Quotes from Jojo Moyes

It was part deference to Mrs. Traynor, part force of habit. I was so used to feeding Thomas, whose vegetables had to be mashed to a paste and hidden under mounds of potato, or secreted in bits of pasta. Every fragment we got past him felt like a little victory.

I didn't say much; my head was still ringing with the music, and I didn't want it to fade. I kept thinking back to it, the way that Will's friend had been so lost in what he was playing. I hadn't realized that music could unlock things in you, could transport you to somewhere even the composer hadn't predicted. It left an imprint in the air around you, as if you carried its remnants with you when you went.

I would have to fill those little white rectangles with a lifetime of things that could generate happiness, contentment, satisfaction, or pleasure. I would have to fill them with every good experience...I had a hundred and seventeen days in which to convince Will Traynor that he had a reason to live. pg. 137

I got the feeling that everyone had tiptoed around him since his accident—apart from perhaps Nathan, who Will seemed to treat with an automatic respect, and who was probably impervious to any of his sharper comments anyway. Nathan was like an armoured vehicle in human form.

was a kiss of utter certainty, the kind of kiss during which monarchs die and whole continents fall without you even noticing.

She had seeped into his consciousness so thoroughly, absorbing all lucid thought, that not only could he think of nothing else but no longer cared to. In his hours alone, his mind wandered to a million possible outcomes, and he marvelled at how long it had been since he had felt so preoccupied by a woman.

Just get through today, I told myself. If life had taught me one thing, it was that the answers would come soon enough.

Now it feels like living with her is a series of small explosions, like he never knows what is coming next.

It was the feeling that her promise had hemmed her in, that she was now bound by obligation to produce this thing, to harbor it in a body that had always been, quite comfortably, entirely hers. (Suzanna's thoughts after promising her husband that they can try for a baby.)

I realized, now I could see him in the light, that he looked really, properly ill and I felt terrible for having failed to grasp it.

It's just facts, Mrs Brady. Facts, to help women take control of their own bodies, their own lives. Nothing sinful about it. Hell, even our own federal court approved that book.

people around me and I wonder if we aren't all destined to leave a trail of damage.

As I was marginally less proficient on a bicycle than I was at particle physics, this involved a lot of swearing and swerving on my part, and a lot of exasperated shouting on his. As

I felt like my sister, when she had first given birth to Thomas. "It's like I'm looking through a funnel," she had said, gazing at his newborn form. "The world has just shrunk to me and him.

I smile, the kind of professional smile that might convey anything at all (...)

I thought I could live as I wanted, long as I didn't hurt nobody. But I've had time to think in here—and I worked it out. You don't get to do that in Lee County, maybe not in the whole of Kentucky. Not if you're a woman. You play by their rules or they . . . well, they squash you like a bug.

For the first time I felt overwhelmed, crushed by the knowledge that I was alone in a city that no longer welcomed me.

I'm going to kick your stupid marathon-running shins so hard you're going to think 157th was actually a good result.

But there, in the inky dark, half drunk from lack of sleep, with the fire and the endless sea and infinite sky, with the sounds of the music in our ears...and my heart bursting this something I couldn't quite identify, I just needed to dance.

What love is depends on where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air - you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all consuming - a physical pain.

The fragrance I always wear is Coco by Chanel. I've worn it for 20 years. It suits me, it's classic, and I like the simplicity of only ever wearing one fragrance.

Try to write at least 500 words a day. You may ditch 499 of them tomorrow, but you will still be moving forward.

I always imagined a writer was someone who lived in an attic in Paris, but my mum instilled in me a belief that I could do anything - so I ended up writing my first novel while working nights as a news reporter.

My writing life has included the struggle to bring up three children. What I do three or four times a year is take myself off to a hotel room to unblock a problem.