The Last Little Blue Envelope Quotes

“It's always easier to say good-bye when you know it's just a prelude to hello.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“Even though she had been warned, she tripped over the bike. She probably tripped because she'd been warned and was telling herself not to trip over the bike. She did that sometimes. It was often easier not to know what obstacles were in the way.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“People would say that it's impossible to have a private pool in the city, unless you were some sort of rich mogul and had it on the roof of your penthouse or something. But it's not illegal to have a really clean dumpster, and if you want to fill it with water, and if you want to get in it... well, that's your prerogative. People always say they can't do things, that they're impossible. They just haven't been creative enough. 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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“Idea meets execution. Feeling becomes action.
I don't know why people find this idea so hard to get. I mean, you can throw any two people together, it doesn't mean they'll fall in love. Everyone knows this. No one quite understands how it works. It's just those people, where they are in their lives, how circumstance throws them together. Sure, it's happened before, but never quite in that way. Maybe they seem to come together all wrong. Maybe they've loved others. Maybe they don't always do right by each other...but it's still there, the love. The event. And no one would dare criticize it just because it's common, it's a little asymmetrical, and anyone can do it. It is unique. It is theirs. It is beautiful. They have made something that has been made a million times before and has also never existed before that moment.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“Why are Americans so fascinated by Ireland?” Keith asked... “you all think you’re Irish. What’s the appeal? Do you like the accent more? Is it all the magical rocks? Oh, look, a lep­rechaun...”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“He had let Aunt Peg live in his house and married her, so clearly he had a thing for flaky American types who liked to sneak off in the dead of night. That was, as Ginny remembered it, how America won the Revolution in the first place. The English walked around in bright red coats in straight lines and took breaks for tea, and the Americans snuck around dressed in rags and hid in trees and stole their horses. Or something. Whatever. She had to do this-it was her birthright. It was what George Washington would have wanted.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“Top Trumps appeared to be a game in which you got cards, and the cards had a picture (in this case, of a horse), and told you all kinds of stats for that horse, how fast it was, how big it was, etc. Whoever had the better horse won both the cards. You repeated this until someone had all the cards. So, basically it was exactly like high school, except it only took three minutes. Which was really a bit more humane, if you thought about it.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“She couldn't take her eyes off the boxers. Mostly, she had a view of the back, but he turned halfway when he looked over. She commanded herself not to look at the front flap, which, of course, was exactly what she honed in on.
He spit and put his mouth under the tap to get some water. All while just wearing underwear. All while she just stared at the crucial spot of the Action Pants.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“They weren't pressed together as closely as normal, but his shoulder bumped hers, then remained there. It was very subtle, and possibly even accidental, but it was enough.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“You want to play?" Ellis yelled. "All right, then! I played a lot of video games as a kid, bitches!"
"There!" Oliver yelled. "That way! Toward Boulevard Périphérique. There! There!"
The car swerved abruptly to the right. Ginny heard Keith swear for a solid ten seconds.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“This kind of thing always amazed Ginny--people who just walked away from institutions. People who left school when they didn't see the point. Aunt Peg had done that. Ginny knew she never would. That either made her someone who worked hard and finished things, or someone who didn't have the guts to break away from the pack. Maybe both.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“And I think something is beautiful if it reveals something important about what it means to be alive.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“She's gone. Been gone for ages. They split up right after you left. That's why the grass out front started growing again."
"He's got a new girlfriend?" she said quietly. "Thank god. You must be happy."
"Yeah. He does. It's a relief. She's a lot nicer. But then, your average angry snake is nicer than Fiona. I'm sure she's happier wherever she is now, burning orphans or whatever she does with her time.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“People always say they can't do things, that they're impossible. They just haven't been creative enough.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“You have to imagine your way through. Never say something can't be done, even if it's weird.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“I don't think I've ever seen you without braids. I thought your hair just grew that way.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“No one gets Paris after one visit. No one.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“She never drank tea at home. Tea was for England.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“She didn’t want him to have good qualities. Horrible people should be horrible all the time.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“That’s how you win at life. 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, The Last Little Blue Envelope

“I think something is art when it is created with intention. Serious intention. Even crazy intention. And I think something is beautiful if it reveals something important about what it means to be alive.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Last Little Blue Envelope