Maureen Johnson Quotes

Maureen Johnson

Maureen Johnson is an American author of young adult fiction. Her published novels include series leading titles such as 13 Little Blue Envelopes, The Name of the Star, Truly Devious, and Suite Scarlett. (Maureen Johnson Quotes)

“A book gives you everything. It gives you a window into other souls, other worlds. The world is a door. Books are the key.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“A half hour later, with a new schedule and an alarming set of “personal academic benchmarks” to meet, Steve was released back into the wild, feeling a confusing blend of joy and terror, which was often a ticket to a ride on the anxiety roller coaster.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“After that, I felt like I had two lives. There was the me I had been before the attack, the one people knew and wanted to relate to. The one people wanted to comfort and fix. And there was another me, a hidden me that no one ever saw. There was a me who had tasted death. That me knew things others people didn’t know.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“Albert Ellingham said knowledge was his religion and libraries were his church, so he built a church.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“All the money, all the power—none of it compares to a good book. A book gives you everything. It gives you a window into other souls, other worlds.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“Although it was very cold, he wore no coat. I think some English people think coats are for the weak.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“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

“And if we get caught, I will claim I made you go. At gunpoint. I am American. People will assume I’m armed.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“Anxiety and excitement are cousins; they can be mistaken for each other at points. They have many features in common—the bubbling, carbonated feel of the emotion, the speed, the wide eyes and racing heart. But where excitement tends to take you up, into the higher, brighter levels of feeling, anxiety pulls you down, making you feel like you have to grip the earth to keep from sliding off as it turns.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“Anxiety does not ask your permission. Anxiety does not come when expected. It’s very rude. It barges in at the strangest moments, stopping all activity, focusing everything on itself It sucks the air our of your lungs and scrambles the world.”
Maureen Johnson
The Hand on the Wall

“Anxiety is very accommodating. Minutes ago, Stevie’s anxiety was all about failure. It neatly converted itself into worry about places called Bounce Houses and not having hot water or air-conditioning. It was perfectly ready to bring the snakes to the party. It’s a big tent. All problems are welcome.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“Anxiety, her therapist had told her many times, never killed anyone. It felt like death, but it was an illusion. A terrible illusion that inhabited your body and tried to make it its puppet. It told you nothing mattered because everything was made of fear.”
Maureen Johnson
The Hand on the Wall

“Are you trying to make me have an emotion?…Because I’ve spent by whole life learning how to repress and deflect and you’re kind of ruining my thing”
Maureen Johnson
The Hand on the Wall

“Avery had sixth and seventh and eighth senses and could tell more from the way someone stood or said “see you later” than Mel could if she stole the person’s diary and read it cover to cover.”
Maureen Johnson
The Bermudez Triangle

“Before she could answer, the waiter sprang at his chance to brush some crumbs from David’s chair. He had been hanging around their table like a vulture, waiting for them to eat the last papadum crumb so he could take away the basket. He eyed the last piece sadly, as if it were the barrier between him and eternal happiness. Ginny grabbed it and shoved it in her mouth. The man looked relieved and took the basket but immediately returned to stare mournfully at their water glasses.”
Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“But when we live, we believe that we have a right to everything in the universe – that everything is ours to touch.”
Maureen Johnson
The Shadow Cabinet

“Daughters were supposed to like prom dresses and getting their hair done and shopping. Stevie assumed those things were all fine and good, but she didn’t understand them, really—at least not in the way that you were supposed to understand them. She never once in her life felt the desire to dress up,”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“Don’t get stabbed. It makes everything awkward.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“English rain feels obligatory, like paperwork. It dampens already damn days and slicks the stones.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“Eton produced Society’s Monsters – everyone knew that. Politicians, mostly, and occasionally people who ran banks and all the other institutions that stole the world’s spoils for themselves.”
Maureen Johnson
The Boy in the Smoke

