Jc > Jc's Quotes

“Taro came into the room, strands of hair flying free of the tie at the back of his skull, sweat plastering his cream-colored shirt against his chest and back. I wished I had an artist's skill, that I could make renderings of him in all his states of beauty. He would never want to look at them, or even know about them. I would just like them for myself. Maybe he would want to see them when he was much older, and beautiful in a different way.”
― Moira J. Moore, Heroes at Risk

“This is a book for those of you who want to be parents as well as people, who don't want to feel guilty about taking some time for yourself or your relationship (if you're even in one). It's for those folks who might, every once in a while, want to get drunk, and have sloppy sex without worrying that they're going to roll over on their kid because you all sleep in a "family bed" since that's how they do it in Taiwan and they have the highest math scores of any country on earth.”
― Brett Berk, The Gay Uncle's Guide to Parenting: Candid Counsel from the Depths of the Daycare Trenches

“This book is not for parents who want to raise a perfect child. You can probably make that kind of kid, but I don't think you should. I've met more than my share of young prodigies - kids who were pushed to skip grades, memorize Latin names for every insect, and greet all adults with firm handshakes. They're weird, and not in a good way, like a corgi wearing a tuxedo: sure it's cute, but does it truly know joy?”
― Brett Berk, The Gay Uncle's Guide to Parenting: Candid Counsel from the Depths of the Daycare Trenches

“Say something Becks. Say anything"
"You," I said. "I remember you." I kept my eyes shut, and felt his hands drop. He didn't move back.
"What do you remember about me?" There was strong emotion behind his voice. Something he fought to control.
With my eyes closed, I could easily picture the other side of the century.
"I remember the way your hand could cover my entire shoulder. The way your lower lip stuck out when you were working out a problem in your head. And how you flick your ring finger with your thumb when you get impatient."
I opened my eyes, and the words no longer got stuck in my throat on their way out. They flowed. "And when something surprises you and you don't know what to say, you get a tiny wrinkle in between your eyebrows." I reached up to touch the divot, then hesitated and lowered my hand. "It showed on the day the coach told you you'd made first-string quarterback. And it's showing now."
For a moment the space between us held no tension, no questions, no accusations.
Finally he leaned back, a stunned expression on his face. "Where do we go from here?"
"Nowhere, really," I whispered. "It doesn't change anything."
Eyebrows still drawn together, he said, "We'll see." Then he turned and left.
I tucked this moment away.
In the dark, dank world of the Tunnels, I would call upon this memory. And there would be a flicker of candlelight. If only for a moment.”
― Brodi Ashton, Everneath

“Firefighter is one of the few jobs kind enough to warn me away by containing two words I'm not interested in, unlike the deceptive bookkeeper.”
― Joel Stein, Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity

“Imagine who she would be if we unleashed her onto the world. I think she would rip the breath from all of us.”
― Melina Marchetta, Froi of the Exiles

“It's not that I like you least [...] it's that I feared you most. The reginita taught me to like you. There was a strange joy to her that lifted my spirits. But you, Quintana of Charyn, you made me love you.”
― Melina Marchetta, Froi of the Exiles

“Oh, fuck you, Flowers in the Attic!" Levi shouted back.”
― Rowell Rainbow

“Reagan was sitting up at Cath's desk when Cath woke up.
"Are you awake?"
"Have you been watching me sleep?"
"Yes, Bella. Are you awake?"
"No.”
― Rainbow Rowell, Fangirl

“Do you find me attractive?'
Gene told me the next day that I got it wrong. But he was not in a taxi, after an evening of total sensory overload, with the most beautiful woman in the world. I believed I did well. I detected the trick question. I wanted Rosie to like me, and I remembered her passionate statement about men treating women as objects. She was testing to see if I saw her as an object or as a person. Obviously the correct answer was the latter.
‘I haven’t really noticed,’ I told the most beautiful woman in the world.”
― Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project

“I met Rosie at the airport. She remained uncomfortable about me purchasing her ticket, so I told her she could pay me back by selecting some Wife Project applicants for me to date.
'Fuck you,’ she said.
It seemed we were friends again.”
― Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project

“As soon as my watch showed 5:00 p.m., I walked in. Gene was at the lectern of the darkened theatre, still talking, apparently oblivious to time, responding to a question about funding. My entrance had allowed a shaft of light into the room, and I realized that the audience's eyes were now on me, as if expecting me to say something.

