Meg Rosoff Quotes & Sayings

Bob's talent, such as it is, consists entirely of the few unconscious charms of youth: its energy, audacity and complete inability to recognize its own shortcomings. — Meg Rosoff

I'm sorry I started all this by trying to fly and I'd take it back if I could but I can't, so please think of it from my point of view: if you die I will have a dead brother and it will be me instead of you who suffers.
Justin thought of his brother on that warm summer day, standing up on the windowsill holding both their futures, light and changeable as air, in his outstretched arms.
Of course, Justin thought, I'm part of his fate just as he's part of mine. I hadn't considered it from his point of view. Or from the point of view of the universe, either. It's just a playing field crammed full of cause and effect, billions of dominoes, each knocking over billions more, setting off trillions of actions every second. A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and my brother in Luton thinks he can fly.
The child nodded. A piano might fall on your head, he said, but it also might not. And in the meantime you never know. Something nice might happen. — Meg Rosoff

I have never written out of a desire to be controversial. — Meg Rosoff

Gil has put his book down and is gazing at something inside his head. — Meg Rosoff

He could see now that she looked tired; the delicate tissue under her eyes bruised violet with fatigue. He fought an almost irresistible desire to trace the half-circles with his finger. — Meg Rosoff

And after awhile of this my brain and my body and every single inch of me that was alive was flooded with the feeling that I was starving, starving for Edmond.
And what a coincidence, that was the feeling I loved best in the world. — Meg Rosoff

Life doesn't go on forever, and you don't want to drop dead without ever having done what you wanted to do. — Meg Rosoff

Ask any comedian, tennis player, chef. Timing is everything. — Meg Rosoff

I think the bravest thing to write about is nothing, just to write a book in which nothing happens. — Meg Rosoff

That's it," Piper said. "That's the end." But I knew it wasn't. They'd left out a chapter. The one where the hero comes home to find me gone. — Meg Rosoff

This was what happiness felt like - this wondrous, miraculous alternative to dread. — Meg Rosoff

She frowned at him. 'You are in love with solitude.'
'Is there a better cure for the world than solitude? — Meg Rosoff

Eck nodded, a bit uncertainly. He supposed that in the absence of a future, a friend might be nice. — Meg Rosoff

I was dying, of course, but then we all are. Every day, in perfect increments, I was dying of loss.
The only help for my condition, then as now, is that I refused to let go of what I loved. I wrote everything down, at first in choppy fragments; a sentence here, a few words there, it was the most I could handle at the time. Later I wrote more, my grief muffled but not eased by the passage of time.
When I go back over my writing now I can barely read it. The happiness is the worst. Some days I can't bring myself to remember. But I will not relinquish a single detail of the past. What remains of my life depends on what happened six years ago.
In my brain, in my limbs, in my dreams, it is still happening. — Meg Rosoff

Would it really be better, he wanted to ask, if it were always this nice? Would anyone bother to notice? Or would they simply pass through a night like this, unmoved?
And (this was more to the point) if life were without flaws and no one ever changed or died, what role would God have?
A muffled sound of voices reached him. Above, the stars glittered so large and bright, he thought he might throw a net and pull them towards him like whiting. Boats slid past him in the inky dark but failed to enter his thoughts. — Meg Rosoff

Things Happen and once they start happening you pretty much just to hold on for dear life and see where they drop you when they stop. — Meg Rosoff

When you read a book, the neurons in your brain fire overtime, deciding what the characters are wearing, how they're standing, and what it feels like the first time they kiss. No one shows you. The words make suggestions. Your brain paints the pictures. — Meg Rosoff

If you have the patience to wait and watch, history will reshape truth (weakest of all forces, and weightless) in the image of opinion. What really happened will cease to matter and, eventually, cease to exist. — Meg Rosoff

People talk about writing convincing teenagers like it's a really clever thing to do, but it comes incredibly naturally to me. Which, of course, is slightly a worry. — Meg Rosoff

To hide her relief, Laura stepped forward and embraced her daughter. 'My poor darling. He's not worth weeping over. If he doesn't appreciate a girl like you ... ' But, even to her own ears, the words sounded quaint. What man ever warranted the tears shed on his behalf? — Meg Rosoff

