Quotes from Jojo Moyes

Sometimes, I said, a lie is the way of least pain for everyone.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a

I can tell you the exact day I stopped being fearless.

I know it's been tough. But we're terribly proud of you, you know." "For what?" She says blowing her nose. "I failed, Dad. Most people think I shouldn't have even tried." "Just for carrying on, really. Sometimes, my darling girl, that's heroic in itself.

Without someone to talk to, every sight I saw—whether it was the Trevi Fountain or a canal in Amsterdam—felt simply like a name on a list that I needed to check off.

Life is complicated. Which is why finding a little joy where you can is important.

Three days later, just as I set off for work, the postman handed me a letter. I opened it on the bus, thinking it might be an early birthday card from some distant cousin. It read, in computer- ized text: Dear Clark, This is to show you that I am not an entirely selfish arse. And I do appreciate your efforts. Thank you. Will I laughed so hard the bus driver asked me if my lottery numbers had come up.

You shall forget that I am part of an enemy army, I shall forget that you are a woman who spends much of her time working out how to subvert that army, and we shall just . . . be two people?

It's the fact that when you spend all day in proximity to someone, there is no escape from their moods. Or your own.

All I can say is that you make me...you make me into someone I couldn't even imagine. You make me happy even when you're awful. I would rather be with you, even the you you seem to think is diminished, than with anyone else in the world.

We move on always carrying with us those we have lost. What we aim to do in our little group is ensure that carrying them is not a burden, something that feels impossible to bear, a weight keeping us stuck in the same place. We want their presence to feel like a gift.

Last night. When I was bleeding out. I heard you. Our eyes locked. And in that moment everything shifted. I saw what I had really done. I saw that I could be somebody's centre, their reason for staying. I saw that I could be enough.

Teenagers are basically toddlers with hormones—old enough to want to do stuff without having any of the common sense.

They might sound revolting to you, but astonishingly, Will Traynor, not all girls get dressed just to please men.

There's no such thing as a life free of complications, Rory. We all end up making compromises in the end.

That Mack McGuire, he makes my heart flutter like a clean sheet on a long line.

Around me a million people are living, breathing, eating, arguing. A million lives completely divorced from mine. It is a strange sort of peace.

to have someone out there who understands you, who desires you, who sees you as a better version of yourself, is the most astonishing gift. Even if we are not together, to know that, for you, I am that man is a source of sustenance to me.

I felt everything more intensely, saw everything as if a filter had been removed.

Sometimes, she told herself, life was a series of obstacles that just had to be negotiated, possibly through sheer act of will. She stared out at the muddy blue of the endless sea, gulped in the air, lifted her chin, and decided that she could survive this. She could survive most things. It was nobody's right to be happy, after all.

She didn't talk about it: if this past year has taught her one thing, it is to live in the present. She immersed herself in every moment, refusing to cloud it by considering the cost. The fall would come - it always did - but she usually collected enough memories to cushion it a little.

Sometimes I look at the lives of the people around me and I wonder if we aren't all destined to leave a trail of damage. It's not just your mum and dad who fuck you up, Mr. Larkin. I gazed around me, like someone suddenly handed clear glasses, and I saw that pretty much everyone bore the brutal imprint of love, whether it was lost, whipped away from them, or simply vanished into a grave.

Because there would be lonely days. And bad days. And days when I wondered what the hell I had just agreed to be part of. Because that was all part of the adventure too.

The key was making sure that anyone you allowed to walk beside you didn't get to decide which you were, and pin you down like a butterfly in a case. The key was to know that you could always somehow find a way to reinvent yourself again.