Top 280 Maureen Johnson Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “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

202. “The regret and humiliation hurt much more than the cold.”

— Maureen Johnson

203. “England and Britain and the United Kingdom are not the same thing. England is the country. Britain is the island containing England, Scotland, and Wales. The United Kingdom is the formal designation of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as a political entity. If you mess this up, you will be corrected. Repeatedly.”

— Maureen Johnson

204. “It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke.”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

206. “It was feeling just beyond fear and somewhere to the left of sadness. Tired, but not the kind of tired that sleep fixes. It was dark and gloomy, and yet, it didn’t seem that things would get any better if the lights were turned up.”

— Maureen Johnson

207. “We kind of wanted the going-out, shopping, prom-going type, and we got this weird, creepy one, and we love it but what is it talking about, ever? Sometimes Stevie felt bad for her parents. Their idea of what constituted interesting was so limited. They were never going to have as much fun as she did.”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

209. “Nothing is longer than a little while.”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

211. “No one fixes the world alone.”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

213. “Rise and shine, porcupines!”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

215. “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

216. “It was a deathtrap, a meandering thread of madness. It suggested that there was something about English people that she may never understand.”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

218. “I had no idea why I was saying this. It just seemed like telling the truth would mean admitting some weaknesses.”

— Maureen Johnson

219. “Some people believe that they are guided by forces, that the universe cuts paths for them through the dense forest of life, showing them where to go.”

— Maureen Johnson

220. “Yeah,” Nate said. “I guess it would be like that if I could go somewhere in a book. I always wanted stories to be real, so I started writing my own. That seemed to make it more real.”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

222. “He was usually her companion in avoiding things, but tonight he was letting her down. His fingers hadn’t stopped moving all night.”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

225. “I have never, ever been so happy to see a house.”

— Maureen Johnson

226. “Who had just witnessed me go through an entire rainbow of emotions and experiences.”

— Maureen Johnson

227. “Before the Smorgasbord, Noah Price was just a star in my sky... constant, familiar, bright and far above me.”

— Maureen Johnson

228. “My entrance brought a little light to his eyes.”

— Maureen Johnson

229. “Endless white ground below, and swirling flakes, and a lonely whistle of wind, and the shadow of houses.”

— Maureen Johnson

230. “No one gets Paris after one visit. No one.”

— Maureen Johnson

231. “Stevie packed like someone who just heard that reports of the monster were true, and it was headed toward the city.”

— Maureen Johnson

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

— Maureen Johnson

233. “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

234. “WHEN things are bad, give yourself a point for everything.”

— Maureen Johnson

235. “It was all so crazy... as weird as finding out that someone had written a book about my life or something.”

— Maureen Johnson

236. “Things around here have deviated from the usual.”

— Maureen Johnson

237. “The truth was that she had managed to betray everyone by doing nothing. No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong. Not cheating on a non-boyfriend with the non-boyfriend of a friend. The pressure of thinking that one through made her swollen body ache.”

— Maureen Johnson

238. “My grandparents are great people, but they are easily rattled. Like, if the grocery store sells out of some frozen pizza or soup they advertise in the circular, and they’ve gone to the store just for that, they’ll stand there debating their next move for a half an hour.”

— Maureen Johnson

239. “Stevie quickly surmised that this was one of those cases where she sounded weird if she explained, but far more weird if she did not.”

— Maureen Johnson

240. “But this was not the time to be picky.”

— Maureen Johnson

241. “Hello, Alice,” Stevie said. “It’d okay. It’s over.”

— Maureen Johnson

242. “The full truth was a little too much to throw at a stranger.”

— Maureen Johnson

243. “Sometimes anxiety did that – it could slow you down or speed you up.”

— Maureen Johnson

244. “I kind of love it,” Nate said, looking around. “It looks like the moisture farm that Luke Skywalker lives on.”

— Maureen Johnson

245. “He still looked handsome. Not in the same way as Noah. Noah wasn’t flawless. He had no single amazing feature. Instead, he had a confluence of agreeable aspects that were accepted by one and all to add up to one very attractive whole, perfectly packaged in the right clothes.”

— Maureen Johnson

246. “I had always assumed the weekend was a holy tradition, respected by good people everywhere. Not so at Wexford.”

— Maureen Johnson

247. “Stevie had no fears of the dead. The living, however, sometimes gave her the creeps.”

— Maureen Johnson

248. “The more I looked, the more Christmasy it got.”

— Maureen Johnson

249. “To her, majoring in painting was an act of insanity akin to majoring in photocopying or reheating leftovers.”

— Maureen Johnson

250. “I wish I’d remembered not to use it around other people, because it was kind of our word.”

— Maureen Johnson