Top 280 Maureen Johnson Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “How are you so smart?” Stevie asked. “I read a lot,” Janelle said, smiling. She unzipped the front of her bag, shoved her pass inside and secured the lanyard to a clip, and zipped the bag back up again. Janelle did everything completely, even putting her pass away. “And I’m just amazing.”

— Maureen Johnson

152. “Never question the girl who works in the library” -Eric.”

— Maureen Johnson

153. “But when we live, we believe that we have a right to everything in the universe – that everything is ours to touch.”

— Maureen Johnson

154. “Stevie said stuff like that all the time and was told she was wrong. David said it once and he got a nod and a compliment. Oh, the magic of dudes. If only they bottled it.”

— Maureen Johnson

155. “Kaz was always enthusiastic. His special interest was the environment, and he spent a lot of time getting Ellingham to convert to composting toilets. Kaz cared a lot about composting toilets.”

— Maureen Johnson

156. “What tinfoil?” he asked.”

— Maureen Johnson

157. “Before I take you into the beating heart of the story, let’s get one thing out of the way. I know from experience that when it comes up later, it will distract you so much that you won’t be able to concentrate on anything else I will tell you. My name is Jubilee Dougal. Take a moment and let it sink in.”

— Maureen Johnson

158. “We study there a lot because... what other choice does society give us, right? It’s Starbucks or death, sometimes.”

— Maureen Johnson

159. “Why was she so anxious? Because she had anxiety.”

— Maureen Johnson

160. “A pause while my mother made high-pitched sisterly devotions of gratitude.”

— Maureen Johnson

161. “It makes you very cool,” he said, taking big, jumping steps to get in front of me. “CNN would interview you, for sure. Daughter of Flobie! But don’t worry. I’ll keep them back!”

— Maureen Johnson

162. “You’ve never told me about your love life, Scarlett. You’re a very pretty girl. You must have a boy shacked up somewhere for your personal delights. I’d bet it’s a booky one, overtones of Harry Potter and a lot of black T-shirts.”

— Maureen Johnson

163. “No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong.”

— Maureen Johnson

164. “Ellie’s mind was an active and colorful place and she decorated her world with its contents.”

— Maureen Johnson

165. “There is a mistaken notion that wealth makes people content. It does the opposite, generally. It stirs a hunger in many – and no matter what they eat, they will never be full.”

— Maureen Johnson

166. “No, hear me out. This whole thing is ticking a lot of the horror movie boxes. Murder at a sleepaway camp. A serial killer. A final girl. A kid who died because some teenagers were being irresponsible.”

— Maureen Johnson

167. “When she opened the window, a giant moth blew in. It beat a hasty path to the ceiling light and landed against it with a thunk. “I know the feeling,” Stevie said to it.”

— Maureen Johnson

168. “Even if you knew your routine like the back of your hand, a checklist was still important.”

— Maureen Johnson

169. “I’ve got a murder mansion, a house full of suspects, a pile of evidence, and nothing.”

— Maureen Johnson

170. “Fine,” he said. “Anything is better than what I’m supposed to be doing.”

— Maureen Johnson

171. “If Gertie van Coevorden had two brain cells, each would be amazed to know of the other’s existence.”

— Maureen Johnson

172. “That’s the thing about speaking – you can talk and talk and have no idea at all what the words leaving your mouth mean, or where they came from.”

— Maureen Johnson

173. “No shoe should be judged by its footprint, for the foot has a print of its own.”

— Maureen Johnson

174. “One of the first questions I get about the skeleton is... is it real? Usually they’re plastic, but this one is the real deal. It was a private donation to the academy, and every year, someone attempts to steal it. It is alarmed. Don’t steal the skeleton. His name is Mr. Nelson. Be nice to Mr. Nelson. – Pix.”

— Maureen Johnson

175. “In Vermont, there is maple syrup in it – it doesn’t matter what it is. Cake. Ice cream. Coffee. Soup. Mustard. Concrete.”

