All Jojo Quotes & Sayings

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

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

I heard him and could well imagine what he had been like in those business meetings, the career that had made him rich and arrogant. He was a man who was used to being heard, after all. He couldn't bear it that in some way I had the power to dictate his future, that I had somehow become Mother again. It — Jojo Moyes

I never really cared what anyone thought of me until he came along, " she said. "And now, I can't believe it's me he's chosen. Every morning I wake up and thank God that he did. Every night I go to bed praying that time will go that much faster so that I can be with him again. I think all the time about what he's doing , who he's talking to. Not in a jealous way , or anything. I just want to be closer to him, and if I can imagine what he's doing, then that helps. — Jojo Moyes

In 'Me Before You,' the two characters popped into my head fully formed, which is really strange and unusual. Other books, I sit on them for two or three months. I have a whole routine: I buy a nice book; I hand-write all their characteristics. I put them through little tests just to see how they would react to things. — Jojo Moyes

There's no such thing as a life free of complications, Rory. We all end up making compromises in the end. — Jojo Moyes

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

He had heard religious people talk about having revelatory experiences. Like there was one moment where everything became clear to them and all the crap and ephemera just floated away. It had always seemed pretty unlikely to him. But the Ed Nicholls had one such moment in a log cabin beside a stretch of water that might have been a lake, or might well have been a canal for all he could tell ... And he realized in that moment that he had to make things right. — Jojo Moyes

The city, compelling as it was, felt like a glamorous couture dress I had bought in haste but that didn't quite fit me after all. — 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

My go-to winter recipe is beef and butternut squash stew, cooked in the slow oven all day. — Jojo Moyes

You cut yourself off from all sorts of experiences because you tell yourself you are 'not that sort of person'"
"But, I'm not."
"How do you know? You've done nothing, been nowhere. How do you have the faintest idea what kind of person you are? — Jojo Moyes

And that's something that your generation find it a lot harder to adjust to. You have all grown up expecting things to go your way almost instantaneously. You all expect to live the lives you chose. Especially a successful young man like
yourself. But it takes time. — 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

Divorced? I'm a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don't divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity. — Jojo Moyes

None of us lasts forever, do we? If I'm honest, seeing her like that was an unwelcome reminder of my own mortality. Of what I had been. Of what we all must become. — 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

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

With Will I had never had to consider what I said; talking to him was as effortless as breathing. Now I was good at not really saying anything about myself at all. — Jojo Moyes

Sometimes, she told herself, life was a series of obstacles that just had to be negotiated, possibly through sheer act of will. She stared out at the muddy blue of the endless sea, gulped in the air, lifted her chin, and decided that she could survive this. She could survive most things. It was nobody's right to be happy, after all. — 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

I've been through a lot, both personally and professionally, and the album that I started to record two and a half years ago is a different album from the one that exists today. I even changed the album title. First it was 'All I Want is Everything,' and now it's 'Jumping Trains.' — Jojo

Do I mind? No! Because that's the way he is. He's a human being! Nose hair and all! — Jojo Moyes

If you were mine," Anthony said, "I wouldn't leave you alone for a minute."
"I bet you say that to all the girls."
"Don't," he said. "I hate that."
"Oh you can't pretend you haven't used all your best lines on other women first. I know you, Boot. You told me, remember? — Jojo Moyes

Love is the driver for all great stories: not just romantic love, but the love of parent for child, for family, for country. — 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

She had seeped into his consciousness so thoroughly, absorbing all lucid thought, that not only could he think of nothing else but no longer cared to. — Jojo Moyes

I write in all sorts of places; it's a legacy of my time as a journalist, where I could turn out copy in a hotel corridor. But I have a little office that I rent in my local town, and that's my ideal place. — Jojo Moyes

It's just that the thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man - the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated off-spring - you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one.
I look at him and see the baby I held in my arms, dewing besotted, unable to believe that I'd created another human being. I see the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history. — 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

slept at all. I didn't want to think how it would feel, to lie trapped in a bed you couldn't get out of with only dark thoughts to keep you company through the small hours. — Jojo Moyes

