“You don't have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“I loved a man who had opened up a world to me but hadn’t loved me enough to stay in it.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“The only way to avoid being left behind was to start moving.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people any more.
It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you, and makes you want to cry in the wrong places, and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead.
It’s just something you learn to accommodate.
Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become … a doughnut instead of a bun”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“Too many people follow their own happiness without a thought for the damage they leave in their wake.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“It is important not to turn the dead into saints. Nobody can walk in the shadow of a saint.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“You never know what will happen when you fall from a great height.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“No journey out of grief was straightforward. There would be good days and bad days.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“Losing him was like having a hole shot straight through me, a painful, constant reminder, an absence I could never fill.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“You’re going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. It always does feel strange to be knocked out of your comfort zone . . . There is a hunger in you, Clark. A fearlessness. You just buried it, like most people do. Just live well. Just live.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“Life is short, right? We both know that. Well, what if you’re my chance? What if you are the thing that’s actually going to make me happiest?”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“I think people get bored of grief,” said Natasha. “It’s like you’re allowed some unspoken allotted time—six months maybe—and then they get faintly irritated that you’re not ‘better,’ like you’re being self-indulgent hanging on to your unhappiness.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“Sometimes the illusion of happiness could inadvertently create it.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“I swallowed. “Mum, you’re not going to get divorced, are you?” Her eyes shot open. “Divorced? I’m a good Catholic girl, Louisa. We don’t divorce. We just make our men suffer for all eternity.” She waited just for a moment, and then she started to laugh.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“I want to tell him that I don't know what i feel. I want him but i'm frightened to want him. I don;t want my happiness to be entirely dependent on somebody else's to be a hostage to fortunes I cannot control.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“I’m still a doughnut, okay?” I said. “I want to be a bun. I really do. But I’m still a doughnut.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“moving on means we have to protect ourselves.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“Hey, Lou!” she yelled. “I meant to say to you. Moving on doesn’t mean you loved my dad any less, you know. I’m pretty sure even he would tell you that.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“Sometimes for our sanity own sanity we just have to look at the bigger picture.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“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.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“When someone we love is snatched from us, it often feels very hard to make plans.
Sometimes people feel like they have lost faith in the future, or they become superstitious.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“none of us move on without a backward look. 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.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“With that kiss, I tried to tell him the enormity of what he meant to me. I tried to show him that he was the answer to a question I hadn’t even known I had been asking. I tried to thank him for wanting me to be me, more than he wanted to make me stay.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After 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 center, his reason for staying. I saw that I could be enough.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“But then I knew better than anyone how the persona you chose to present to the world could be very different from what was really inside. I knew how grief could make you behave in ways you couldn't even begin to understand.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“No. Really. I’ve thought about it a lot. You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people anymore. It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you and makes you want to cry in the wrong places and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead. It’s just something you learn to accommodate. Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become . . . a doughnut instead of a bun.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“You don’t have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“How could I convey the way those short months had changed the way I felt about everything? The way he had skewed my world so totally that is made no sense without him”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“Sometimes just getting through each day requires almost superhuman strength.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
“My voice, when it emerged, cracked a little. “I’m not in love with a ghost.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from After You
Jojo Moyes
Born place: in London, England, The United Kingdom
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“Everything,' his father said, 'comes down to time in the end--to the passing of time, to changing. Ever thought of that? Anything that makes you happy or sad, isn't it all based on minutes going by? Isn't sadness wishing time back again? Even big things--even mourning a death: aren't you really just wishing to have the time back when that person was alive? Or photos--ever notice old photographs? How wistful they make you feel? ... Isn't it just that time for once is stopped that makes you wistful? If only you could turn it back again, you think. If only you could change this or that, undo what you have done, if only you could roll the minutes the other way, for once.”
― Anne Tyler, quote from Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
“He had made his decision regarding Molly with great care and consideration.”
― Jayne Ann Krentz, quote from Absolutely, Positively
“Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is that which must be personal and may be perverse.”
― G.K. Chesterton, quote from What's Wrong with the World
“What franticke fit (quoth he) hath thus distraught
Thee, foolish man, so rash a doome to give?
What justice ever other judgement taught,
But he should die, who merites not to live?
None else to death this man despayring drive,
But his owne guiltie mind deserving death.
Is then unjust to each his due to give?
Or let him die, that loatheth living breath?
Or let him die at ease, that liveth here uneath?
Who travels by the wearie wandring way,
To come unto his wished home in haste,
And meetes a flood, that doth his passage stay,
Is not great grace to helpe him over past,
Or free his feet, that in the myre sticke fast?
Most envious man, that grieves at neighbours good,
And fond, that joyest in the woe thou hast,
Why wilt not let him passe, that long hath stood
Upon the banke, yet wilt thy selfe not passe the flood?
He there does now enjoy eternall rest
And happie ease, which thou doest want and crave,
And further from it daily wanderest:
What if some litle paine the passage have,
That makes fraile flesh to feare the bitter wave?
Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease,
And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave?
Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.
[...]
Is not his deed, what ever thing is donne,
In heaven and earth? did not he all create
To die againe? all ends that was begonne.
Their times in his eternall booke of fate
Are written sure, and have their certaine date.
Who then can strive with strong necessitie,
That holds the world in his still chaunging state,
Or shunne the death ordaynd by destinie?
When houre of death is come, let none aske whence, nor why.
The lenger life, I wote the greater sin,
The greater sin, the greater punishment:
All those great battels, which thou boasts to win,
Through strife, and bloud-shed, and avengement,
Now praysd, hereafter deare thou shalt repent:
For life must life, and bloud must bloud repay.
Is not enough thy evill life forespent?
For he, that once hath missed the right way,
The further he doth goe, the further he doth stray.
Then do no further goe, no further stray,
But here lie downe, and to thy rest betake,
Th'ill to prevent, that life ensewen may.
For what hath life, that may it loved make,
And gives not rather cause it to forsake?
Feare, sicknesse, age, losse, labour, sorrow, strife,
Paine, hunger, cold, that makes the hart to quake;
And ever fickle fortune rageth rife,
All which, and thousands mo do make a loathsome life.
Thou wretched man, of death hast greatest need,
If in true ballance thou wilt weigh thy state:
For never knight, that dared warlike deede,
More lucklesse disaventures did amate:
Witnesse the dongeon deepe, wherein of late
Thy life shut up, for death so oft did call;
And though good lucke prolonged hath thy date,
Yet death then, would the like mishaps forestall,
Into the which hereafter thou maiest happen fall.
Why then doest thou, O man of sin, desire
To draw thy dayes forth to their last degree?
Is not the measure of thy sinfull hire
High heaped up with huge iniquitie,
Against the day of wrath, to burden thee?
Is not enough, that to this Ladie milde
Thou falsed hast thy faith with perjurie,
And sold thy selfe to serve Duessa vilde,
With whom in all abuse thou hast thy selfe defilde?
Is not he just, that all this doth behold
From highest heaven, and beares an equall eye?
Shall he thy sins up in his knowledge fold,
And guiltie be of thine impietie?
Is not his law, Let every sinner die:
Die shall all flesh? what then must needs be donne,
Is it not better to doe willinglie,
Then linger, till the glasse be all out ronne?
Death is the end of woes: die soone, O faeries sonne.”
― Edmund Spenser, quote from The Faerie Queene
“For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the
grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-grey hair.”
― William Faulkner, quote from A Rose for Emily and Other Stories
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