“Even if Shawn and Paul wanted to team up to murder people they thought had wronged them, there seemed little chance that the woman she’d just met would have had any part in that.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“Even if you knew your routine like the back of your hand, a checklist was still important.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“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 Quotes)
Maureen Johnson
The Last Little Blue Envelope

“Every time you try to flirt with her, a puppy dies.”
Maureen Johnson
Suite Scarlett

“Fashions come and go, but jawlines are eternal.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“Fear can’t hurt you. When it washes over you, give it no power. it’s a snake with no venom.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“Few words are more chilling when put together than make friends.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“For you, there is underage, and then, there is underage. I believe a taste of wine is perfectly acceptable, but please stick to one glass tonight. Now, let’s work on ambiance.”
Maureen Johnson
Suite Scarlett

“From this close, she could see the color of his eyes perfectly. They were a misty, shifting blue marbled with gray, like smoke rising through an early morning sky.”
Maureen Johnson
Suite Scarlett

“Go see old virgins! Now ask a strange boy out, you shy, Retarded thing!”
Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“Guilt isn’t always a rational thing, Clio realized. Guilt is a weight that will crush you whether you deserve it or not.”
Maureen Johnson
Girl at Sea

“He grinned the grin of a presenter on some educational show with a cartoon dog, as if to say, “Come with me if you want to learn.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“Her parents had no idea that you could meet people outside of school and it wasn’t freaky and the internet was the way of finding your people.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“His voice was deep and smooth and rich, like what gravy might sound like if gravy could talk.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“How could she be anxious when everything was so cheerful? Very easily, as it happens. Brain chemistry doesn’t care about how pretty things are.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“How does this keep happening to you?” David said. “Because I look,” Stevie replied. “A lot of things happen when you go out and do them on purpose.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“I am out of ideas and need to conserve my energy so I can freak out more efficiently.”
Maureen Johnson
The Hand on the Wall

“I could pretend, at least, and if I pretended long enough, maybe I could make it into a reality.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“I decided to deflect her attitude by giving a long, Southern answer. I come from people who know how to draw things out. Annoy a Southerner, and we will drain away the moments of your life with our slow, detailed replies until you are nothing but a husk of your former self and that much closer to death.”

“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 guess life is full of maybes.”
Maureen Johnson
Girl at Sea

“I had always assumed the weekend was a holy tradition, respected by good people everywhere. Not so at Wexford.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“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
The Name of the Star

“I heard about her from one of the top librarians at the public library, this girl from Avenue A who read Greek and slipped into one of the rare books rooms three times. They said she was trouble, but good trouble. Good trouble.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“I know a true believer when I see one-that high fervor, that total conviction, the calm that explodes into emotion in a moment. I was in a car full of conviction, full of ancient Greek rituals and destroying death. And murderers.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“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
The Madness Underneath

“I like you because you were mad. And you’re pretty. And pretty sane for a mad person.”
Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“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
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“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.”
Maureen Johnson
The Last Little Blue Envelope

“I ran like a thing that runs.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“I remember how, at first, I had felt the tension in his lips, as if he was trying to make a barrier between us – then they had relaxed, parted slightly. And that’s when I had known he wanted to kiss me, wanted to give in. That little parting of the lips, the little sigh that came out… I would hear that sigh forever. That little, little sound when the whole world seemed to open up.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“I sleep better knowing that a naked cork-eater is not sneaking around at night, stealing my underwear.”
Maureen Johnson
The Bermudez Triangle

“I still have a whopping bad case of what you call scag magnetism. I thought i had gotten rid of it there, but it looks like scary guys still materialize from thin air in my presence. They are drawn to me. I am the North Pole, and they are the explorers of love.”
Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“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

“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
The Madness Underneath

“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

“I’m still going to eat a lot of tacos,” Nate said. “But I’m going to do it judgmentally”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“If they bulge in the brain or anywhere else of interest, the wallet is a good alternate location. And I should know.”
Maureen Johnson
Suite Scarlett

