Jojo Moyes Quotes & Sayings

But there, in the inky dark, half drunk from lack of sleep, with the fire and the endless sea and infinite sky, with the sounds of the music in our ears...and my heart bursting this something I couldn't quite identify, I just needed to dance. — 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

Do you know how it feels to resign yourself to your fate? It is almost welcome. There was to be no more pain, no more fear, no more longing. It is the death of hope that comes as the greatest relief.
The Girl You Left Behind — Jojo Moyes

That evening she glowed. She gave off a vibration of energy that he suspected only he could detect. Do I do this to you?, he wondered, as he watched her eat. Or is this just the relief of being out from under the forbidden eye of that husband of yours? — Jojo Moyes

I saw that pretty much everyone bore the brutal imprint of love, whether it was lost, whipped away from them, or simply vanished into a grave. — Jojo Moyes

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

You were reading my Flannery O'Connor the other day." He took a sip of his drink. "When I was ill." "The short stories? I can't believe you noticed that." "I couldn't help but notice. You left the book out on the side. I can't pick it up." "Ah." "So don't read rubbish. Take the O'Connor stories home. Read them instead." I — Jojo Moyes

And because, most crazy of all, all that kindness, all that magnificence, was sitting there just because of his words — 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

Kind eyes under all the mascara. — Jojo Moyes

Don't set pen to paper until you know your main characters inside out. Create files detailing their appearances, likes, dislikes, and personal background. You may not use all the information, but it is a crucial step in planning your story. — Jojo Moyes

I'm telling you there's a while world out there. — Jojo Moyes

Jesus Christ," said my father. "Can you imagine? If it wasn't punishment enough ending up in a ruddy wheelchair, then you get our Lou turning up to keep you company."
"Bernard!" my mother scolded.
Behind me, Granddad was laughing into his mug of tea. — Jojo Moyes

She was beautiful. As always she looked like she'd meant to head for somewhere else but at the last minute she'd decided to stop by you, as a favor, you understand. — 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

We had thought it a little odd, but what did we know? Lou has been peculiar since birth, after all. Mum — Jojo Moyes

How is it possible to exist with so much pain? — Jojo Moyes

I could hear her babbling away beside me, but I wasn't really paying attention. I could barely focus on anything. My nerve endings seemed to have come alive; they almost jangled with anticipation I was going to see Will. Whatever else, I had that. I could almost feel the miles between us shrinking, as if we were at two ends of some invisible elastic thread. — Jojo Moyes

I had been having trouble sleeping, and had found that actually getting up was marginally preferable to lying in my bed batting away the swirling mess of my thoughts. — Jojo Moyes

It had been years before she could view anybody else's happiness without mourning the loss of her own. — Jojo Moyes

She regards Ellie gravely. You know, you can't make someone love you again. No matter how much you might want it. Sometimes, unfortunately, the timing is simply ... off. — Jojo Moyes

I should have listened to my father. "Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience?" he would say. "Plan a fun family day out. — Jojo Moyes

Louisa, is your life always like this? — Jojo Moyes

Tell me something good. — Jojo Moyes

Good to meet you, Patrick," Will said. "And thank you for the ... advice."
"Oh, just trying to help my girlfriend get the best out of her job," he said. "That's all." There was a definite emphasis on the word my.
"Well, you're a lucky man," Will said, as Nathan began to steer him out. "She certainly gives a good bed bath." The words came out so quickly that the door was closed before Patrick even realized what he had said. — Jojo Moyes

Stolen from someone. Like they stole everything. Occupied. I was occupied. I disappeared. — Jojo Moyes

You are scored on my heart. — Jojo Moyes

It's complicated.'
'So's quantitative easing. But I still get that it means printing money. — Jojo Moyes

It's like I'm looking through a funnel, she had said, gazing at his newborn form. The world has just shrunk to me and him. — Jojo Moyes

You're going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. It always does feel strange to be knocked out of your comfort zone. — Jojo Moyes

I would have to fill those little white rectangles with a lifetime of things that could generate happiness, contentment, satisfaction, or pleasure. I would have to fill them with every good experience I could summon up for a man whose powerless arms and legs meant he could no longer make them happen by himself. I had just under four months' worth of printed rectangles to pack with days out, trips away, visitors, lunches, and concerts. I had to come up with all the practical ways to make them happen, and do enough research to make sure that they didn't fail. And — Jojo Moyes

My voice, when it emerged, cracked a little. I'm not in love with a ghost. — Jojo Moyes