— Maureen Johnson

176. “It’s been a long week,” Nate said. “Don’t leave again. Don’t leave me with these people.” “Which people?” “Any people.” “I don’t count as people?” “Of course not,” he said. “It’s been all feelings and love. I want to go back to numbness and avoidance. You’re great at that stuff.”

— Maureen Johnson

177. “Nate was a rain cloud, but he was her friendly rain cloud, and the world needs some rain.”

— Maureen Johnson

178. “She wasn’t as bad as Todd, as good as Sabrina, or the well-meaning drug dealer who almost made it to safety. She was simply there, the girlfriend, the fourth victim.”

— Maureen Johnson

179. “No one fixes the world alone.”

— Maureen Johnson

180. “But there was some life in the thing.”

— Maureen Johnson

181. “You can only spend so long in a bathroom without arousing suspicion. Over a half an hour, and people are staring at the door, wondering about you.”

— Maureen Johnson

182. “Told me not to sell my self short.”

— Maureen Johnson

183. “We’re good at lying,” Sebastian said, leaning over and managing a smile. “We’ve been doing it for years.”

— Maureen Johnson

184. “Paris seemed to make good on the promise it made in every photograph of it she’d ever seen.”

— Maureen Johnson

185. “Hate it when I wake up to find that people have been creeping around me and have seen me asleep. Unfortunately, it happens to me a lot. I can sleep like a champion.”

— Maureen Johnson

186. “There was the thing about romantic feelings- the sensation was incredible, like a warm flood through every highway and byway of her body. Every good chemical she could produce turned up, like some bountiful harvest. But the feelings and chemicals blocked out everything else. They dulled logic and sense and focus. They made everything else seem irrelevant and time started to move jerkily too fast, then too slow.”

— Maureen Johnson

187. “His face shining with the kind of radiance usually associated with religious epiphany.”

— Maureen Johnson

188. “I just think you get me,” she said. “I do,” he said, shrugging. “We have a limited emotional vocabulary. We’re indoor kids.”

— Maureen Johnson

189. “Personality-wise. Is he secretly a poet or something? Does he dance around his room when he thinks no one is looking? Is he funny, like you? What’s his essence?”

— Maureen Johnson

190. “English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork. It dampens already damn days and slicks the stones.”

— Maureen Johnson

191. “Gators are just something you have to accept where I come from. Most don’t go anywhere near the houses, even though there are lots of delicious children and dogs there. Every once in a while, though, an alligator has a lightbulb moment and decides to take a stroll and see the world a bit.”

— Maureen Johnson

192. “She’s like the Hulk,” Nate explained. “But instead of transforming when she gets mad, it’s when she sees crafts. And she doesn’t turn big and green. She just makes crafts. So not like the Hulk, really.”

— Maureen Johnson

193. “It is so cold. So cold that the Department of Temperature Acknowledgment and Regulation in your brain gets the readings and says, “I can’t deal with this. I’m out of here.”

— Maureen Johnson

194. “The words seemed to come from a place deep inside me, far beyond the place where I stored them, past the ideas.”

— Maureen Johnson

195. “The idea that Izzy had a full life that didn’t revolve around David had somehow never occurred to Stevie. Love made her stupid.”

— Maureen Johnson

196. “Welsh is an actual, currently used language and our next-door neighbors Angela and Gaenor spoke it. It sounds like Wizard.”

— Maureen Johnson

197. “David had, in fact, done the Sherlock thing that Stevie had dismissed for herself, specifically, the BBC one.”

— Maureen Johnson

198. “Much as I would have liked to, I couldn’t hide upstairs forever. Sooner or later, I was going to have to come down and face the world.”

— Maureen Johnson

199. “Where does this arrogant fantasy come from?”

— Maureen Johnson

200. “Funny how the world shifts when you’re in the same space with your friends. The air is energized, the light is warmer.”

— Maureen Johnson