Top 280 Maureen Johnson Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Something in the room had changed. My hand was on the floor, next to Stephen, but he wasn’t as close to my hand as he had been. He had moved several inches over, toward the table. Just as I realized this, his arm shot out for the knife. In the next moment, he had rolled up on his knees and had Sadie caught in the crook of his arm. His face was pale, and he looked a bit shaken by the sudden movement. He was alive.”

— Maureen Johnson

152. “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

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

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

156. “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

157. “Once again, her parents’ problems had run through her life like a piece of heavy equipment, smashing everything in their way.”

— Maureen Johnson

158. “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

159. “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

160. “What tinfoil?” he asked.”

— Maureen Johnson

161. “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

162. “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

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

— Maureen Johnson

164. “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

165. “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

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

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

172. “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

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

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

175. “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

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

— Maureen Johnson

177. “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

178. “It all feels so fake that it seems okay.”

— Maureen Johnson

179. “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

180. “We all have an innate desire to make a difference, to make an impact, to be seen, to be heard, to leave behind something better than what we’re brought into.”

— 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. “This is about real people, not figures from fiction. I know this crime is popular – that crime itself is popular. But crime has a human face. If you’re going to study crime, you have to remember the people involved.”

— Maureen Johnson

184. “It was like the entire world was colluding to make me feel insane, and it was doing a really good job.”

— Maureen Johnson

185. “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

186. “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

187. “By this point, I was hungry – maybe hungrier than I’d ever been in my life.”

— Maureen Johnson

188. “This was England. There was always rain in the future.”

— Maureen Johnson

189. “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

190. “But... he had had a long night, and it seemed a waste to force my story on him when he was half asleep.”

— Maureen Johnson

191. “Sometimes, you have to wait a little bit for this kind of gratification, but it’s still worth it.”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

193. “Which was precisely what I had to do. Go away. Get out of this house and his life while I still had a shred of dignity left.”

— Maureen Johnson

194. “Let it snow and snow and bury me. Very funny, Life.”

— Maureen Johnson

195. “Noah was many things, but funny was not one of them.”

— Maureen Johnson

196. “Back in Pittsburgh, if someone had infiltrated the library with fifty squirrels, that person would have been hailed as a hero. But Ellingham was full of library lovers, and there was the feeling in the air that this was, perhaps, a bridge too far. You could be naked, you could scream and hang out on the roof, but you do not mess with the place with the books.”

— Maureen Johnson

197. “I could pretend, at least, and if I pretended long enough, maybe I could make it into a reality.”

— Maureen Johnson

198. “My memories of the last year were playing back through my mind at super-speed, but I was looking at them all from a different camera angle.”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

200. “You know how depression lies? Well anxiety is stupid. I did not just say people with anxiety are stupid. No, no. I mean that anxiety itself is stupid. If you asked anxiety what two plus two is, anxiety will think very hard and say “triangle” or “a bag of Fritos” or “a commemorative stamp.” Because anxiety doesn’t know what anything is. It will try to convince you that things that are totally fine are worthy of dread.”

— Maureen Johnson