“Sometimes life is a series of obstacles, a matter of putting one foot in front of the other. Sometimes, she realizes suddenly, it is simply a matter of blind faith.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“There is a whole lot more to life than winning.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“the ability to earn a living by doing the thing one loves must be one of life’s greatest gifts.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“Nobody fights you like your own sister; nobody else knows the most vulnerable parts of you and will aim for them without mercy.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“All that counts is the truth. Without it you're basically just juggling people's daft ideas.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“Do you know how it feels to resign yourself to your fate? It is almost welcome. There was to be no more pain, no more fear, no more longing. It is the death of hope that comes as the greatest relief.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“Sit here long enough you get to know everything. You listen, see ?"
She taps the side of her head.
"Nobody listens any more. Everyone knows what they want to hear, but nobody actually listens.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“She does not want to feel even the faintest temptation to call his mobile number, as she had done obsessively for the first year after his death so she could hear his voice on the answering service. Most days now his loss is a part of her, an awkward weight she carries around, invisible to everyone else, subtly altering the way she moves through the day. But today, the Anniversary of the day he died, is a day when all bets are off.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“Paul. Look at me. You need to understand this. The worst thing that could have happened to me already happened."
He looks up.
She swallows, knowing that these are the words that stall; that may simply refuse to emerge.
"Four years ago David and I went to bed like it was any other night, brushing our teeth reading our books, chatting about a restaurant we were going to the next day...and when I woke up the next morning he was there beside me, cold. Blue. I didn't...I didn't feel him go. I didn't even get to say..."
There is a short silence.
"Can you imagine knowing you slept through the person you love most dying next to you ? Knowing that there might have been something you could have done to help him ? To save him ? Not knowing if he was looking at you, silently begging you to..."
The words fail, her breath catches, a familiar tide threatens to wash over her He reaches out his hands slowly, enfolds hers within them until she can speak again.
"I thought the world had actually ended. I thought nothing good could ever happen again. I thought any thing might happen if I wasn't vigilant. I didn't eat. I didn't go out. I didn't want to see anyone. But I survived, Paul. Much to my own surprise, I got through it. And life...well, life gradually became liveable again."
She leans closer to him.
"So this...the painting, the house...It hit me when I heard what happened to Sophie. It's just stuff. They could take all of it, frankly. the only thing that matters is people."
She looks down at his hands, and her voice cracks.
"All that really matters is who you love.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“It was only when I got home that I reached into my pocket. I found a piece of paper he must have slipped in there while he held me: a little caricature of the two of us, him a huge bear in his uniform, grinning, his arm around me, petite and narrow-waisted, my face straight and solemn, my hair pulled neatly behind my head. Underneath it he had written, in his looping,‘I never knew real happiness until you.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“And it was suddenly very simple: There was no choice.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“Marianne touches his elbow, halting him. 'You know I'll tell you something about being married five times. Or married five times and still friends with my surviving ex-husbands'. She counts them on gnarled fingers. 'That would be three'. He waits. 'It teaches you damn all about love.' Paul begins to smile, but she hasn't finished. Her grip on his arm is surprisingly strong. 'What it does teach you, Mr McCafferty, is that there's a whole lot more to life than winning.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“Most days now his loss is a part of her, an awkward weight she carries around, invisible to everyone else, subtly altering the way she moves through the day.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“What are you doing?"
"Thinking."
"That sounds dangerous.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“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?”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“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.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“I wanted to live as Edouard did, joyfully, sucking the marrow out of every moment and singing because it tasted so good.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“Can't you feel this ? Don't walk away...", she wills him silently.