I know the subtlest movements of the city because I no longer sleep. — 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

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

And yet. To commit to Sam was to commit to the likelihood of more loss. — Jojo Moyes

I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment. — Jojo Moyes

When Jess had Tanzie, young and daft as she had been, she'd had enough wisdom to know she was going to tell her how much she loved her every day. She would hug her and wipe her tears and flop with her on the sofa with their legs entwined like spaghetti. She would cocoon her in love. — Jojo Moyes

It has become a secret
habit, me, the city skyline, the
comfort of the dark, the
anonymity, and the
knowledge that up here
nobody knows who I am — Jojo Moyes

Last night. When I was bleeding out. I heard you.
Our eyes locked. And in that moment everything shifted. I saw what I had really done. I saw that I could be somebody's centre, their reason for staying. I saw that I could be enough. — Jojo Moyes

She didn't talk about it: if this past year has taught her one thing, it is to live in the present. She immersed herself in every moment, refusing to cloud it by considering the cost. The fall would come - it always did - but she usually collected enough memories to cushion it a little. — Jojo Moyes

I walked back across the road straight past him, fumbling in my bag for my keys. Why did fingers always turn into cocktail sausages at moments of stress? — Jojo Moyes

I'm going to end up like my mother. She left it too late to remember who she actually was before she became a wife. — Jojo Moyes

The world is full of people who will try to bring you down, Caitlin," Mum said, turning to look at me. "And full of things that will make you sad and angry. But they are only people and things, and you, you are a dancer. Dancers are never defeated. — Jojo Moyes

It never ended. Even though she'd thought she'd covered her heart with a permanent porcelain shell, he still found a way to chip at it. — Jojo Moyes

Did I grow up wanting to clean houses?" She raised an eyebrow, as if checking that he had seriously asked that question. "Um, no. I wanted to be a professional scuba diver. But I had Tanze — Jojo Moyes

You know, you would never have let those breasts so close to me if I weren't in a wheelchair,' he murmured.
I looked back at him steadily. 'You would never have looked at my breasts if you hadn't been in a wheelchair.'
'What? Of course I would.'
'Nope. You would have been far too busy looking at the tall blonde girls with the endless legs and the big hair, the ones who can smell an expense account at forty paces. And anyway, I wouldn't have been here. I would have been serving the drinks over there. One of the invisibles.'
He blinked.
'Well? I'm right, aren't I?'
Will glanced over at the bar, then back at me. 'Yes. But in my defense, Clark, I was an arse. — Jojo Moyes

I chose to believe that God, a benign God, would understand our sufferings and forgive us our trespasses. — Jojo Moyes

The worst thing about working as a caregiver is not what you might think. IT's not the lifting and cleaning, the medicines and wipes, and the distant but somehow always perceptible smell of disinfectant. IT's not even the fact that most people assume you're only doing it because you really aren't smart enough to do anything else. It's the fact that when you spend all day in proximity to someone, there is no escape from their moods. Or your own. — Jojo Moyes

She closed the file, then studied the text messages — Jojo Moyes

Jess's grandmother had often said that the key to a happy life was a short memory. — Jojo Moyes

I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn't have met, and who didn't like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other. — Jojo Moyes

You should just keep your mouth shout! It gets very tedious having you make a snarky comment about everything that someone says in this group. — Jojo Moyes

The only thing holding me back was myself. — Jojo Moyes

You shall forget that I am part of an enemy army, I shall forget that you are a woman who spends much of her time working out how to subvert that army, and we shall just . . . be two people? — Jojo Moyes

And when it came down to it, what was the point in re-examining your sadness all the time anyway? It was like picking at a wound and refusing to let it heal. I knew what I had been part of. I knew what my role was. What was the point in going over and over it? — Jojo Moyes

Handsome husband, who adores you, and a wardrobe any woman — Jojo Moyes

He was gazing right into her eyes, as he said this, seemingly imparting something of the impossibility of connections when one is always on the move. — Jojo Moyes

What am I meant to do with what's left? — Jojo Moyes

Sometimes the illusion of happiness could inadvertently create it. — Jojo Moyes

Visits. Your parents plainly think you're a loser. You don't have the guts to walk out of even the — 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

Marriage is a decades-long experiment, conducted mostly in private; a test of will in the face of unexpected obstacles. — Jojo Moyes

So with the loss of my family as well as the man I had loved, every thread that had linked me to who I was had been abruptly cut. I felt as if I had simply floated off, untethered, to some unknown universe. — 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

