Top 100 Maureen Johnson Quotes
#1. I take my best lessons from nature, and nature says 'When something flies at your head- move.
Maureen Johnson
#3. I can sleep like a champion. I once slept through a smoke alarm going off. For three hours. In my bedroom.
Maureen Johnson
#4. But when we live, we believe that we have a right to everything in the universe - that everything is ours to touch.
Maureen Johnson
#6. Nowhere was good. Except with Eric. He had both perfumed and poisoned her entire world.
Maureen Johnson
#8. I had one class in the morning, the mysteriously named "Further Maths". It was two hours long and so deeply frightening that I think I went into a trance.
Maureen Johnson
#9. The kids I talk to are readers, and the craziest, the most dedicated readers you will ever see.
Maureen Johnson
#11. She introduced herself to my parents with one of her mighty, bunny-crushing handshakes. (I'd never seen Claudia crush a bunny, to be fair, but that's the approximate level of pressure.)
Maureen Johnson
#12. Were you playing with Stuart? she asked.
The question was loaded. I was a filthy, filthy woman, and even the five-year-old knew it.
Maureen Johnson
#13. Go see old virgins! Now ask a strange boy out, you shy, Retarded thing!
Maureen Johnson
#14. She looks like a jumper to me. Jumpers do that a lot, stand on the edge and stare out. Never kill yourself in a Tube station. Tip number one. You might end up down here forever, staring at the wall." Stephen coughed a little. "Just giving advice," Callum said.
Maureen Johnson
#15. One of them hung a pink bra from our lighting fixture. I left it there. It was a nice bra
Maureen Johnson
#16. I live alone," Knud said, "and I work alone, but I am never truly alone. I do my ancestor's work. I live the entire history of my country and people.
Maureen Johnson
#17. Spicy food and I have a close relationship - an obsessive one, in fact. If it's spicy, I want it. I want to sweat and shake and go half blind from the searing pain ... which, now that I put it that way, seems really suggestive. But spicy stuff is addictive. That's a known fact of science.
Maureen Johnson
#18. I've heard people on panels say, 'You must have a Web site. You need to tweet. Repeat the title of your book constantly,' and I just want to say, 'Shut up. Everything you're saying is wrong.' People will know instantly if your only motivation for tweeting is to sell books.
Maureen Johnson
#19. 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
#20. Then I noticed his rising blush, and I realized something.
Tobin and Angie ... their togetherness was new. New enough that being touched by her still came as a
glorious, blush-worthy surprise.
Maureen Johnson
#21. Charlotte had been beaten over the head with a lamp by an invisible man. I was prepared to give her a pass.
Maureen Johnson
#22. Okay, maybe it didn't get that close and it didn't move that much, but it still came toward me, and if you've been chased by an alligator at any distance or speed, I don't think people should get all 'But how far was it? And how fast was it going?
Maureen Johnson
#23. She was standing in the airport of Copenhagen, staring at a doorway, trying to figure out if it was (a) a bathroom and (b) what kind of bathroom it was. The door merely said H.
Was she an H? Was H "hers"? It could just as easily be "his". Or "Helicopter Room: Not a Bathroom at All
Maureen Johnson
#24. (Oh, the ongoing love affair between hair and mouths. Hair always goes for the mouth. The mouth opens, and hair says, "I'm going in! I'm going in!" like a manic cave diver.)
Maureen Johnson
#25. Running away is pretty pathetic, but it's even worse getting caught.
Maureen Johnson
#27. I could envision it all to clearly: Stuart or Debbie finding the dented door off its hinges, lying in the snow. "She came in, ravaged the boy, stole plastic bags, and ripped off the door in her escape," the police would say in the APB. "Probably making her way to bust her parents out of jail.
Maureen Johnson
#28. Hey! Jack the Wanker! Over here! I want your autograph!
Maureen Johnson
#29. I like to talk. Talking is kind of my thing. If talking had been a sport option at Wexford, I would have been captain. But sports always have to involve running, jumping, or swinging your arms around. You don't get PE points for the smooth and rapid movement of the jaw.
Maureen Johnson
#30. Back at home, people would have been weeping and doing a lot of very public group hugs. At Wexford, some people just aggressively pretended nothing was happening.
