Quotes from Maureen Johnson

WHEN things are bad, give yourself a point for everything.

because displaying real emotion would be gross.

You know how depression lies? Well anxiety is stupid. I did not just say people with anxiety are stupid. No, no. I mean that anxiety itself is stupid. If you asked anxiety what two plus two is, anxiety will think very hard and say triangle or a bag of Fritos or a commemorative stamp. Because anxiety doesn't know what anything is. It will try to convince you that things that are totally fine are worthy of dread.

She never drank tea at home. Tea was for England.

No one gets Paris after one visit. No one.

Nate was a rain cloud, but he was her friendly rain cloud, and the world needs some rain.

With a drowning kind of quiet

But there was some life in the thing

But I was fuelled by the power of confusion and panic, which, like I said is always ready and waiting to get to work.

The sky was white instead of the crazy pink of the night before.

Who had just witnessed me go through an entire rainbow of emotions and experiences.

The regret and humiliation hurt much more than the cold.

Charles was dressed more casually than normal, in a heavy fleece and sweatpants. Dr. Quinn rose to the occasion in a rose-gray cashmere sweater, a sweeping wool skirt, black cashmere tights, and tall black boots. No amount of cold was going to rob her of her queenly graces. Charles had a look on his face that said, I'm not angry, but I am disappointed. Dr. Quinn's expression said, He's passive-aggressive. I'm not. I am aggressive. I have killed before.

Told me not to sell my self short

The questions that creep around at four thirty in the morning are not the kind that can be easily dismissed. You can beat them with a shovel, and they'll just keep getting back up.

Stevie had never put these Stevies together to assemble a portrait of herself—her choices had not been failures. They had been choices. It was all one Stevie, and that Stevie was worthwhile.

Told her I would wait as long as it took. She told me not to bother, but I waited anyway.

The package contained a collection of envelopes much like the first. They were all blue. They were all made of heavy paper. Good quality. The kind from one of those boutique paper stores. The front of each envelope was either illustrated in pen and ink or watercolor, and they were bundled together with an overstretched rubber band that had been doubled around them.

Didn't say we tell each other everything

Good resume," he said, not sounding all that impressed. "But what's he like?" Oh, God. This conversation was going to go on.

Personality-wise. Is he secretly a poet or something? Does he dance around his room when he thinks no one is looking? Is he funny, like you? What's his essence?

Think about what you could be stopping—someone who uses racist policies to hurt or kill people. Someone who could do untold damage to the environment. Someone who could start an illegal war to distract from his political problems. You know, Vi, that he's capable of that.

There is an insatiable appetite for things about the wives of Henry the Eighth. Everyone loves them. Sex and murder.

But...he had had a long night, and it seemed a waste to force my story on him when he was half asleep.