Quotes from Jojo Moyes

Didn't you ever love anything that much?

I should have listened to my father. "Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience?" he would say. "Plan a fun family day out.

She looked like a human racehorse.

She took out the last of the books, then nearly dropped the canvas bag in fright. At the bottom, neatly wrapped in a red handkerchief, she could just make out the bone grip of a Colt .45 pistol.

anything to stop me having to sit and contemplate my own life.

No more nightmares about the Fishers?" "Last night," Tanzie said, "I dreamed about a cabbage that could roller-skate. It was called Kevin." Mum gave her a long look. "Right.

How could you live each day knowing that you were simply whiling away the days until your own death? How could this man whose skin I had felt that morning under my fingers – warm, and alive – choose to just extinguish himself? How could it be that, with everyone's consent, in six months' time that same skin would be decaying under the ground?

I'm not employed by you. I'm employed by your mother. And unless she tells me she doesn't want me here any more I'm staying. Not because I particularly care about you, or like this stupid job or want to change your life one way or another, but because I need the money. Okay? I really need the money.

Lily, our last girl, had rather a clever habit of using that pan for two vegetables at once" meant You're making too much mess. "Perhaps you'd like a cup of tea, Will" actually meant I have no idea what to say to you. "I think I've got some paperwork that needs sorting out" meant You're being rude, and I'm going to leave the room.

There are normal hours, and then there are invalid hours, when time stalls and slips, when life—real life—seems to exist at one remove.

That's fine," he said. "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.

I was left alone with my thoughts, a bunch of unwelcome houseguests who refused to leave.

I had only asked for five.

And I thought that even before I had sex with him.

I pressed my ear against the door, trying to work out if it was safe to knock, feeling furtive, as if it were I who was at fault. But all I could hear was music and muffled conversation.

I thought about Patrick, and the fact that even as I had collected my things from his flat, [...] my sadness was never the crippling thing I should have expected. I didn't feel desolete, or overwhelmed, or any of the things you should feel when you split apart a love of several years. I felt quite calm, and a bit sad and perhaps a little guity - both at my part in the split, and the fact that I didn't feel the things I probably should.

remarkably bad at understanding other people's motivations, even when they know them terribly well. We write all sorts of inaccurate stories in our heads.

Das ist das Leben. Wir wissen nicht, was passieren wird. Und deswegen müssen wir unsere Chancen wahrnehmen, solange wir es können.

No. No, don't be sorry. It's

You and I. We are both immigrants. We both know it is hard to find your place in this world. You want to make your life better, work hard in country that is not your own—you make new life, new friends, find new love. You get to become new person! But is never a simple thing, never without cost.

The only light came from the windows of those houses she passed that had open curtains, revealing little tableaux of family life: the young couple prostrate on a sofa in front of the television, their small child playing on the floor; the solitary old lady reading the paper; the table set for tea, while an unwatched television cast an aurora borealis of moving shadows in the corner.

Perhaps all freedom—physical, personal—really only came at the cost of somebody or something else.

They don't want to end up like Harlan, with a damn war going on between the miners and their bosses.

Lovely.' I smile. All babies look like currant buns to me.