Quotes from Jojo Moyes

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

and the look she gave me was far too wise for her age and utterly heartbreaking.

To commit to Sam was to commit to the likelihood of more loss.

Whatever it was she was doing, it seemed to be giving him just a small respite from that.

Tienes que salir de aquí, Clark. Prométeme que no vas a pasar el resto de tus días atrapada en esta maldita parodia de postal de vacaciones. […] Eres demasiado inteligente. Demasiado interesante. […] Solo se vive una vez. En realidad, es tu deber que sea una vida plena.

I supposed I would probably marry Patrick, knock out a few kids, live a few streets away from where I had always lived. Apart from an exotic taste in clothes, and the fact that I'm a bit short, there's not a lot separating me from anyone you might pass in the street. You probably wouldn't look at me twice. An ordinary girl, leading an ordinary life. It actually suited me fine.

Statistically most relationships ended badly and, given my mental state over the past two years, my chances of beating the odds were pretty low. We could talk around it, we could lose ourselves in brief moments, but love ultimately meant more pain.

I stared at my calendar, the pen stilled in my hand. This little patch of paper suddenly bore a whole heap of responsibility. I had a hundred and seventeen days in which to convince Will Traynor that he had a reason to live.

With no money, no home and none of my things? That's the biggest bunch of Hallmark greetings-card self-help crap I've ever heard.

White-water rafting and scuba diving were not part of his plan for convalescence.

That we were all part of some great cycle, some pattern that it was only God's purpose to understand.

remembering how unpleasant the sensation of wet socks was.

What else could I say? It was a job. Progress of sorts.

and waited to feel as if I had really started living. Nine months on I was still waiting.

I can't delete my brother's voice mail message. I have a little listen to his voice when I feel like I'm going to forget what he sounds like.

Under his breath, he repeated the words of Xenophon: "Anger undermines effective communication with your horse.

when it came down to it, what was the point in reexamining your sadness all the time anyway? It was like picking away at a wound and refusing to let it heal.

and for the first time since I had embarked upon my plan, I felt properly despondent.

Her eyes shot open. "Divorced? I'm a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don't divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity." She waited just for a moment, and then she started to laugh.

Oh, but it was such a relief to have someone to talk to. I was so unused to people who actually listened—as opposed to those, at the bar, who only wanted to hear the sound of their own voices—that talking to Sam was a revelation. He didn't interrupt, or tell me what he thought, or what I should do. He listened, and nodded.

I didn't tell her about the days when it felt like a peculiar form of torture to work somewhere where I was forced to watch each plane taxi on the runway, gather its energy like a great bird, then launch itself into the sky.

You cut yourself off from all sorts of experience because you tell yourself you re not 'that sort of person

I had never, in my life, imagined I would spend time somewhere like this. Every morning I woke to the sound of the sea breaking gently on the shore, unfamiliar birds calling to each other from the trees.

Because something else had changed too, something fundamental. Alice had discovered how, for a woman at least, it was much easier to feel anger on behalf of someone you cared about, to access that cold burn, to want to make someone suffer if they had hurt someone you loved. Alice, it turned out, was no longer afraid.