Jon McGregor Quotes

#1. Last week I was just someone who had had a first novel published.

Jon McGregor

#2. Everybody's got their own situation and their own needs.

Jon McGregor

#3. The only clouds are pale and thin, hung as high as they can manage, like cobwebs in the high arches of a stairwell, and the sky is a freshly scrubbed blue, as permanent-looking as the first day of the holidays.

Jon McGregor

#4. I wonder how many ways there are for a mother to produce that wreckage in her own daughter, and my muscles tense as I think of them.

Jon McGregor

#5. The whole city stopped - And this is a pause worth savouring, because the world will soon be complicated again.

Jon McGregor

#6. It is something I recognise in myself. I do eavesdrop. I do people-watch, a lot.

Jon McGregor

#7. But there are people too he says, everywhere there are people and I think it is easier to hold hands with people than it is with angels, yes?

Jon McGregor

#8. Say excuse me but, really, I am actually very much in love with you.

Jon McGregor

#9. He wonders what memories she is rediscovering, what thoughts are catching in her mouth like the dust blown from unused textbooks.

Jon McGregor

#10. And she doesn't understand why he doesn't want to put out his medal like a trophy. And he can't tell her that he liberated Europe with a spade.

Jon McGregor

#11. It takes a lot of energy and creativity to make such screwed up lives carry on. And the kind of will people have to survive, year after year, dealing with that stuff, is weirdly impressive.

Jon McGregor

#12. I'm surprised, but I'm glad, I realise that this is what i wanted that night last week, to simply make a connection and keep hold of it.

Jon McGregor

#13. All the emails I get these days start with sorry but I've been so busy, and I don't understand how we can be so busy and then have nothing to say to each other.

Jon McGregor

#14. the rain falls, catching the trailing edges of net curtains which flow out of open windows like fishing nets lowered over the backs of boats, nets hung neatly between the outside and the in, keeping floundering secrets firmly hidden...

Jon McGregor

#15. There are so many people in the world, and I want to know them all but I don't even know my next-door neighbor's name.

Jon McGregor

#16. I once saw a picture in the paper of John Hegley with 'poet' written on his knuckles, and I thought that was pretty cool, so I was quite up front about it.

Jon McGregor

#17. There are only these: sparkling eyes, smudged lipstick, fading starlight, the crunching of feet on gravel, laughter, and a slow walk home.

Jon McGregor

#18. Now that I've had a book published, it is quite validating, but a bit embarrassing.

Jon McGregor

#19. She wonders if you can feel nostalgic for something before it's in the past, she wonders if perhaps her vocabulary is too small or if her chemical intake has corroded it and the music goes doowoah doowoah.

Jon McGregor

#20. I say too much of what, he says too much of everything, too much stuff, too many places, too much information, too many people, too much of things for there to be too much of, there is too much to know and I don't know where to begin but I want to try.

Jon McGregor

#21. People seem to be losing their sense of boundaries more and more, what people are willing to put up on the internet, especially blogs. People seem to assume that only their friends are going to read it but anyone in the world could read it at any time.

Jon McGregor

#22. I didn't know what to do, there was a feeling of time running out and a loss of momentum, of opportunities wasted.

Jon McGregor

#23. It would have been very easy to drift into writing a non-fiction book so by taking it away from Nottingham I forced myself to imagine much more of it.

Jon McGregor