And all she heard was the scream, the screaming that went on and on, the sound of the end of the word, the worst sound you ever heard, and she realized it was her it was her it was the sound of her own voice. — Jojo Moyes

You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they're not living, breathing people any more.
It's not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you, and makes you want to cry in the wrong places, and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead.
It's just something you learn to accommodate.
Like adapting around a hole. I don't know. It's like you become ... a doughnut instead of a bun — Jojo Moyes

All that counts is the truth. Without it you're basically just juggling people's daft ideas. — Jojo Moyes

Don't you think it's actually harder for you . . . to adapt, I mean? Because you've done all that stuff?'
'Are you asking me if I wish I'd never done it?'
'I'm just wondering if it would have been easier for you. If you'd led a smaller life. To live like this, I mean.'
'I will never, ever regret the things I've done. Because most days, if you're stuck in one of these, all you have are the places n your memory that you can go to.' He smiled. It was tight, as if it cost him. 'So if you're asking me would I rather be reminiscing about the view of the caste from the minimart, or that lovely row of shops down off the roundabout, then, no. My life was just fine, thanks. — Jojo Moyes

And all babies were God's blessing, even those who said bugger quite a lot, and whose presence meant that half the potential wage earners in our family couldn't actually go and get a decent job. — Jojo Moyes

It's easy to fall into a funk and not want to exercise, or to really want that second piece of chocolate cake. I have to say, I fight against those feelings all year. But I try not to let myself sit in a rut like that. — Jojo

We all make mistakes. Go and take your punishment, then come back and start again. — Jojo Moyes

block three times in search of a suitable parking space. We got there, and almost before I had closed the door behind him he said all the work was terrible. I — 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

You're the most terrible snob, Clark." "What? Me?" "You cut yourself off from all sorts of experiences because you tell yourself you are 'not that sort of person.'" "But I'm not." "How do you know? You've done nothing, been nowhere. How do you have the faintest idea what kind of person you are?" How — Jojo Moyes

Sometimes i still think about when we used to fight and I feel really bad because if I'd known what was going to happen to her, I would have tried to be nice to her every day. I say 'try' because it's quite hard to be nice to someone every day. Even my mum gets on my nerves sometimes but I'm always nice to her because I know she's still sad, and because I'm all she has left. — Jojo Moyes

Computers, and what I had done for Will. But I thought this should probably be her moment. We sat on the foldaway chairs, under the tattered sunshade, and sipped at our mugs of tea. Her fingers, I noticed, were all the right colors. "She misses you," I said. "We'll be back most weekends from now on. I just needed ... Lou, it wasn't just about settling Thomas in. I just needed a bit of time to be away from it all. I just wanted time to be a different person." She looked a bit like a different person. It was weird. Just a few weeks away from home could rub the familiarity right off someone. I felt like she was on the path to being someone I wasn't quite sure of. I felt, weirdly, as if I were being left behind. "Mum told me your disabled bloke came to — Jojo Moyes

I looked at Will and I saw the baby I held in my arms, dewily besotted, unable to believe that I had created another human being. I saw the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history. That's what he was asking me to extinguish - the small child as well as the man - all that love, all that history. — Jojo Moyes

The only people who still have all the answers are those who have never been faced with the questions. — Jojo Moyes

He grimaced. 'Jesus, for a girl who made tea for a living you make a terrible cup.'

'You're just used to lesbian tea,' I said. 'All that lapsang souchong herbal stuff.'