There's an overwhelming sense of paranoia in the suburbs. People there seem so much more paranoid to me than people in the city about their kids being kidnapped or their parties being raided or their drinks being spiked. There's a kind of hysteria about that. — Meg Rosoff

How many events added up to a coincidence?
How many coincidences added up to a conspiracy? — Meg Rosoff

One of the more interesting things I've learnt since becoming a writer is that if you like the book, you'll generally like the person. It doesn't always work in reverse - there are huge numbers of lovely people out there writing not very good books. — Meg Rosoff

In the meantime, Charlie learnt to fly. Dorothea fell in love. Peter discovered a new star. And a great number of things happened to Justin. Hundreds of millions of ordinary, unexpected, and occasionally quite astonishing things.
And that was his fate. — Meg Rosoff

What else? A handful of hard white sugar lumps from the supply for the master's table. Sugar and cake and blood and pork. That's what little boys are made of. — Meg Rosoff

The startled child gathered his thoughts.
I'm not entirely sure what the circumstances are, he said, but as a general rule I try to keep things simple. If I'm clear about what I want, other people have an easier time making me happy. It sounds basic, but most of the time it works.
"Duck." He spoke clearly, pointing to a wooden duck. — Meg Rosoff

Maybe we shouldn't be living this way, without grass and trees, and ducks, always under pressure, always trying to catch up, never enough time or energy for the things we love, if we can even remember what those things are. — Meg Rosoff

As it was, nothing happened except the two of us watching the sea come in and go out again, listening to the birds, sheltering from the rain when it came, and lying silent as the sky changed from blue to white to gold. For hours we lay side by side, breathing softly together, watching thin rivulets of water run down the cliffs and into the sea, feeling the world slowly revolve around us as we leaned into each other for warmth
and for something else, something I couldn't quite name, something glorious, frightening, and unforgettable. — Meg Rosoff

I give thanks for all that has passed, for all that is passing, and for all that is yet to come. — Meg Rosoff

because we were all catching on to the fact that some questions were better not asked. Piper — Meg Rosoff

I studied Finn the way another boy might have studied history, determined to memorize his vocabulary, his movements, his clothes, what he said, what he did, what he thought. What ideas circulated in his head when he looked distracted? What did he dream about?
But most of all what I wanted was to see myself through his eyes, to define myself in relation to him, to sift out what was interesting in me (what he must have liked, however insignificant) and distill it into a purer, bolder, more compelling version of myself.
The truth is, for that brief period of my life I failed to exist if Finn wasn't looking at me. And so I copied him, strove to exist the way he existed: to stretch, languid and graceful when tired, to move swiftly and with determination when not, to speak rarely and with force, to smile in a way that rewarded the world. — Meg Rosoff

The average attention span of the modern human being is about half as long as whatever you're trying to tell them. — Meg Rosoff

some people are lonely for all the right reasons. After — Meg Rosoff

Pouring breakfast cereal into a bowl, he saw his life crashing down in smoking ruins. — Meg Rosoff

I can't even trust my own imaginary dog. How much lower can a person get? — Meg Rosoff

My younger sister Debby had died of cancer, which started me writing - the sense of life being short. Cancer focuses your mind. — Meg Rosoff

The facts of his existence are plain. I know that he will never silence those unspeakable voices. He heard how people killed, and how they died and their voices infected him, coursed through his body, poisoned him. He didn't know how to turn off the noise, or turn the hate back out onto the world like the rest of us. He turned it on himself. You could see that from the scars on him. — Meg Rosoff

I love you. I'm madly in love with you. Well, madly obviously, given I'm mad as a mudlark. But you saved my life. I'd be dead without you. And you're so good to me. And you love me too. How lucky is that? Amazing! Amazingly lucky. I can't live without you. You're my lucky charm. She felt a sudden desire to kill Justin's well-meaning friend. — Meg Rosoff

