Quotes from Maureen Johnson

Stevie had great hopes for the boarding school dining hall. She knew better than to hope for floating candlesticks and ghosts, but long wooden tables didn't seem out of the question. Long tables were also featured in so may murder mysteries, when all the guests of the house were arranged, eyeing each other over their wineglasses, wondering who Lord Dudley was going to put in his will or who might have killed Ratchets with the golf club.

Ils durent prendre le tramway pour se rendre au prochain musée, la Maison de Rembrandt, qui était (comme son nom l'indique), la maison de Rembrandt [...].

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

I wish I'd remembered not to use it around other people, because it was kind of our word.

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

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

Yeah. She said that there was weird shit in the walls at Ellingham. Things and hollow spaces. Stuff. She'd found things. Shit in the walls.

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

Sure, Noah was a bit closer than that...but somehow when it's real, when it's your life... that person can feel even farther off and more unobtainable than an actual celebrity. Proximity doesn't bread familiarity.

Once threw a mug of tea at a policeman

I had no idea if he had asked me because he liked me, or if his mom made him (our parents know each other), or because he lost a bet.

Noah was many things, but funny was not one of them.

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.

It was a good brain, but it had only two modes—fog and frenzy.

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

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.

God," I said. "Why are all guys so easy like that?

Like what?" he said, giving me a sideways glance, slipping in the process. "Saying that they're lucky.

Things change. Never act is if situations won't change

Again, I noticed and again, I didn't really care. But he did make more of an impact than the snow.

Knowledge is the heaviest weight of all.

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

It is so cold. So cold that the Department of Temperature Acknowledgment and Regulation in your brain gets the readings and says, "I can't deal with this. I'm out of here.

Eton produced Society's Monsters - everyone knew that. Politicians, mostly, and occasionally people who ran banks and all the other institutions that stole the world's spoils for themselves.