Top 400 Jojo Moyes Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “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

202. “Who wouldn’t say yes to a handsome, square-jawed man, who looked at her as if she were made of spun silk? Everyone else had spent the past months looking at her as if she were contaminated.”

— Jojo Moyes

203. “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

204. “As logic went, it was pretty impressive. I could tell because Mum’s mouth was working like someone feeling a loose tooth, but she couldn’t come up with any reason why Lily was wrong.”

— Jojo Moyes

205. “Hey, Lou!” she yelled. “I meant to say to you. Moving on doesn’t mean you loved my dad any less, you know. I’m pretty sure even he would tell you that.”

— Jojo Moyes

206. “Every time you get a chance to move forward, you just hijack your own future. it’s like – you don’t actually want to... You’re in control of your own life. And yet you act like you’re permanently buffeted by events outside your control.”

— Jojo Moyes

207. “In his hours alone, his mind wandered to a million possible outcomes, and he marveled at how long it had been since he had felt so preoccupied by a woman. It was because she was that rare thing, genuinely unobtainable. He should have given up days ago.”

— Jojo Moyes

208. “I’m giving you this because there is not much that makes me happy any more, but you do.”

— Jojo Moyes

209. “You and I could no more not love each other than the earth could stop circling the sun.”

— Jojo Moyes

210. “Teenagers are basically toddlers with hormones – old enough to want to do stuff without having any of the common sense.”

— Jojo Moyes

211. “She believed me fearless. But nothing frightened me as much as my sister’s fears.”

— Jojo Moyes

212. “Do you know how stifling it is to be told you are never going to be able to change? For the rest of your life? Because nobody else wants you to? Do you know how awful it is to feel stuck?”

— Jojo Moyes

213. “I saw that pretty much everyone bore the brutal imprint of love, whether it was lost, whipped away from them, or simply vanished into a grave.”

— Jojo Moyes

214. “The conductor stepped up, tapped twice on the rostrum, and a great hush descended. I felt the stillness, the auditorium alive, expectant. Then he brought down his baton and suddenly everything was pure sound. I felt the music like a physical thing; it didn’t just sit in my ears, it flowed through me, around me, made my senses vibrate. It made my skin prickle and my palms dampen. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.”

— Jojo Moyes

215. “Running had been my ex Patrick’s thing. It was like kale – one of those things you know exists and is possibly good for you but, frankly, life is always going to be too short to get stuck in.”

— Jojo Moyes

216. “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

217. “And because, most crazy of all, all that kindness, all that magnificence, was sitting there just because of his words.”

— Jojo Moyes

218. “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

219. “Do I mind? No! Because that’s the way he is. He’s a human being! Nose hair and all!”

— Jojo Moyes

220. “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

221. “She couldn’t believe losing someone you had known such a short time could feel like losing part of yourself, that it could make food taste wrong and colors seem dull.”

— Jojo Moyes

222. “He smiled, the kind of smile that denotes private happiness, the kind where you have nothing to prove.”

— Jojo Moyes

223. “The Kommandant thought about this, as if my answer had satisfied him. “I once wanted to be a painter. I was no good, of course. I had to confront the truth of the matter very early on.” He fingered the stem of his glass. “I often think that the ability to earn a living by doing the thing one loves must be one of life’s greatest gifts.”

— Jojo Moyes

224. “Very few troubles in life couldn’t be lessened by a nice smile – that was what her mother always said.”

— Jojo Moyes

225. “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

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

— Jojo Moyes

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

— Jojo Moyes

228. “I’m not saying she wasn’t wrong to do it. I’m just saying maybe that one moment shouldn’t be the whole thing that defines her. Or your relationship with her.”

— Jojo Moyes

229. “She was beautiful. As always she looked like she’d meant to head for somewhere else but at the last minute she’d decided to stop by you, as a favor, you understand.”

— Jojo Moyes

230. “Her life these days held a constant underlying drumbeat of worry.”

— Jojo Moyes

231. “With that kiss, I tried to tell him the enormity of what he meant to me. I tried to show him that he was the answer to a question I hadn’t even known I had been asking. I tried to thank him for wanting me to be me, more than he wanted to make me stay.”

— Jojo Moyes

232. “On evenings like this, when the streets below were filled with couples strolling, and laughing people spilled out of pubs, already planning meals, nights out, trips to clubs, something ached inside me, something primal telling me that I was in the wrong place, that I was missing something. These were the moments when I felt most left behind.”

— Jojo Moyes

233. “I rang my parents and told them that I would stay over. My mother sounded relieved. When I told her I was going to get paid for sleeping over, she sounded overjoyed. “Did you hear that, Bernard?” she said, her hand half over the phone. “They’re paying her to sleep now.” I could hear my father’s exclamation. “Praise the Lord. She’s found her dream career.”

— Jojo Moyes

234. “I wanted to live as Edouard did, joyfully, sucking the marrow out of every moment and singing because it tasted so good.”

— Jojo Moyes

235. “I don’t want my happiness to be entirely dependent on somebody else’s, to be a hostage to fortunes I cannot control.”

— Jojo Moyes

236. “And finally, my head pressed into the pillow, I cried, because my life suddenly seemed so much darker and more complicated than I could ever have imagined, and I wished I could go back...”

— Jojo Moyes

237. “I could only have done the thing that I did, but also that this will help you live a really good life, a better life, than if you hadn’t met me.”

— Jojo Moyes

238. “Please. Come on. Right here, on the bed. Right next to me.”

— Jojo Moyes

239. “It was as if a light had gone on: the only way to avoid being left behind was to start moving.”

— Jojo Moyes

240. “It was a terrible thing to discover you no longer wanted the life that stretched out ahead of you.”

— Jojo Moyes

241. “Books are what teach you about life. Books teach you empathy.”

— Jojo Moyes

242. “Around me a million people are living, breathing, eating, arguing. A million lives completely divorced from mine. It is a strange sort of peace.”

— Jojo Moyes

243. “Convinced that if she wished hard enough, good things would finally happen.”

— Jojo Moyes

244. “And yet. To commit to Sam was to commit to the likelihood of more loss.”

— Jojo Moyes

245. “Agnes’s expression was briefly wistful. Then she shrugged. “But on the bright side, they are quite old. Maybe some of them will die soon.”

— Jojo Moyes

246. “And when it came down to it, what was the point in re-examining your sadness all the time anyway?”

— Jojo Moyes

247. “We all make mistakes. Go and take your punishment, then come back and start again. Do even better next time. I know you can.”

— Jojo Moyes

248. “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

249. “We were enjoying one of those rare summers of utter freedom – no financial responsibility, no debts, no time owing to anybody.”

— Jojo Moyes

250. “But then I knew better than anyone how the persona you chose to present to the world could be very different from what was really inside. I knew how grief could make you behave in ways you couldn’t even begin to understand.”

— Jojo Moyes