'Lesbian tea!' He almost choked. 'Well, it's better than this stair varnish. Christ. You could stand a spoon up in that. — Jojo Moyes

Before I met your father I thought that love and peace would change the whole world, but looking into your eyes, I knew all I had to do was let you be whoever it was that you wanted to be, and to love you, and that would be the best and closest thing I could ever do to change the world for the better.
"You are going to be brilliant," I told you. "You are going to be clever, and funny. Brave and strong. You're going to be a feminist, and a peace campaigner and a dancer. And one day you are going to be a mother yourself. You are going to fall in love and have adventures and do things I can't even imagine. You, little Claire Armstrong, you are going to be the most wonderful woman, and you are going to have the most amazing life: a life that no one will ever forget. — 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

But surely if you loved someone it was your job to stick with him? To help him through the depression? In sickness and in health, and all that? — Jojo Moyes

Now ring that bloke of yours to tell him you're staying out all night, then have another drink. In fact, have six. It would please me no end to see you get hammered on Alicia's father's bill. And so I did. — Jojo Moyes

When you put someone down all the time, eventually they stop listening to the sensible stuff. — Jojo Moyes

Sometimes I look at the lives of the people around me and I wonder if we aren't all destined to leave a trail of damage. — Jojo Moyes

I watched relationships begin and end across those tables, children transferred between divorcees, the guilty relief of those parents who couldn't face cooking, and the secret pleasure of pensioners at a fried breakfast. All human life came through, and most of them shared a few words with me, trading jokes or comments over the mugs of steaming tea — Jojo Moyes

Astonishingly, not all girls get dressed just to please men. — Jojo Moyes

I don't know what I think. All I know is that most of the time, I would rather be with him that anyone else I know. — Jojo Moyes

She was always tired, these days. She put on one of those smiles that wasn't really a smile at all, and they went on. — Jojo Moyes

How do we figure out when to call, when to text, and when to just drop everything, stand outside someone's window, and serenade them with your favorite nineties R&B tune, perhaps "All My Life" by K-Ci & JoJo? — Aziz Ansari

What love is depends on where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air - you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all consuming - a physical pain. — 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

So this is it. You are scored on my heart, Clark. You were from the first day you walked in, with your ridiculous clothes and your bad jokes and your complete inability to ever hide a single thing you felt. You changed my life so much more than this money will ever change yours.
Don't think of me too often. I don't want to think of you getting all maudlin. Just live well.
Just live.
Love,
Will — 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

All I felt when I saw Vanessa was this weird sensation I used to get when I was a kid, like when you're at a friend's house and your mum comes to get you before you're ready. — Jojo Moyes

Um ... I'm not afraid of hard work. I'm good at dealing with all sorts of people and ... and I make a mean cup of tea." I began to blather into the silence. The thought of it being her son had thrown me. "I mean, my dad seems to think that's not the greatest reference. But in my experience there's not much that can't be fixed by a decent cup of tea ... " There — 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

I felt the mood shift. And, for no reason at all other than that he didn't expect it, I climbed fully clothed into the bath and kissed him as he laughed and spluttered. I was suddenly glad of his solidity in a world where it was so easy to fall. — Jojo Moyes

I was good at keeping secrets from my parents (it's one of the things we learn while growing up, after all). — Jojo Moyes

All the stuff that was important or interesting about me was what I couldn't share. — Jojo Moyes

We are all part of some great cycle, some pattern that it was only God's purpose to understand. — Jojo Moyes

All babies look like currant buns to me. — 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

she knew that something happened to you when your mother didn't hold you close, or tell you all the time that you were the best thing ever, or even notice when you were home: a little part of you sealed over. — 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 often ordered chips, just so that I could watch them all pretend they didn't want one. — Jojo Moyes

I will never, ever regret the things I've done. Because most days, all you have are places in your memory that you can go to. — Jojo Moyes

Because there would be lonely days. And bad days. And days when I wondered what the hell I had just agreed to be part of. Because that was all part of the adventure too. — Jojo Moyes

Page 117 Sam says "You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they're not living, breathing people anymore. It's not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you and makes you want to cry in the wrong places and irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It's just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don't know. It's like you become ... a doughnut instead of a bun." page 117 — Jojo Moyes

Over the past couple of months, Chantel had become a pro at leading book discussions and inventing fun games and trivia questions that all related to that particular month's book selection. Although, last month's theme, dystopian and the book selection "Matched" by Allie Condie, had the retirement home director a little concerned when everyone wanted to stop taking their medications. Not... a good... thing! — JoJo Sutis