“In my mind, I said the best things to Elton. I wrote countless excellent notes that I never sent. I came up with clever and highly detailed imaginary situations in which we were thrown together and it somehow made him realize that life without me was a hollow shell. But he didn’t look like a hollow shell. He looked like he was back on the soccer team, all calf muscles and lean body.”
Maureen Johnson
Devilish

“In our lifetime those who kill the newsworld hands them stardom and these are the ways on which I was raised. —Morrissey, “The Last of the Famous International Playboys”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“Irony is the word I forget the meaning of immediately after I look it up, but I kind of feel like I live in a constant state of it.”
Maureen Johnson
The Bermudez Triangle

“It could have been like a fairy tale. But fairy tales aren’t real. Things don’t work like that. There’s a price for everything.”
Maureen Johnson
Girl at Sea

“It is unclear what I bring to the table here, but I thank you for having me.
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“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

“It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“It was also helpful that the hotel’s owner tended to turn a blind eye to room sharing. A room filled with too many guests was better than one with no guests at all.”
Maureen Johnson
Suite Scarlett

“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
The Name of the Star

“It was clearly one of those mornings when I was particularly American.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“It was like the entire world was colluding to make me feel insane, and it was doing a really good job.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“It was very pretty. It also made Marlene look very demure, which she probably hated. Ideally, Marlene probably wanted an outfit that had a special holder for a gun.” (Maureen Johnson Quotes)
Maureen Johnson
Scarlett Fever

“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

“It’s not bad or good. It just is. That’s something you’ll find out if you decide to go into this line of work. You have to take things as they are, not how you hear they’re supposed to be.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“Lecturing Brooks was as useful as lecturing a cat.”
Maureen Johnson
The Key to the Golden Firebird

“Lies are a tremendous karmic setback. Keep it up and you’ll come back in the next life as something without a spine. You’re not fine. And you don’t have to be fine.”
Maureen Johnson
Scarlett Fever

“Life is always going to be a series of ouch-making moments, and the question was, was I going to go all fetal position, or was I going to woman up? I went into fetal position on the bed to think about this. Fetal position turned out to be very comfortable.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“Living well is the best revenge”
Maureen Johnson
Girl at Sea

“Look at us, we are the three Nina, Mel, and there’s Avery Shout it loud, then shout it louder Shout it out, Triangle Power!”
Maureen Johnson
The Bermudez Triangle

“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
Devilish

“Maybe it was that I was broken. Maybe it was just that I was out of my mind. But it occurred to me that I was going to kiss him. The thought just arrived, certain knowledge delivered from some greater, more knowledgeable place. I was going to kiss him.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“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

“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

“My moose,” she said in a low voice. “I finally got it. The universe paid me in moose.”
Maureen Johnson
The Hand on the Wall

“Never question the girl who works in the library” -Eric”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“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
Scarlett Fever

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

“No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong.”
Maureen Johnson
Girl at Sea

“No shoe should be judged by its footprint, for the foot has a print of its own.”
Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“Nothing was quite like it was supposed to be.”
Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“Nowhere was good. Except with Eric. He had both perfumed and poisoned her entire world.”
Maureen Johnson
Suite Scarlett

“Of course I worry too much,” Nate said. “But I’m usually right. The people who worry are always right. That’s how that works.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“Once again, her parents’ problems had run through her life like a piece of heavy equipment, smashing everything in their way.”
Maureen Johnson
Girl at Sea

“Once skin touched tile and part of her soul died, she knew what slippers were for.”
Maureen Johnson
The Hand on the Wall

“Paris seemed to make good on the promise it made in every photograph of it she’d ever seen.”
Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“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

“Periodically someone would encourage her to walk through the woods or try out the mountain bike. Stevie viewed these offers with grave suspicion and declined.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“Quarrels are a natural part of relationships. Making up is always the best part.”
Maureen Johnson
Suite Scarlett

“Schools may be famous for many things: academics, graduates, sports teams. They are not supposed to be famous for murders.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“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
The Madness Underneath