So much of translating, Gil once told me, takes place in an imaginary space where the writer and the translator come together. It is not necessary to sympathize with the writer, to agree with what he's written. But it is necessary to walk alongside and stay in step. It's harder, he says, when the other person has a bad limp or stops and starts all the time or moves erratically. It is hardest of all when the story comes from a place the translator himself can't go. — Meg Rosoff

Julie helped him to feel defined. He was Julie's boyfriend. Julie's fiance. Julie's provocation. He came into focus when he stood beside her, despite the fact that the person standing beside her was mostly not him. — Meg Rosoff

The things that break your heart when you think there's nothing left to break — Meg Rosoff

Where's your dog?" Peter's voice came from within the gushing stream of water. Justin thought he must have misheard.
"Pardon?"
"Your dog."
"Yes?"
"Isn't he with you today?" Justin looked at Peter.
"Ha bloody ha." Peter stuck his head out of the stream of water, features dripping. He smiled shyly.
"I love greyhounds." Justin stared.
"My dog is imaginary."
"Oh." Peter looked interested. "That's unusual." Justin put his head under the water. When he emerged, Peter was still looking at him.
"Less work," Peter offered, cheerily. "If the dog's imaginary, I mean. Not so much grooming, feeding, et cetera. — Meg Rosoff

The imagination can be dangerous. It can change the world. And that is why we write. — Meg Rosoff

Writing's a great skill, but thinking's a better one. — Meg Rosoff

It was not a big smile, not particularly bold or polite or ironic or glib, not asking for anything or offering anything, not stringy or careless, not, in short, like any smile I had ever experienced before. But such a smile! You could burn a hole in the world with that smile. — Meg Rosoff

I'm constantly snatching my books out of the hands of precocious ten-year-olds who are simply too young to read them, despite parents insisting that dear Octavia has a reading age of 28. I remember trying to read 'In Cold Blood' at the age of twelve, and realising that just because you can read book doesn't mean you should. — Meg Rosoff

Suzanne is not a horrible person masquerading as a nice one, just an angry one pretending to be normal. — Meg Rosoff

Quick-wittedness can be very lonely. — Meg Rosoff

It says: "Baltic Amber, fifty million years old and full of fire; warm, and enduring like love". Wonderfully romantic, don't you think? Only I don't know how to differntiate thestuff from plain old yellow stones. — Meg Rosoff

Age is not always the best judge of competence. — Meg Rosoff

I was starting to think that except for the deli counters and five or ten thousand other total essentials, supermarkets were pretty much a waste of time. — Meg Rosoff

I've been fired five times for having a bad attitude. — Meg Rosoff

If you haven't been in a war and are wondering how long it takes to get used to losing everything you think you need or love, I can tell you the answer is no time at all. — Meg Rosoff

How had he got here? Only a few minutes ago he'd been a kid, riding his bike to school, collecting comics, doing homework and watching TV. Over the years, a few trappings of adulthood had insinuated themselves into his life withoutmaking significant inroads. Real adult life seemed to exist over there, somewhere as distant and unreachable as Uranus. He had no idea how people crossed over to this place, or why - the demands of being grown up seemed exhausting. Look how I work all the time. See my silky girlfriend. Watch me exchange money for food. Admire my blood pressure. — Meg Rosoff

(Mam) ignorant as a thistle, married to a drunk and pushing out baby after baby, each of which had to be clothed and fed until it grew up and left, or died. — Meg Rosoff

He was a peculiar sight. Tears rolling down his face, shouting to drown the sound of the singing rabbit; he said he needed help, pointed to a chicken, handed over some money, grabbed his parcel and bolted out the door in panic.
Boys, thought the butcher.
Drugs, thought the woman.
Justin Case, thought Dorothea. — Meg Rosoff

Each day, a new crisis, a new massacre, a new threat of extinction, disease, internecine conflict, meteorological catastrophe... Behold man. Violent, self-serving and ruthless when in power; exploited, miserable and diseased when not. — Meg Rosoff

In my experience, adults rarely bother reading the reviews of children's books and almost never read the books themselves - particularly if they don't have children. — Meg Rosoff

Nowadays, I only review books I really like. It's cowardly, I know, but I figure it's not my job to make people unhappy. I'll leave that to the professionals. — Meg Rosoff