Nobody ever says "sweet girl" about someone they were in love with. It's like the whole "we'll still be friends" thing. It means you didn't feel enough.'
He was briefly amused. 'So what would I have said if I had been in love with her?'
'You would have looked very serious, and said, "Karen. Complete nightmare," or shut down and gone all "I don't want to talk about it. — Jojo Moyes

I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history. That's what he was asking me to extinguish - the small child as well as the man - all that love, all that history. And — Jojo Moyes

I tell him I don't see it that way. Look out at the sea for long enough, at its moods and frenzies, at its beauties and terrors, and you'll have all the stories you need - of love and danger, and about what life lands in your nets. And the fact that sometimes it's not your hand on the tiller, and you can do no more than trust that it'll all work out okay. — 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

Don't think of me too often. I don't want to think of you getting all maudlin. Just live well. Just live. — Jojo Moyes

The men were less interesting to look at, but nearly all had that air about them that I could sometimes detect in Will
of wealth and entitlement, a sense that life would settle itself agreeably around them. — Jojo Moyes

Because she knew that something happened to you when your mother didn't hold you close, or tell you all the time that you were the best thing ever, or even notice when you were home: a little part of you sealed over. You didn't need her. You didn't need anyone. And without even knowing you were doing it, you waited. You waited for anyone who got close to you to see something they didn't like in you, something they hadn't initially seen, and to grow cold and disappear, too, like so much sea mist. Because there had to be something wrong, didn't there, if even your own mother didn't really love you? — Jojo Moyes

That's fine," he said. "Now ring that bloke of yours to tell him you're staying out all night, then have another drink. In fact, have six. It would please me no end to see you get hammered on Alicia's father's bill. — Jojo Moyes

When they told me in the hospital that Will would live, I walked outside into my garden and I raged. I raged at God, at nature, at whatever fate had brought our family to such depths. 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. — Jojo Moyes

I turned in my seat. Will's face was in shadow and I couldn't quite make it out.
'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 could see his pale collar, his dark suit jacket a contrast against it.
'I don't want to go in just yet. I just want to sit and not have to think about . . . ' He swallowed.
Even in the half-dark it seemed effortful.
'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.'
I released the door handle.
'Sure.'
I closed my eyes and lay my head against the headrest, and we sat there together for a while longer, two people lost in remembered music, half hidden in the shadow of a castle on a moonlit hill. — Jojo Moyes

When they smile in your face, but behind you, it ain't well wishes
When they eatin' all the food off your plate and they don't do dishes
When they words and they actions blur and they don't know different
No time for these FABs. — Jojo

If someone wanted to be with you, after all, they just made it happen. — 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

The sooner you get another job, babe, the better.'

'It's all of twenty-four hours since I lost the last one. Am I allowed to just be a bit miserable and floppy? You know, just for today?'

'But you've got to look at the positive side. You knew you couldn't stay at that place forever. You want to move upwards, onwards. — Jojo Moyes

I was gazing underwater at the brightly colored landscape that had been hidden from view, forgetting to be afraid that my equipment might fail, that against all evidence I would sink to the bottom and die a watery death, even that I was afraid at all. — Jojo Moyes

I know this isn't a conventional love story. I know there are all sorts of reasons I shouldn't even be saying what I am. But I love you. I do. I knew it when I left Patrick. And I think you might even love me a little bit. — Jojo Moyes

Nathan stared at the floor. "Honestly? He's a C5-6 quadriplegic. That means nothing works below about here ... " He placed a hand on the upper part of his chest. "They haven't worked out how to fix a spinal cord yet." I stared at the door, thinking about Will's face as we drove along in the winter sunshine, the beaming face of the man on the skiing holiday. "There are all sorts of medical advances taking place, though, right? I mean ... somewhere like this ... they must be working on stuff all the time. — Jojo Moyes

All Chelsea's internet dates were gorgeous. Until she met them. — Jojo Moyes

It is not the grown man- the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated offspring- you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one. — Jojo Moyes

Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning. — Jojo Moyes

Somehow it was harder to show all that emotional stuff to someone you knew. — Jojo Moyes