"Please don't walk away from me...”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“I often think that the ability to earn a living by doing the thing one loves must be one of life’s greatest gifts.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“Just for carrying on, really. Sometimes, my darling girl, that's heroic in itself.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“there’s a whole lot more to life than winning.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“the very point of faith was that it must be tested.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“This was the story of our lives: minor insurrections, tiny victories, a brief chance to ridicule our oppressors, little floating vessels of hope amid a great sea of uncertainty, deprivation and fear.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“It had been years before she could view anybody else’s happiness without mourning the loss of her own.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“She has several imaginary conversations with him and two imaginary arguments.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“I keep reading your looping, cursive script, until the words are indelible inside me: “I never knew real happiness until you.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“Liv runs. Every morning, and some evenings too. Running has taken the place of thinking, of eating, sometimes of sleeping. She runs until her shins burn and her lungs feel as if they will explode...She plugs in her iPod earphones, closes the door of the block, rams her keys into the pocket of her shorts, and sets off at a pace. She lets her mind flood with the deafening thumping beat, dance music so relentless that it leaves no room for thought.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“So this . . . the painting, the house . . . it hit me when I heard what happened to Sophie earlier. It’s just stuff. They could take all of it, frankly. The only thing that matters is people.” She looks down at his hands, and her voice cracks. “All that really matters is who you love.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
“Some lives work better with routines, and Liv Halston's is one of them. Every weekday morning she rises at seven thirty am, pulls on her trainers, grabs her iPod, and before she can think about what she's doing, she heads down, bleary-eyed, in the rackety lift, and out for a half hour run along the river. At some point, threading her way through the grimly determined commuters, swerving round reversing delivery vans, she comes fully awake, her brain slowly wrapping itself around the musical rhythms in her ears, the soft thud-thud-thud of her feet hitting the pavement. Most importantly she has steered herself away again from a time she still fears: those initial waking minutes, when vulnerability means that loss can still strike her unheralded and venal, sending her thoughts into a toxic black fog. She had begin running after she had realized that she could use the world outside, the noise in her earphones, her own motion, as a kind of deflector, Now it has become habit, and insurance police. I do not have to think. I do not have to think. I do not have to think.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Girl You Left Behind
Jojo Moyes
Born place: in London, England, The United Kingdom
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“A broken heart is just the growing pains necessary so that you can love more completely when the real thing comes along.”
― J.S.B. Morse, quote from Now and at the Hour of Our Death
“I woke in the middle of the night, and he was standing at the side of my bed. He was as real as my husband sleeping beside me. He was tall, and upright, but looked younger than when I had known him, like a handsome man of about sixty or sixty-five. He was smiling, and then he said, “You know the secret of life, my dear, because you know how to love.”
― Jennifer Worth, quote from Shadows of the Workhouse
“Life isn't just about darkness or light, rather it's about finding light within the darkness.”
― quote from First Night of Summer
“I don't know what's happening to me," she says, blinking through a veil of tears as she looks everywhere but at me. "I don't think I can do this anymore."
My heart plummets inside my chest, my lips still hovering over hers, my hands on her waist "do what anymore?" I don't want the answer, don't want to hear what follows my question, don't want to lose her.
"Fight it." Tears are still flowing from her eyes, but I think she stop crying. She sucks and several breaths when she looks at me, her eyes are clear that I anticipated. She's scared shitless - that's clear - but it's like she stop fighting the fear, giving into it instead.
Her lips apart and I'm a stop whatever she's about to say, silence her with my lips, but I don't, forcing myself to hear, needing to know what's got all worked up.
"I think I'm in love with you," she says, her chest heaving with every ravenous breath she takes, yet her voice is astonishingly even and she manages to maintain my gaze.
My voice however is the exact opposite of even, coming out all high-pitched like I'm a thirteen year old and going through puberty all over again. "What?"
She sucks and a breath, then releases is slowly, the fear in her eyes subsiding, as if she just won it. "I think I'm in love with you..." She bites on your lips and shakes her head. "No...I don't think. I know."
I gradually process her words and the full extent of what she's saying. I think I'd honestly believed that she might never say them, that this love thing was going to be a one-way street. Hearing her say it... I don't even know how to describe it. It's like my entire life of associated the word with hatred. Every time my mother said it, it felt like she was trying to take something from me and it made me hate her and myself-Love equaled hate for me. But hearing it from Violet's lips, seeing that look in her eyes, the one I've never seen from anyone, is so different. She's not taking something for me right now, she's giving me something.
She's giving me everything.”
― Jessica Sorensen, quote from The Certainty of Violet & Luke
“Byron had drawn his pistol, and was looking closely at the leaves and dirt around him, as if he'd dropped something. "It's -- do keep calm now -- it's right over your head. I suppose you could look, if you can do it slowly."
Crawford felt drops of sweat run down his ribs under his shirt as he slowly forced the muscles of his neck to tilt his head up; he saw the upper slope, bristling with trees that obstructed a view of the road, and then he saw the outer branches of the tree he was braced against, and finally he gathered his tattered courage and looked straight up.
And it took all of his self-control not to recoil or scream, and he was distantly resentful that he couldn't just die in this instant.”
― Tim Powers, quote from The Stress of Her Regard
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