Quotes by Maureen Johnson

Claim whatever you want. Say you only want a happy family or a successful career or a big house. I say: no, that's not what you want. You'll settle for those things, but you really want a monkey that does your evil bidding. Pullman is a genius just for this.

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.

When she emerged, Keith was watching the tiny round window of the under-the-counter washing machine. "Put your clothes in for a wash," he said. "They were disgusting."Ginny always thought that the only way of getting clothes clean was by drowning them in scalding water and then whipping them around in a violent centrifugal motion that caused the entire washing machine to vibrate and the floor to shake. You beat them clean. You made them suffer. This machine used about half a cup of water and was about as violent as a toaster, plus it stopped every few minutes, as if it were exhausted from the effort of turning itself.Sluff, sluff, sluff sluff. Rest. Rest. Rest.Click.Sluff, sluff, sluff, sluff. Rest. Rest. Rest."Who thought to put a window on a washing machine?" Keith asked. "Does anyone just sit and watch their wash?"You mean, besides us?""Well," he said, "yeah. Is there any coffee?

I'm done. I'm going to go to bed and read important books about theater.""It would would be easier if you just said porn," Scarlett said."No idea what you're talking about. But knock first if you need me.

My final word: don't follow your dreams . . . chase them. With a stick, or a shovel, or whatever you have handy. Get that [bleep]ing dream!

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.

People can't really sympathize with you properly when you've woken them up

People were freaked out, but they showed it in weird ways. Back home, people would have been weeping and doing a lot of very public group hugs. At Wexford people just aggressively pretended nothing had happened.

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.

It was as if the news itself wanted to reassure me. Even Jack the Ripper himself had reappeared as part of the greeting committee.

i get a little romantic about the old Empire State. Just looking at it makes me want to play some Frank Sinatra tunes and sway a little. I have a crush on a building. I'd been in there several times but never to work. I always knew there were offices in there but the face never penetrated, really. You don't work in the Empire State Building. You propose in the Empire State Building. You sneak a flask up there and raise a toast to the whole city of New York.

I sleep better knowing that a naked cork-eater is not sneaking around at night, stealing my underwear.

I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and caring about it are two very different things, and I didn't care.