I always imagined a writer was someone who lived in an attic in Paris, but my mum instilled in me a belief that I could do anything - so I ended up writing my first novel while working nights as a news reporter. — Jojo Moyes

just wanted to get him out of the house and thinking about something else." I — Jojo Moyes

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

And I ate the cheesecake. — Jojo Moyes

She is probably slightly too old to pout, but they've been going out a short enough time for it still to be cute. — Jojo Moyes

A stylish person, for me, is one who draws your eye without necessarily being showy; they wear clothes that are beautifully cut, flatter the wearer, and show that they are not impervious to fashion, but not a slave to it either. — Jojo Moyes

She does not want to feel even the faintest temptation to call his mobile number, as she had done obsessively for the first year after his death so she could hear his voice on the answering service. Most days now his loss is a part of her, an awkward weight she carries around, invisible to everyone else, subtly altering the way she moves through the day. But today, the Anniversary of the day he died, is a day when all bets are off. — Jojo Moyes

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

And suddenly everything was pure sound. 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. Will hadn't described any of it like this. I had thought I might be bored. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. And — Jojo Moyes

I see all this talent, all this ... this energy and brightness and ... potential. Yes. Potential. And I cannot for the life of me see how you can be content to live this tiny life. This life that will take place almost entirely within a five mile radius and contain nobody who will ever surprise you or push you or show you things that will leave your head spinning and unable to sleep at night. — 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

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

Beside me Sam had started to shake silently. "Stop them," he murmured. "I'm going to bust my stitches. — Jojo Moyes

You never know what will happen when you fall from a great height. — Jojo Moyes

Unless you sell millions, I think it's very hard as a writer not to feel anxious about what you put out. I always feel I could do better. — Jojo Moyes

All I can say is that you make me ... you make me into someone I couldn't even imagine. You make me happy, even when you're awful. I would rather be with you - even the you that you seem to think is diminished - than with anyone else in the world. — 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

Shhh. Just listen. You, of all people. Listen to what Im saying. This ... tonight ... is the most wonderful thing you could have done for me. What you have told me, what you have done in bringing me here ... knowing that, somehow, from that complete arse, I was at the start of this, you managed to salvage something to love is astonishing to me. But ... I need it to end here. No more chair. No more pneumonia. No more burning limbs. No more pain and tiredness and waking up every morning already wishing it was over. When we get back, I am still going to go to Switzerland. And if you do love me, Clark, as you say you do, the thing that would make me happier than anything is if you would come with me. So I'm asking you - if you feel the things you say you feel - then do it. Be with me. Give me the end I'm hoping for. — Jojo Moyes

Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you'd be okay. — Jojo Moyes

It felt like I was living a life I hadn't had a chance to anticipate. — Jojo Moyes

Good things happen to good people. — Jojo Moyes

You know your sister has been reading The Female Eunuch? And some old shite called The Women's Bedroom or something. She says your mother is a classic example of oppressed womanhood, and that the fact your mother disagrees shows how oppressed she is. She's trying to tell her I should be doing the cooking and cleaning and making out I'm some fecking caveman. But if I dare to say anything back she keeps telling me to "check my privilege". Check my privilege! I told her I'd be happy to check it if I knew where the hell your mother had put it. — Jojo Moyes

Good things happen. sometimes when you least expect them — Jojo Moyes

She swore loudly and slammed the rig into reverse, steering it round the garage, — Jojo Moyes

You live. And you throw yourself into everything and try not to think of the bruises. — Jojo Moyes

moving on means we have to protect ourselves. — Jojo Moyes

We danced as if we had nothing else to do but dance. Lord, it felt good. I had forgotten the joy of just existing, of losing yourself in the music...I let go of everything, my problems floating away like helium balloons: my awful job, my picky boss, my failure to move on. I became a thing, alive, moving, joyful. — Jojo Moyes

Well, you're a lucky man," Will said, as Nathan began to steer him out. "She certainly gives a good bed bath. — Jojo Moyes

And I thought that even before I had sex with him. — Jojo Moyes

She doesn't know what to say. She feels quietly furious with him, while conscious that she has no right to be. What has he ever promised her, after all? — Jojo Moyes

I hadn't realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn't predicted. It left an imprint in the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went. — 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

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

I think there is an awful lot of technology for technology's sake. I have yet to be convinced by my husband that persuading our mobiles to talk to our computers is going to be quicker and more straightforward than scribbling a note in our kitchen diary. — Jojo Moyes

The very point of faith was that it must be tested. — Jojo Moyes