'Time's up,' I said. 'I have a meeting with Gene.”
― Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project

“I can't do this because I can't... I can't be the man I want to be with you. And that means that this—this just becomes... another reminder of what I am not.”
― Jojo Moyes

“I turned in my seat. Will’s face was in shadow and I couldn’t quite make it out.
‘Just hold on. Just for a minute.’
‘Are you all right?’ I found my gaze dropping towards his chair, afraid some part of him was pinched, or trapped, that I had got something wrong.
‘I’m fine. I just . . . ’
I could see his pale collar, his dark suit jacket a contrast against it.
‘I don’t want to go in just yet. I just want to sit and not have to think about . . . ’ He swallowed.
Even in the half-dark it seemed effortful.
‘I just . . . want to be a man who has been to a concert with a girl in a red dress. Just for a few minutes more.’
I released the door handle.
‘Sure.’
I closed my eyes and lay my head against the headrest, and we sat there together for a while longer, two people lost in remembered music, half hidden in the shadow of a castle on a moonlit hill.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“Hey Clark', he said.'Tell me something good'. I stared out of the window at the bright-blue Swiss sky and I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn't have met, and who didn't like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other. And I told him of the adventures they had, the places they had gone, and the things I had seen that I had never expected to. I conjured for him electric skies and iridescent seas and evenings full of laughter and silly jokes. I drew a world for him, a world far from a Swiss industrial estate, a world in which he was still somehow the person he had wanted to be. I drew the world he had created for me, full of wonder and possibility.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“Push yourself. Don’t settle. Wear those stripy legs with pride. And if you insist on settling down with some ridiculous bloke, make sure some of this is squirreled away somewhere. Knowing you still have possibilities is a luxury. Knowing I might have given them to you has alleviated something for me.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“Shhh. Just listen. You, of all people. Listen to what Im saying. This...tonight...is the most wonderful thing you could have done for me. What you have told me, what you have done in bringing me here...knowing that, somehow, from that complete arse, I was at the start of this, you managed to salvage something to love is astonishing to me. But...I need it to end here. No more chair. No more pneumonia. No more burning limbs. No more pain and tiredness and waking up every morning already wishing it was over. When we get back, I am still going to go to Switzerland. And if you do love me, Clark, as you say you do, the thing that would make me happier than anything is if you would come with me. So I'm asking you - if you feel the things you say you feel - then do it. Be with me. Give me the end I'm hoping for.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“I placed my face so close to his that his features became indistict, and I began to lose myself in them. I stroked his hair, his skin, his brow, with my fingertips, tears sliding unchecked down my cheeks, my nose against his, and all the time he watched me silently, studying me intently as if he were storing each molecule of me away. He was already retreating withdrawing to somewhere I couldn't reach him.
I kissed him, trying to bring him back. I kissed him and let my lips rest against his so that our breath mingled and the tears from my eyes became salt on his skin, and I told myself that, somewhere, tiny particles of him would become tiny particles of me, ingested, swallowed, alive perpetual. I wanted to press every bit of me against him. I wanted to will something into him. I wanted to give him every bit of life I felt and force him to life.
I held him, Will Traynor ex-City whiz kid, ex-stunt diver, sportsman, traveller, lover. I held him close and said nothing, all the while telling him silently that he was loved. Oh, but he was loved.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“Time slowed, and stilled. It was just the two of us, me murmuring in the empty, sunlit room. Will didn't say much. He didn't answer back, or add a dry comment, or scoff. He nodded occasionally, his head pressed against mine, and murmured, or let out a small sound that could have been satisfaction at another good memory.
"It has been, the best six months of my entire life."
"Funnily enough, Clark, mine too."
And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn't bear it.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“It's just that the thing you never understand about being a mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man - the galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated off-spring - you see before you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love life. You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one.
I look at him and see the baby I held in my arms, dewing besotted, unable to believe that I'd created another human being. I see the toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears of fury after being bullied  by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love, the history.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“...I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn't have met, and who didn't like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn’t bear it. I honestly thought I couldn’t bear it.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“... if you're going to wear a dress like that you need to wear it with confidence. You need to fill it out mentally as well as physically.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“ And I don't want to look at you every day, to see you naked,to watch you wandering around the annexe in your crazy dresses and not...not be able to do what I want with you. Oh, Clark,if you had any idea what I want to do to you right now.And I...i can't live with that knowledge. I can't. It's Not who I am. I can't be the kind of man who just...accepts.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“You know, you would never have let those breasts so close to me if I weren’t in a wheelchair,’ he murmured.
I looked back at him steadily. ‘You would never have looked at my breasts if you hadn’t been in a wheelchair.’
‘What? Of course I would.’
‘Nope. You would have been far too busy looking at the tall blonde girls with the endless legs and the big hair, the ones who can smell an expense account at forty paces. And anyway, I wouldn’t have been here. I would have been serving the drinks over there. One of the invisibles.’
He blinked.
‘Well? I’m right, aren’t I?’
Will glanced over at the bar, then back at me. ‘Yes. But in my defense, Clark, I was an arse.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“I should have listened to my father. "Want to know the true definition of the triumph of hope over experience?" he would say. "Plan a fun family day out.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“You are scored on my heart,Clark. You were from the first day you walked in,with your ridiculous clothes and your complete inability to ever hide a single thing you felt.”
― Jojo Moyes, Me Before You

“Kaz leaned back. "What's the easiest way to steal a man's wallet?"
"Knife to the throat?" asked Inej.
"Gun to the back?" said Jesper.
"Poison in his cup?" suggested Nina.
"You're all horrible," said Matthias.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Jesper knocked his head against the hull and cast his eyes heavenward. “Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I’m going to get Wylan’s ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost.”
Brekker’s lips quirked. “I’ll just hire Matthias’ ghost to kick your ghost’s ass.”
“My ghost won’t associate with your ghost,” Matthias said primly, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows