Quotes from After You

“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

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.