quotes by Meg Rosoff

"I don't get enough credit for the things I manage not to say."
— Meg Rosoff (how i live now)

"I was dying, of course, but then we all are. Every day, in perfect increments, I was dying of loss.
The only help for my condition, then as now, is that I refused to let go of what I loved. I wrote everything down, at first in choppy fragments; a sentence here, a few words there, it was the most I could handle at the time. Later I wrote more, my grief muffled but not eased by the passage of time.
When I go back over my writing now I can barely read it. The happiness is the worst. Some days I can't bring myself to remember. But I will not relinquish a single detail of the past. What remains of my life depends on what happened six years ago.
In my brain, in my limbs, in my dreams, it is still happening."
— Meg Rosoff (How I Live Now)

"I didn't seem to have that effect on anyone but it would have been a waste for both of us to be saints."
— Meg Rosoff (How I Live Now)

"On the warm stone walls, climbing roses were just coming into bloom and great twisted branches of honeysuckle and clematis wrestled each other as they tumbled up and over the top of the wall. Against another wall were white apple blossoms on branches cut into sharp crucifixes and forced to lie flat against the stone. Below, the huge frilled lips of giant tulips in shades of white and cream nodded in their beds. They were almost finished now, spread open too far, splayed, exposing obscene black centers. I've never had my own garden but I suddenly recognized something in the tangle of this one that wasn't beauty. Passion, maybe. And something else. Rage. "
— Meg Rosoff (How I Live Now)

"I can't even trust my own imaginary dog. How much lower can a person get?"
— Meg Rosoff

"The facts of his existence are plain. I know that he will never silence those unspeakable voices. He heard how people killed, and how they died and their voices infected him, coursed through his body, poisoned him. He didn't know how to turn off the noise, or turn the hate back out onto the world like the rest of us. He turned it on himself. You could see that from the scars on him."
— Meg Rosoff (How I Live Now)

"I don't get nearly enough credit in life for the things I manage not to say."
— Meg Rosoff (How I Live Now)

"I guess the difference between Gin and me is that when Gin got shut in the barn she thought Edmond didn't love her anymore but because I could feel Edmond out there somewhere always loving me I didn't have to howl all night."
— Meg Rosoff (How I Live Now)

"Fate is trying to kill me. I miss my dog. What's a doctor going to say? You're not ill, you're mad as a muffin? They'll either lock me up or tell me to get a grip and no one will believe the truth anyway."
— Meg Rosoff (Just In Case)

"I'm sorry I started all this by trying to fly and I'd take it back if I could but I can't, so please think of it from my point of view: if you die I will have a dead brother and it will be me instead of you who suffers.
Justin thought of his brother on that warm summer day, standing up on the windowsill holding both their futures, light and changeable as air, in his outstretched arms.
Of course, Justin thought, I'm part of his fate just as he's part of mine. I hadn't considered it from his point of view. Or from the point of view of the universe, either. It's just a playing field crammed full of cause and effect, billions of dominoes, each knocking over billions more, setting off trillions of actions every second. A butterfly flaps its wings in Africa and my brother in Luton thinks he can fly.
The child nodded. A piano might fall on your head, he said, but it also might not. And in the meantime you never know. Something nice might happen."
— Meg Rosoff (Just In Case)

"I frightened myself. I became the ghost Piper was so scared of."
— Meg Rosoff (How I Live Now)

"At the time, I didn't have the insight to wonder at the transient nature of despair, but now that I'm older I've seen how little it takes to turn a person's life around for better or worse. An event will do, or an Idea. Another person. An idea of a person. "
— Meg Rosoff (What I Was)

"The startled child gathered his thoughts.
I'm not entirely sure what the circumstances are, he said, but as a general rule I try to keep things simple. If I'm clear about what I want, other people have an easier time making me happy. It sounds basic, but most of the time it works.
"Duck." He spoke clearly, pointing to a wooden duck."
— Meg Rosoff (Just In Case)

"Where's your dog?" Peter's voice came from within the gushing stream of water. Justin thought he must have misheard.
"Pardon?"
"Your dog."
"Yes?"
"Isn't he with you today?" Justin looked at Peter.
"Ha bloody ha." Peter stuck his head out of the stream of water, features dripping. He smiled shyly.
"I love greyhounds." Justin stared.
"My dog is imaginary."
"Oh." Peter looked interested. "That's unusual." Justin put his head under the water. When he emerged, Peter was still looking at him.
"Less work," Peter offered, cheerily. "If the dog's imaginary, I mean. Not so much grooming, feeding, et cetera."
— Meg Rosoff (Just In Case)

"I love you. I'm madly in love with you. Well, madly obviously, given I'm mad as a mudlark. But you saved my life. I'd be dead without you. And you're so good to me. And you love me too. How lucky is that? Amazing! Amazingly lucky. I can't live without you. You're my lucky charm."
She felt a sudden desire to kill Justin's well-meaning friend."
— Meg Rosoff (Just In Case)