Top 400 Jojo Moyes Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Did I imagine it all? Sometimes I think I’ve made what happened between Will and me so much bigger in my head. Like how can I have loved someone that much in such a short time? And all these things I think about the two of us – did we actually feel what I remember? The further we get from it, the more those six months just seem like this weird... dream.”

— Jojo Moyes

102. “The key was making sure that anyone you allowed to walk beside you didn’t get to decide which you were, and pin you down like a butterfly in a case. The key was to know that you could always somehow find a way to reinvent yourself again.”

— Jojo Moyes

103. “Sometimes when you get hammered till the small hours you feel pretty good in the morning, but really it’s just because you’re still a bit drunk. That old hangover is just toying with you, working out when to bite.”

— Jojo Moyes

104. “You and I. We are both immigrants. We both know it is hard to find your place in this world. You want to make your life better, work hard in country that is not your own – you make new life, new friends, find new love. You get to become new person! But is never a simple thing, never without cost.”

— Jojo Moyes

105. “Look outwards, Alice. Not much point worrying what the town thinks about you – nothing you can do about that anyway. But when you look outwards, why, there’s a whole world of beautiful things.”

— Jojo Moyes

106. “I ask you not to judge me for my weakness. The only way I can endure is to be in a place where I will never see you, never be haunted by the possibility of seeing you with him. I need to be somewhere where sheer necessity forces you from my thoughts minute by minute, hour by hour, I cannot do that here.”

— Jojo Moyes

107. “Captain,” she said, “the only people who still have all the answers are those who have never been faced with the questions.”

— Jojo Moyes

108. “He smelt of the sun, as if it had seeped deep into his skin, and I found myself inhaling silently, as if he were something delicious.”

— Jojo Moyes

109. “The only way to avoid being left behind was to start moving.”

— Jojo Moyes

110. “Apart from an exotic taste in clothes, and the fact that I’m a bit short, there’s not a lot separating me from anyone you might pass in the street. You probably wouldn’t look at me twice. An ordinary girl, leading an ordinary life. It actually suited me fine.”

— Jojo Moyes

111. “It is important not to turn the dead into saints. Nobody can walk in the shadow of a saint.”

— Jojo Moyes

112. “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

113. “You know the worst thing about a man hitting you?” Margery said finally. “Ain’t the hurt. It’s that in that instant you realize the truth of what it is to be a woman. That it don’t matter how smart you are, how much better at arguing, how much better than them, period. It’s when you realize they can always just shut you up with a fist. Just like that.”

— Jojo Moyes

114. “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

115. “I realized pretty quickly I couldn’t marry a man without a bookshelf.”

— Jojo Moyes

116. “How is it possible to exist with so much pain?”

— Jojo Moyes

117. “I felt everything more intensely, saw everything as if a filter had been removed.”

— Jojo Moyes

118. “I keep reading your looping, cursive script, until the words are indelible inside me: “I never knew real happiness until you.”

— Jojo Moyes

119. “It is the death of hope that comes as the greatest relief.”

— Jojo Moyes

120. “Knowledge is power, Clark.”

— Jojo Moyes

121. “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. Some deep-rooted part of you would know you were loved. That you deserved to be loved.”

— Jojo Moyes

122. “I thought about how you’re shaped so much by the people who surround you, and how careful you have to be in choosing them for this exact reason, and then I thought, despite all that, in the end maybe you have to lose them all in order to truly find yourself.”

— Jojo Moyes

123. “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

124. “The morning sagged and decided to last for several years.”

— Jojo Moyes

125. “All this nonsense about women having it all. We never could and we never shall. Women always have to make the difficult choices. But there is a great consolation in simply doing something you love.”

— Jojo Moyes

126. “I remember staring up at the stars, feeling myself disappear into their infinite depths as the ground gently swayed and lurched around me like the deck of a huge ship.”

— Jojo Moyes

127. “Too many people follow their own happiness without a thought for the damage they leave in their wake.”

— Jojo Moyes

128. “So this is it. You are scored on my heart, Clark. You were from the first day you walked in.“- Will Traynor.”

— Jojo Moyes

129. “I’m still a doughnut, okay?” I said. “I want to be a bun. I really do. But I’m still a doughnut.”

— Jojo Moyes

130. “Vicariously,’” she said slowly. “You’ll have to tell me what that means, Anthony.” The way she said his name induced a kind of intimacy. It promised something, a repetition in some future time. “It means” – Anthony’s mouth had dried – “it means pleasure gained through the pleasure of someone else.”

— Jojo Moyes

131. “Castles trump feminism every time.”

— Jojo Moyes

132. “I felt a sudden wave of sympathy for her. It couldn’t be easy being my mother.”

— Jojo Moyes

133. “Stolen from someone. Like they stole everything. Occupied. I was occupied. I disappeared.”

— Jojo Moyes

134. “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

135. “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

136. “Just for carrying on, really. Sometimes, my darling girl, that’s heroic in itself.”

— Jojo Moyes

137. “Just a little homesick, Alice answered. It was the truth, she thought. She just wasn’t sure she had yet been to the place she was homesick for.”

— Jojo Moyes

138. “I had a choice. I was Louisa Clark from New York or Louisa Clark from Stortfold. Or there might be a whole other Louisa I hadn’t yet met. The key was making sure that anyone you allowed to walk beside you didn’t get to decide which you were, and pin you down like a butterfly in a case. The key was to know that you could always somehow find a way to reinvent yourself again.”

— Jojo Moyes

139. “Had a million things to say and none I knew how. I stepped forward and kissed him, like people kiss at airports, full of love and desperate longing, kisses that must imprint themselves on their recipient for the journey, for the weeks, the months ahead.”

— Jojo Moyes

140. “Somehow it was harder to show all that emotional stuff to someone you knew.”

— Jojo Moyes

141. “She just wasn’t sure she had yet been to the place she was homesick for.”

— Jojo Moyes

142. “I know this – nobody gets everything. And we immigrants know this more than anyone. You always have one foot in two places. You can never be truly happy because, from the moment you leave, you are two selves, and wherever you are one half of you is always calling to the other. This is our price, Louisa. This is the cost of who we are.”

— Jojo Moyes

143. “The morning sagged and decided to last for several years. I couldn’t remember the last time minutes and hours stretched so interminably.”

— Jojo Moyes

144. “I think about your sister a lot. I think about Will too. When people we love die young it’s a nudge, reminding us that we shouldn’t take any of it for granted, that we have a duty to make the most of what we have. I feel like I finally get that.”

— Jojo Moyes

145. “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

146. “We all make mistakes. Go and take your punishment, then come back and start again.”

— Jojo Moyes

147. “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

148. “I was twenty-six years old and I wasn’t really sure about what I was. You probably wouldn’t look at me twice. An ordinary girl, leading an ordinary life. It actually suited me fine.”

— Jojo Moyes

149. “I always think this is the kind of place that people come back to. When they’ve become tired of everything else. Or when they don’t have enough imagination to go anywhere else.”

— Jojo Moyes

150. “I think she loves me. But she loves herself more. Or how could she do what she does?”

— Jojo Moyes