“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
See more on GoodReads
“The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. Sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves. But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got. As in war, the victor only seemed to win. Our moments of triumph were short-lived.”
― quote from Alcoholics Anonymous
“One must wait till it comes.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from The Lost World
“There is scarcely any passion without struggle.”
― Albert Camus, quote from The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
“As we believed in those days, a hero slain in the service of a mighty lord or sacrificed in homage to a high god was assured of a life everlasting in the most resplendent of afterworlds, where he would be rewarded and regaled with bliss throughout eternity. And now Christianity tells us that we all may hope for an afterlife in a similarly splendid Heaven. But consider. Even the most heroic of heroes dying in the most honorable cause, even the most devout Christian martyr dying in the certainty of reaching Heaven, he will never again know the caress of this world's moonlight dappling his face as he walks beneath this world's rustling cypress trees. A trifling pleasure--so small, so simple, so ordinary--but never to be known again.”
― Gary Jennings, quote from Aztec
“Hang on .... Do you smell that?"
"Yeah ... shit," Nev snarled, glancing at the thick jungle that surrounded us.
"You smell shit?" Ethan asked. "Thanks for sharing."
"No," Nev said. "We smell cats.”
― Andrea Cremer, quote from Bloodrose
Der Held unserer Zei...
My Life in Black and...
Sacred Marriage: Cel...
Days and Nights of L...
Objectivism: The Phi...
South of No NorthBookQuoters 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.