Somewhere along the line I'd lost the will not to eat. — Meg Rosoff

Tell me, I say, is there some huge adult conspiracy where people lead unimaginably complex lives and pretend it's normal? — Meg Rosoff

Then I just closed my eyes and watched the blossom petals fall and — Meg Rosoff

In the odd moment when I am not thinking about horses, I write books. — Meg Rosoff

I felt a momentary urge to leap into the sea and swim free of the present. — Meg Rosoff

After all this time, I know exactly where I belong. Here. With Edmond. And that's how I live now. — Meg Rosoff

It's just a playing field crammed full of cause and effect, billions of dominoes, each knocking over billions more, setting off trillions of actions every second. — Meg Rosoff

Maybe he's lonely, she said, and I just looked at her wondering if she expected me to open a Home for the Socially Challenged or what. Then she started giggling and I had the feeling we were thinking the same thing, namely, some people are lonely for all the right reasons. — Meg Rosoff

Edmond just lay there smoking and telling me he loved me without saying anything out loud and if there ever was a more perfect day in the history of time it isn't one I've heard about. The — Meg Rosoff

I was touched that he has considered the fact that there would be two of us, and prepared for it - concrete evidence that I had entered his consciousness at a time when I was not standing in front of him. A thrilling discovery - like seeing a chimp make tools. — Meg Rosoff

Look, I say. You can't just let your thoughts float around in the ether and hope eventually they'll connect with something. It's absurd.
No, it's not, Gil says. Lots of good things happen that way. Penicillin. Teflon. Smart dust. Something happens that you weren't expecting and it shifts the outcome completely. You have to be open to it.
When I open my brain, I tell him, things bounce around and fall out. They don't connect with anything. Maybe I haven't got enough points of reference stored up yet.
You're young, he says, that's probably it. When I let my thoughts float around, I trust that they'll latch on to something useful in the end or make an association I wouldn't necessarily have predicted. I'm trusting that they'll find the right thought to complete, all by themselves. The right bit of fact to ping. You have to trust your brain sometimes. — Meg Rosoff

We are three. Even when we are just two, we are three. — Meg Rosoff

If there was ever a more perfect day in the history of time it isn't one I've heard about. — Meg Rosoff

And then without any signal or obvious sign of tansformation, the beach was suddenly alight with fiery stones. — Meg Rosoff

I would hate to have parents who were always looking over my shoulder, reading my diary, checking my thoughts. I would hate to be exposed. And so, perhaps, when I say I long to be a pane of glass, I am lying. I long for partial obscurity at the same time that I long for someone to know me.
It is confusing and difficult to be me.
Sometimes I I need to cry in order to release the great welling sadness I feel in my head.
For this I need privacy. I do not want anyone to see me and ask why, almost as much as I would like to be comforted.
Somehow, without ever being present, Matthew has exposed all of this, brought it wriggling to the surface like worms. They gather there now, vaguely nostalgic for the dark. — Meg Rosoff

I should have liked this particular story to end with me settled happily ever after in the hut on the island, but it didn't happen. It wasn't long before I had to face the fact that I was living in the sea. — Meg Rosoff

I guess there was a war going on somewhere in the
world that night but it wasn't one that could touch us. — Meg Rosoff

The truth about love is that you don't always fall in love with whom you are supposed to fall in love with. Love just hits you. It is a transcendent thing. Sometimes it is your best friend's husband and sometimes it's your father. It's weird. But that's a fact of life. — Meg Rosoff

Though we were all taught to be proud of living in this great parliamentary democracy the civil servants who ran it were a fearsome bunch - a nameless mass of people with jobs (police, social workers, record-keepers, teachers, councilmen) whose sole purpose was to keep everyone shuffling from birth to death in a nice orderly queue. Surely some social-service record had been passed to the local constabulary bearing a huge black question mark beside the name Finn and the scrawled words, Why isn't this boy in school — Meg Rosoff

I hardly saw Osbert that week because he went to school, unlike Isaac and Edmond and Piper, who were supposed to be homeschooled, which as far as I could tell meant reading whatever books you happen to be interested in, and every once in a blue moon having Aunt Penn say Have you learned any geography? and them saying yes. — Meg Rosoff

