a part of you; there's always one more thing to say, one more moment you wish you'd had. — Jennifer McMahon

Some people are made stronger by loss. Others are broken by it. — Jennifer McMahon

Sometimes what a person needs most is to be forgiven. — Jennifer McMahon

Sometimes a butterfly is not just a butterfly. This is what Oma taught me. You know the worst thing I learned from her? You can be a monster and not even know you are one. They look like us. They think they are us. But really, they've got a monster hiding inside. — Jennifer McMahon

I do believe in ghosts, or at least in some kind of persistent spiritual echoes of the past in certain places. — Jennifer McMahon