Jon McGregor Quotes & Sayings

I wonder how many ways there are for a mother to produce that wreckage in her own daughter, and my muscles tense as I think of them. — Jon McGregor

He wonders how so much water can resist the pull of so much gravity for the time it takes such pregnant clouds to form, he wonders about the moment the rain begins, the turn from forming to falling, that slight silent pause in the physics of the sky as the critical mass is reached, the hesitation before the first swollen drop hurtles fatly and effortlessly to the ground. — Jon McGregor

Everybody's got their own situation and their own needs. — Jon McGregor

He wonders what memories she is rediscovering, what thoughts are catching in her mouth like the dust blown from unused textbooks. — Jon McGregor

I didn't know what to do, there was a feeling of time running out and a loss of momentum, of opportunities wasted. — Jon McGregor

I'm surprised, but I'm glad, I realise that this is what i wanted that night last week, to simply make a connection and keep hold of it. — Jon McGregor

There are so many people in the world, and I want to know them all but I don't even know my next-door neighbor's name. — Jon McGregor

And she doesn't understand why he doesn't want to put out his medal like a trophy. And he can't tell her that he liberated Europe with a spade. — Jon McGregor

It would have been very easy to drift into writing a non-fiction book so by taking it away from Nottingham I forced myself to imagine much more of it. — Jon McGregor

All the emails I get these days start with sorry but I've been so busy, and I don't understand how we can be so busy and then have nothing to say to each other. — Jon McGregor

The architecture student from number eleven presses his face to the glass and looks at the way the light falls through the water, he thinks about a place where he worked in the spring, an office where they had a stack of empty watercooler bottles against the window, and how he would sit and watch the sun mazing its way through the layers of refraction, the beauty of it, he called it spontaneous maths and he wanted to build architecture like he that, he looks at the row of houses opposite and he pictures them built entirely of plastic and glass, he imagines how people's lives might change if their dwellings shook with endless reflections of light, he does not know if it's possible but he thinks it's a nice idea — Jon McGregor

He says when your grandmother died your mother cried solidly for a week, solidly.
She was crying with relief he says, it was like as if a door had been unlocked and she'd been let outside, she said to me I'm safe now.
He waits, and he says this kid, when it's born, you mustn't ever let it think it's anything other than a gift and a blessing, do you hear me? — Jon McGregor

Last week I was just someone who had had a first novel published. — Jon McGregor

They haven't spoken about it, they haven't said what will we do when we leave here, do you want to come with me, let's work something out, and she knows that this means they will quickly and easily drift apart, into other people's lives, into other people's arms in rooms like this. She is surprised that this doesn't make her feel sad. She listens to the music, she looks around at the things people dropped when they fell asleep or went out of the room, she kisses the boy's arm again and she feels only a kind of sweet nostalgia. She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it's in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowah doowah doowah. — Jon McGregor

She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it's in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowoah doowoah. — Jon McGregor

If you listen, you can hear it.
The city, it sings.
If you stand quietly, at the foot of a garden, in the middle of the street, on the roof of a house.
It's clearest at night, when the sound cuts more sharply across the surface of things, when the song reaches out to a place inside you.
It's a wordless song, for the most, but it's a song all the same, and nobody hearing it could doubt what it sings. And the song sings the loudest when you pick out each note. — Jon McGregor

I say too much of what, he says too much of everything, too much stuff, too many places, too much information, too many people, too much of things for there to be too much of, there is too much to know and I don't know where to begin but I want to try. — Jon McGregor

People seem to be losing their sense of boundaries more and more, what people are willing to put up on the internet, especially blogs. People seem to assume that only their friends are going to read it but anyone in the world could read it at any time. — Jon McGregor

The only clouds are pale and thin, hung as high as they can manage, like cobwebs in the high arches of a stairwell, and the sky is a freshly scrubbed blue, as permanent-looking as the first day of the holidays. — Jon McGregor

Every step of the road was just as she'd dreamt it all the time she'd been away. Every step took her further away from the smoke and the noise and the loneliness and fear of the city she'd left behind. Every step drew her deeper into the hollows of the landscape, the green hills and shining rivers and mist-tangled treetops. — Jon McGregor

It is something I recognise in myself. I do eavesdrop. I do people-watch, a lot. — Jon McGregor

He thinks about her, at this moment, in her house, a few thin walls away, packing her life into boxes and bags and he wonders what memories she is rediscovering, what thoughts are catching in her mouth like the dust blown from unused textbooks. He wonders if she has buried any traces of herself under her floorboards. He wonders what those traces would be if she had. And he wonders again why he thinks about her so much when he knows so little to think about. — Jon McGregor

Now that I've had a book published, it is quite validating, but a bit embarrassing. — Jon McGregor

I once saw a picture in the paper of John Hegley with 'poet' written on his knuckles, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I was quite up front about it. — Jon McGregor

It takes a lot of energy and creativity to make such screwed up lives carry on. And the kind of will people have to survive, year after year, dealing with that stuff, is weirdly impressive. — Jon McGregor

There are only these: sparkling eyes, smudged lipstick, fading starlight, the crunching of feet on gravel, laughter, and a slow walk home. — Jon McGregor

You must always look with both of your eyes and listen with both of your ears. He says this is a very big world and there are many many things you could miss if you are not careful. There are remarkable things all the time, right in front of us, but our eyes have like the clouds over the sun and our lives are paler and poorer if we do not see them for what they are. If nobody speaks of remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable? — Jon McGregor

But there are people too he says, everywhere there are people and I think it is easier to hold hands with people than it is with angels, yes? — Jon McGregor

the rain falls, catching the trailing edges of net curtains which flow out of open windows like fishing nets lowered over the backs of boats, nets hung neatly between the outside and the in, keeping floundering secrets firmly hidden... — Jon McGregor

The whole city stopped - And this is a pause worth savouring, because the world will soon be complicated again. — Jon McGregor

And he'd looked straight back at her, holding her professional eye contact, and said yes, thankyou doctor, I do understand, yes. And he'd coughed, hard, repeatedly, spraying blooded phlegm into his handkerchief as to prove how much he understood.
Yes, thankyou doctor, I understand.
Things are not exactly one hundred percent the way we would like them to be. — Jon McGregor

Say excuse me but, really, I am actually very much in love with you. — Jon McGregor