Top 400 Jojo Moyes Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “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

152. “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

153. “Without someone to talk to, every sight I saw – whether it was the Trevi Fountain or a canal in Amsterdam – felt simply like a name on a list that I needed to check off.”

— Jojo Moyes

154. “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

155. “We had not mentioned love, but my every nerve ending throbbed with it, and I carried it in a cloud around me, like sea mist.”

— Jojo Moyes

156. “No journey out of grief was straightforward. There would be good days and bad days.”

— Jojo Moyes

157. “I hope the coffee is good and strong and the croissants fresh and that the weather is still sunny.”

— Jojo Moyes

158. “I’m not letting go of you.”

— Jojo Moyes

159. “Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.”

— Jojo Moyes

160. “There’s no such thing as a life free of complications, Rory. We all end up making compromises in the end.”

— Jojo Moyes

161. “Sometimes for our sanity own sanity we just have to look at the bigger picture.”

— Jojo Moyes

162. “No, it was the livid red lines scoring Will’s wrists, the long, jagged scars that couldn’t be disguised, no matter how swiftly Nathan pulled down Will’s sleeves.”

— Jojo Moyes

163. “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 doesn’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 shut you up with a fist. Just like that.” She mulled over it for a Monet, then straightened up, and flashed Alice a tight smile. “Course, you know that only happens till you learn to hit back harder.”

— Jojo Moyes

164. “Sometimes it took only a few words of faith to reilluminate a spark of confidence that the future could be something wonderful, instead of a relentless series of obstacles and disappointments.”

— Jojo Moyes

165. “Best before: 19 March 2007.”

— Jojo Moyes

166. “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

167. “You’re having another unnervingly quiet day. What happened to ‘chatty to the point of vaguely irritating’?”

— Jojo Moyes

168. “So once upon a time Ed met a girl who was the most optimistic person he had even know. A girl who wore flip-flops in the hope of spring. She seemed to bounce through life like Tigger; the things that would have felled most people didn’t seem to touch her. Or if she did fall, she bounced right back. She fell again, plastered on a smile, dusted herself off, and kept going. He never could work out whether it was the single most heroic thing or the most idiotic thing he’d ever seen.”

— Jojo Moyes

169. “As if something’s missing. I feel as if there’s some puzzle to which I don’t hold all the pieces. Does that sound terribly silly?”

— Jojo Moyes

170. “I like the breath of foreign air, the close-up glimpses of lives far removed from my own. I liked to hear the accents and work out where their owners came from, to study the clothes of people who have never seen a Next catalog or bought a five-pack of knickers at Marks and Spencer.”

— Jojo Moyes

171. “I tuned out, and watched the other people in the pub, wondering about their lives. Each of them would have huge events in their own families – babies loved and lost, dark secrets, great joys and tragedies. If they could put it into perspective, if they could just enjoy a sunny evening in a pub garden, then surely I should too. And.”

— Jojo Moyes

172. “Women always have to make the difficult choices.”

— Jojo Moyes

173. “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

174. “MOVING ON means we have to protect ourseves.”

— Jojo Moyes

175. “I thought of Patrick and the multitude of certificates on the wall of his apartment, and wondered at the male need to display achievements, like a peacock permanently shimmering his tail.”

— Jojo Moyes

176. “Life is short, right? We both know that. Well, what if you’re my chance?”

— Jojo Moyes

177. “She didn’t want to end up like some girls from her school, exhausted and pushing prams in their mid-twenties, financially dependent on husbands they seemed to despise.”

— Jojo Moyes

178. “There is a great consolation in simply doing something you love.”

— Jojo Moyes

179. “Perhaps we all harbor a perverse need to get close to things that might destroy us.”

— Jojo Moyes

180. “Doesn’t matter how smart you are, how clever, how self-reliant – you can always be bettered by a stupid man with a gun. The.”

— Jojo Moyes

181. “Marveling at the 180 degree swings of life in general.”

— Jojo Moyes

182. “Time flew. And each ended the night full and happy with the rare glow that comes from knowing your very being has been understood by somebody else. And that there might just be someone out there, who will only ever see the best in you.”

— Jojo Moyes

183. “When you work hard to get somewhere, it’s quite nice to show people where you belong.”

— Jojo Moyes

184. “Who was it who had said you were only as happy as your unhappiest child?”

— Jojo Moyes

185. “Louisa Clark had become, although neither of us said it, our only chance of keeping him alive.”

— Jojo Moyes

186. “And there is the bare truth of it, for her and all the women around here. Doesn’t matter how smart you are, how clever, how self-reliant – you can always be bettered by a stupid man with a gun.”

— Jojo Moyes

187. “Its not a matter of giving you a chance. I’ve watched you these six months becoming a whole different person, someone who is only just beginning to see her possibilities. You have no idea how happy that has made me. I don’t want you to be tied to me, to my hospital appointments, to the restrictions on my life. I don’t want you to miss out on the things someone else could give you.”

— Jojo Moyes

188. “Every act has a consequence. In my view the world divides into people who can see that, and make a decision accordingly, and those who just go for what feels good at the time.”

— Jojo Moyes

189. “This is the story of a family who didn’t fit in. A little girl who was a bit geeky and liked maths more than makeup. And a boy who liked makeup and didn’t fit into any tribes.”

— Jojo Moyes

190. “To be the recipient of such hate, without the prospect of a word of comfort from those who loved you. The way Margery had isolated herself made Alice want to weep. It was like an animal that deliberately takes itself off somewhere solitary before it dies.”

— Jojo Moyes

191. “Everyone should drink champagne on their birthday.”

— Jojo Moyes

192. “But if we don’t have faith that he can feel better, even get better, then how is he supposed to keep the faith that good things might happen?” Nathan.”

— Jojo Moyes

193. “The most enjoyable element of Kentucky society, she observed, was the endless stories: the misfortunes of families, gossip about neighbors – every anecdote served up beautifully formed and with a punch-line that would leave the table rocking with laughter. If there was more than one raconteur at the table it would swiftly become a competitive sport.”

— Jojo Moyes

194. “There is nothing more disconcerting to passers-by than to see a man in a wheelchair pleading with a woman who is meant to be looking after him. It’s apparently not really the done thing to be angry with your disabled charge. Especially.”

— Jojo Moyes

195. “I believe that when two people are in love, the way that we are in love, the love lasts, whatever else happens.”

— Jojo Moyes

196. “She is one of those people who are completely calm and competent, and as a result no one ever messes with her.”

— Jojo Moyes

197. “Their eyes met, and in those few silent moments, he told her everything. He told her that she was the most astonishing thing he had ever encountered. He told her that she haunted his waking hours, and that every feeling, every experience he had in his life up to that point was flat and unimportant to the enormity of this. He told her he loved her.”

— Jojo Moyes

198. “He talked to her in the way that people tell lifelong secrets to fellow passengers in railway carriages: an unburdened intimacy, resting on the unspoken understanding that they were unlikely to meet again.”

— Jojo Moyes

199. “I felt something rise inside me then, a feeling of joy and anticipation so great that it seemed as if this world had briefly stopped turning, like there was just me and the universe and a million good things that could happen if you only hung on in there.”

— Jojo Moyes

200. “Do you know how hard it is to say nothing? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite?”

— Jojo Moyes