He would like to be held in the arms of this clear-eyed, clear-voiced girl, who seems to be the only creature among all of his acquaintances who cares for something beside self-glorification and the gratification of her own desires. — Meg Rosoff

I was happiest when he just came and lay down next to me, and I could almost feel the weight of his body against mine. — Meg Rosoff

Wonder at what point a child becomes a person. Does it happen all at once, or slowly, in stages? Is there an age, a week, a moment, at which all the secrets of the universe are revealed and adulthood descends on a cloud from heaven, altering the brain forever? Will the child-me slink off one day, never to return? — Meg Rosoff

In theory, I would like to lead a transparent life. I wold like my life to be as clear as a new pane of glass, without anything shameful and no dark shadows. I would like that. But if I am completely honest, I have to acknowledge secrets too painful to even tell myself. There are things I consider in the deep dark of night, secret terrors. Why are they secrets? I could easily tell either of my parents how I feel, but what would they say? Don't worry, darling, we will do our best never to die? We will never ever leave you, never contract cancer or walk in front of a bus or collapse of old age? We will not leave you alone, not ever, to navigate the world and all of its complexities without us? — Meg Rosoff

Bob exploded. 'There is no such thing as a casual conversation with my mother. Every single word will be twisted recognition until before you know it you're playing Russian roulette in a wind tunnel with a psychotic dwarf, having wagered your birthright for a piece of cheese ... — Meg Rosoff

How doe we define the energy of thought versus the energy of action. — Meg Rosoff

I don't get nearly enough credit in life for the things I manage not to say. — Meg Rosoff

Every war has turning points and every person too. — Meg Rosoff

Accept love instinctively, without responsibility or conditions. — Meg Rosoff

It's hard recommending books for kids, and a huge responsibility. If you get it wrong, they don't tell you they hate that particular book, they tell you they hate reading. — Meg Rosoff

I hate you, I thought, I hate you with your bloody nature-boy airs and your bloody forced-march voyage of bloody discovery. I wondered then if Finn's personality worked on everyone, or whether I had just the the right sort of mentality to fall in step with a self-centered hermit-boy crab murderer. — Meg Rosoff

I've noticed that the magic getting along with someone isn't really magic. If you break it down, you can see how it happens. You say something a bit off-center and see if they react. If they get it, they push it a bit further. Then it's your turn again. And theirs. And so on, until it's banter. Once it's banter, it's friendship. — Meg Rosoff

Even then I knew that happiness was something in which to plunge headlong, and damn the torpedoes — Meg Rosoff

His presence silenced, if only for a few seconds, the crackling anxiety that made my blood grate against my bones and for a little while I'd feel melted and soft. — Meg Rosoff

And I think, OK. So a dog isn't the most important thing. But a dog like Honey loves one person completely, unwaveringly, with perfect faith. That has to be more important than most things.
And Gabriel, I say. He has Gabriel too.
Gil says nothing but I know the answer. The answer is that Gabriel can't save Matthew any more than Gil can, or Honey. Or Jake. But we are all woven together, like a piece of cloth, and we all support each other, for better or worse. Gabriel is just a baby but eventually he will see the world and his father as they are: imperfect, dangerous, peppered with betrayals and also with love. — Meg Rosoff

I was pretty far gone, but not so far gone that I thought anyone with half a toehold in reality would think what we were doing was a good idea. — Meg Rosoff

I've spent most of my life trying to wear a persona that didn't quite fit and when I started writing books, it was like finally becoming the right person. — Meg Rosoff

When I finally got to sleep I found Edmond and told him everything that happened, and he stayed with me for hours and whether I was dreaming or just borderline schizophrenic I didn't know and didn't care either. At — Meg Rosoff

Fate isn't some middle-aged man with a squint who won't recognize you if you change your clothes. — Meg Rosoff

I always think plot is what you fall back on if you can't write, to keep things going. — Meg Rosoff

I am quite a cheerful, dark person. On the outside, I'm optimistic but I expect the worst to happen. — Meg Rosoff