Maureen Johnson
#33. There is no normal. I've never met a normal person. The concept is flawed. It implies that there is only one way people are supposed to be, and that can't possible be true. Human experience is far too varied.
Maureen Johnson
#34. There is nothing about a bad situation that fourteen hyper cheerleaders can't worsen.
Maureen Johnson
#35. 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
#36. Gators are just something you have to accept where I come from. Most don't go anywhere near the houses, even though there are lots of delicious children and dogs there. Every once in a while, though, an alligator has a lightbulb moment and decides to take a stroll and see the world a bit.
Maureen Johnson
#38. You'd been petting a stuffed dog?' she said 'A dead one?'
'It was a really well stuffed dog' I clarified. 'I have seen some bad taxidermy. This was top-notch work. It would have fooled anyone.
Maureen Johnson
#39. You've never told me about your love life, Scarlett. You're a very pretty girl. You must have a boy shacked up somewhere for your personal delights. I'd bet it's a booky one, overtones of Harry Potter and a lot of black T-shirts.
Maureen Johnson
#40. Rory, do you want to go live in the sky? On a Pegasus?
Maureen Johnson
#42. These houses had been plunked down with an alarming randomness
unevenly spaced, on crooked lines, like whoever had designed the place had said, We'll just follow this cat, and wherever he sits down, we'll build something.
Maureen Johnson
#43. Is this all right?" he asked. He was using that very low, somewhat husky universal kissing voice.
"Huh?" I said, because I am sexy.
Maureen Johnson
#44. What you don't realize at the time is that you're not seeing the full picture," "You don't think about the fact that things will change. Things always change.
Maureen Johnson
#45. Tell me what you want, what you really, really want," he said.
"Braiiinnnnssss," we said in unison.
Maureen Johnson
#46. Oh my God!" said one of the Ambers. "Is this not the worst trip ever? Did you see the snow?"
She was a sharp one, this Amber. What would she notice next? The train? The moon? The hilarious vagaries of human existence? Her own head?
Maureen Johnson
#47. Sometimes artists like to catch themselves looking out, let the world see them for once. It's a signature. This one is a very bold one. But this is also a witnessing. We want to remember, and we want to be remembered. That's why we paint." Mari
Maureen Johnson
#48. I read two mysteries a day when I was a kid. All of Agatha Christie, all of 'Sherlock Holmes.' I've seen every single British detective show ever made.
Maureen Johnson
#49. We're going to die," Keith said, the moment he was gone. "This man is a serial killer. We're going to die, and he's going to bury us in his garden and build a shed on us.
Maureen Johnson
#50. Prefects. I had learned this one. Student council types, but with superpowers. They who must be obeyed.
Maureen Johnson
#51. It's always awkward when someone doesn't realize you're joking and devotes thought time to what you've said. Double that when the person is wearing tinfoil.
Maureen Johnson
#52. 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
#53. This wasn't a position she wanted to be in. And yet ... yet she knew that she was going to do it anyway.
Maureen Johnson
#55. Sometimes, life leaves you without directions, without guideposts or signs. When this happens, you just have to pick a direction and run like hell.
Maureen Johnson
#56. What are you?" I asked. "I'm the Ghost of the Night Before Exams." "And how long did it take you to come up with that?" Jazza asked. "I'm a busy man," he replied.
Maureen Johnson
#57. Did you hear?" he asked. "They found another body around nine this morning. It's the Ripper, definitely."
"Good morning," I replied.
"Morning. Listen to this. The second victim ...
Maureen Johnson
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. Who runs a combination cat shelter and hostel?" Keith asked. "With the cat shelter being the primary function? Only people who want to kill you with an axe and then put you in the garden and build a shed on you, that's who.
Maureen Johnson
#61. You could wear the same outfit every single day and no guy - who isn't gay - will notice.
Maureen Johnson
#62. Being an author means, almost by definition, that you make up characters and then complicate their lives. That's it, really. You make up characters and give them problem after problem after problem.
Maureen Johnson
#64. Walk really, really carefully. It's not complicated, but if you mess up, you'll die, so pay attention.
