Maureen Johnson Quotes

Claim whatever you want. Say you only want a happy family or a successful career or a big house. I say: no, that's not what you want. You'll settle for those things, but you really want a monkey that does your evil bidding. Pullman is a genius just for this.

~ Maureen Johnson

WORTH IT and perfect are different things. No one’s perfect, yet in romance, everyone becomes WORTH IT. And that’s the trick.

~ Maureen Johnson

I looked at the stained-glass image of the lamb in the window above me, but that only reminded me that lambs are famous for being led to slaughter, or sometimes hanging out with lions in ill-advised relationships.

~ Maureen Johnson

She had always thought applying to college would be exciting. Living away from home, meeting so many new people, Learning new things, making a few poor life desicisons....

~ Maureen Johnson

Every time you try to flirt with her, a puppy dies.

~ Maureen Johnson

Fear can't hurt you. When it washes over you, give it no power. it's a snake with no venom.

~ Maureen Johnson

My final word: don't follow your dreams . . . chase them. With a stick, or a shovel, or whatever you have handy. Get that [bleep]ing dream!

~ Maureen Johnson

Hey! Jack the Wanker! Over here! I want your autograph!

~ Maureen Johnson

Maybe this was what Aunt Peg meant all along - returning was a weird thing. You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe our what came before.

~ Maureen Johnson

Money is for doing things, my love. Don't sit on it like a hen sits on an egg. It doesn't hatch. I should know. I've made enough of it.

~ Maureen Johnson

People can't really sympathize with you properly when you've woken them up

~ Maureen Johnson

You can't curl up on the sofa and deny life forever. Life is always going to be a series of ouch-making moments, and the question was, was I going to go all fetal-position or was I going to woman up?

~ Maureen Johnson

People were freaked out, but they showed it in weird ways. Back home, people would have been weeping and doing a lot of very public group hugs. At Wexford people just aggressively pretended nothing had happened.

~ Maureen Johnson

I felt so alone on that train... a weird, unnatural kind of alone that bore into me. It was feeling just beyond fear and somewhere to the left of sadness.

~ Maureen Johnson

I’d love to be a tabletop in Paris, where food is art and life combined in one, where people gather and talk for hours. I want lovers to meet over me. I’d want to be covered in drops of candle wax and breadcrumbs and rings from the bottom of wineglasses. I would never be lonely, and I would always serve a good purpose.

~ Maureen Johnson

I decided to deflect her attitude by giving a long, Southern answer. I come from people who know how to draw things out. Annoy a Southerner, and we will drain away the moments of your life with our slow, detailed replies until you are nothing but a husk of your former self and that much closer to death.

~ Maureen Johnson

It was as if the news itself wanted to reassure me. Even Jack the Ripper himself had reappeared as part of the greeting committee.

~ Maureen Johnson

It just seemed like telling the truth would mean admitting some weakness

~ Maureen Johnson

i get a little romantic about the old Empire State. Just looking at it makes me want to play some Frank Sinatra tunes and sway a little. I have a crush on a building. I'd been in there several times but never to work. I always knew there were offices in there but the face never penetrated, really. You don't work in the Empire State Building. You propose in the Empire State Building. You sneak a flask up there and raise a toast to the whole city of New York.

~ Maureen Johnson

Did you ask people to crime scenes on dates?

~ Maureen Johnson

I sleep better knowing that a naked cork-eater is not sneaking around at night, stealing my underwear.

~ Maureen Johnson

I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and caring about it are two very different things, and I didn't care.

~ Maureen Johnson

Irony is the word I forget the meaning of immediately after I look it up, but I kind of feel like I live in a constant state of it.

~ Maureen Johnson

Life is always going to be a series of ouch-making moments, and the question was, was I going to go all fetal position, or was I going to woman up? I went into fetal position on the bed to think about this. Fetal position turned out to be very comfortable.