Maureen Johnson
#65. 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
#66. The cast of Hamlet had not moved much. They had that haunted yet hopeful look in their eyes, like the ones you see in photographs of people crammed into steerage compartments, traveling to some new, unknown land.
Maureen Johnson
#67. A woman who shaves or otherwise depilates her pubic curls has a profound interest in recreational sex.
Maureen Johnson
#69. It's always easier to say good-bye when you know it's just a prelude to hello.
Maureen Johnson
#70. I'm Keith," he said, "and you're ... clearly mad, but what's your name?
Maureen Johnson
#71. Early the next morning, they were on a tram out to the far edge of Amsterdam. Ginny liked the tram. It was like an overgrown toy train that had gotten loose on the streets. She looked out and saw the Netherlands wobbling by - its ancient houses and constant canals and people in practical shoes.
Maureen Johnson
#72. You don't know me yet," I said. "Rory was telling me she lives in a swamp," Charlotte said. "That's right," I said, turning up my accent a little. "These are the very first shoes I've ever owned. They sure do pinch my feet." Jerome gave a little snort.
Maureen Johnson
#73. He knows,"I said. "I tell him everything"
"Does that go both ways?" he asked.
"Does what go both ways?"
"You said you tell him everything," he replied. "You didn't say we tell each other everything
Maureen Johnson
#74. It took a lot of women like that, a lot of women who said "I'm not going to do what you expect me to do, because you have no idea what I'm capable of. I'm going to get dirty and use tools and live the way I want" to move the world forward.
Maureen Johnson
#75. and things that looked just like palaces even thought they probably weren't.
Maureen Johnson
#76. Fear can't hurt you. When it washes over you, give it no power. it's a snake with no venom.
Maureen Johnson
#77. We study there a lot because ... what other choice does society give us, right? It's Starbucks or death, sometimes.
Maureen Johnson
#78. My rule is: the second you find yourself doing something you hate, quit doing it.
Maureen Johnson
#79. Ah," he said. "I had an ... artistic disagreement with the director of the panto. As it happens, I take issue with the objectification of women in Cinderella, and the reliance on shoes as a means of identification. Surely you understand.
Maureen Johnson
#80. She called, "Aurora!" in a penetrating voice that could cause a small bird to fall dead out of the sky.
Maureen Johnson
#81. If they bulge in the brain or anywhere else of interest, the wallet is a good alternate location. And I should know.
Maureen Johnson
#83. I never shut up'
Yes, you do'
Not much'
I could make you shut up'
Oh, yeah? ... How?
Maureen Johnson
#84. It was okay to give up. I'd been brave. Everyone would say so. And yet ... even as I opened a dresser drawer and figured out which things I would take with me in this hypothetical scenario, I remembered the problem. There would still be ghosts. I would still have a future.
Maureen Johnson
#85. You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe out what came before.
Maureen Johnson
#86. We all know what we're doing. Whether we realize it or not.
Maureen Johnson
#87. Dr. Everest, got up and gave us a little pep talk. Mostly it boiled down to the fact that it was autumn, and everyone was back, and while that was a great thing, people better not get cocky or misbehave or he'd personally kill us all.
He didn't actually say those words, but that was the subtext.
Maureen Johnson
#88. 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
#89. New start or not, there was a line to be drawn, and that line was singing musicals to yourself as serious psychological motivation.
Maureen Johnson
#90. I had always liked him, but it never occurred to me to like him, like him.
Maureen Johnson
#91. The essay I had to read was called, "An Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope.
The first challenge was that the essay was, in fact, a very long poem in "heroic couplets". If something is called an essay, it should be an essay.
Maureen Johnson
#92. 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
#93. 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
#94. 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
#95. Sometimes it is worth any amount of suffering just to prevent giving your parents the opportunity to be right.
Maureen Johnson
#96. 'Harry Potter' achieved a very special act of actual magic: it made it completely acceptable for an adult to carry around, read and enjoy a children's book.
Maureen Johnson
#97. People can't really sympathize with you properly when you've woken them up
Maureen Johnson
#98. 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
#99. Quarrels are a natural part of relationships. Making up is always the best part.
Maureen Johnson
#100. One person's crazy is another person's sane, I guess.
Maureen Johnson
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