~ Maureen Johnson

I know no one is perfect, that behind every facade of perfection is a writhing mess of subterfuge and secret sorrows... but even taking that into account, Noah was pretty much perfect.

~ Maureen Johnson

Lecturing Brooks was as useful as lecturing a cat.

~ Maureen Johnson

Sometimes people graduate but they don't leave. They hang around for years, for no reason. I would think of ghosts like that, I decided.

~ Maureen Johnson

The English play hockey in any weather. Thunder, lightening, plague of locusts...nothing can stop the hockey. Do not fight the hockey, for the hockey will win.

~ Maureen Johnson

I don't know if there is actually more rain here in England, or if it was just that the rain seemed to be so deliberately annoying. Every drop hit the window with a peevish Am I bothering you? Does this make you cold and wet? Oh, sorry.

~ Maureen Johnson

English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork. It dampens already damn days and slicks the stones.

~ Maureen Johnson

Boo: Go talk to her.Callum: About what?Boo: Anything.Callum: You want me to walk up to her and say, 'Are you a ghost?'Boo: I do that.Callum: I love it when you get it wrong.

~ Maureen Johnson

Shame is like melting. You can actually feel your muscles sag and drop, as if your body is preparing you to crawl, or possibly ooze, to the nearest exit.

~ Maureen Johnson

Many large corporations are actually modeled on hell,' Brother Frank added. 'The policies and organization are almost idential. Hell, of course, is much worse.

~ Maureen Johnson

I don't mind bigots. You're allowed to be bigoted, if that makes you happy. Just do it at home. And not around the children.

~ Maureen Johnson

I try to shake it loose-but these ideas, they cling. It's like I'm shackled to them with an iron chain. They rattle along behind me, dragging against the ground, always reminding me of their presence.

~ Maureen Johnson

This pool is a triumph of imagination. That's how you win at life, Gin. You have to imagine your way through. Never say something can't be done. There's always a solution, even if it's weird.

~ Maureen Johnson

Maybe it was that I was broken. Maybe it was just that I was out of my mind. But it occurred to me that I was going to kiss him. The thought just arrived, certain knowledge, delivered from some greater, more knowledgeable place. I was going to kiss him. Stephen would not want to kiss me. He would back up in horror. And yet, I was still going to do it. I reached over, and I put my hand against his chest, then I moved closer. I could feel just the very tips of the gentle stubble on his cheek brushing against my skin.“Rory,” he said. But it was a quiet protest, and it went nowhere.For the first few seconds, he didn’t move—he accepted the kiss like you might accept a spoonful of medicine. Then I heard it, a sigh, like he had finally set down a heavy weight.“I was pretty sure we were both kind of terrified, but I was completely sure that we were both doing this. We kissed slowly, very deliberately, coming together and then pulling apart and looking at each other. Then each kiss got longer, and then it didn’t stop. Stephen put his hand just under the edge of my shirt, holding it on the spot where the scar was. Sometimes the skin around the scar got cold—now it was warm. Now it was alive.

~ Maureen Johnson

Kissing is something that makes up for a lot of other crap you have to put up with...It can be confusing and weird and awkward, but sometimes it just makes you melt and forget everything that is going on.

~ Maureen Johnson

With that, I splashed some water on my face, fixed on a smile, and stepped out. I would find Jerome. I would make him explain to me what I was missing. We would laugh, then we would kiss with tongue, and all would be well.

~ Maureen Johnson

Of course, he showed me this one afternoon when he was skipping class. When trolls cut classes, you think they are losers. When the beautiful and/or reasonably erudite do the same thing to sit on the library steps and read poetry, you think they are on to something deep. You see only deep brown wavy hair and strong legs, well honed by years of Ultimate Frisbee. You see that book of T. S. Eliot poems held by the hand with the long, graceful fingers, and you never stop to think that it shouldn't take half a semester to read one book of poems... that maybe he is not so much reading as getting really high every morning and sleeping it off on the library steps, forcing the people who actually go to class to step or trip over him.

~ Maureen Johnson