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

“She didn’t even notice right away that a small animal had come out from behind a nearby car and was slowly making its way toward the trash can she was standing near. She flipped through some old files in her mind, trying to come up with what this thing might be, and after a few seconds decided that-impossible as it seemed-it was a fox.”
Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“She firmly held the theory that everyone gets at least one very stupid superpower.”
Maureen Johnson
Girl at Sea

“She wasn’t as bad as Todd, as good as Sabrina, or the well-meaning drug dealer who almost made it to safety. She was simply there, the girlfriend, the fourth victim.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“She wrinkled her nose to dismiss the thought. This is how she had learned to release some of her anxiety- thoughts may come, but she didn’t have to follow them everywhere they wanted her to go”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“Sherlock said, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“Slippers always seemed like kind of a nonsense item until she came to Ellingham and felt the bathroom floor on the first proper day of wintry weather. Once skin touched tile and part of her soul died, she knew what slippers were for.”
Maureen Johnson
The Hand on the Wall

“So much of anxiety was anxiety about having anxiety.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“Something about this boat screamed, “I am a very popular model in the world’s oil-bearing regions. I cost more than your soul!”
Maureen Johnson
Girl at Sea

“Something in the room had changed. My hand was on the floor, next to Stephen, but he wasn’t as close to my hand as he had been. He had moved several inches over, toward the table. Just as I realized this, his arm shot out for the knife. In the next moment, he had rolled up on his knees and had Sadie caught in the crook of his arm. His face was pale, and he looked a bit shaken by the sudden movement. He was alive.”
Maureen Johnson
The Shadow Cabinet

“Sometimes anxiety did that—it could slow you down or speed you up.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“Sometimes artist 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.”
Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“Sometimes I feel like I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me when I can be normal again,’ she said. ‘I keep thinking I’ll get a letter. Or a call. When does it happen?’ Pete looked like he wanted to walk toward her, but then he fell back against the car. The staring contest between them for almost a minute, and finally Pete exhaled loudly. It’s okay,’ he said.”
Maureen Johnson
The Key to the Golden Firebird

“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
The Name of the Star

“Sometimes you have to leave the fucking Shire, Frodo.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“Sometimes you have to see the bathroom to know the hard reality of things.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“Sometimes, Gin, 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
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“Stevie had often wondered how these conversations worked, when people talked about feelings and touching and all of the stuff she thought was meant to be kept carefully bottled inside her own personal apothecary. Now someone wanted in, to take the lids off the vials, to peer at the contents. Stevie was unaware that people were even allowed to talk about emotions this frankly. This was not how things happened at home.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“Stevie’s other big interest outside crime was disaster, so she had seen Titanic many times. It was clear to her that there was plenty of room on that door for two people. Jack was murdered.”
Maureen Johnson
The Hand on the Wall

“That Nate was feeling so positive should have served as a warning, but people rarely recognize signs when they appear.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“That particular April day was strange and foggy, blurring spaces between the trees and blanketing all of Ellingham in a milky mist. Dottie decided that the weather lent itself to a mystery. Sherlock Holmes would be perfect.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“That’s the thing about speaking—you can talk and talk and have no idea at all what the words leaving your mouth mean, or where they came from.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“The best part, without any question, was the tie. I’ve always liked ties, but it seemed like too much of a Statement to wear them.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“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
Suite Scarlett

“The funny thing about stop signs is that they’re also start signs.”
Maureen Johnson
The Key to the Golden Firebird

“The moon was thin like a hook, and the owls were calling. The smell of fall leaves blew on the wind and Hayes was dead.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“The package contained a collection of envelopes much like the first. They were all blue. They were all made of heavy paper. Good quality. The kind from one of those boutique paper stores. The front of each envelope was either illustrated in pen and ink or watercolor, and they were bundled together with an overstretched rubber band that had been doubled around them.”
Maureen Johnson
13 Little Blue Envelopes

“The questions that creep around at four thirty in the morning are not the kind that can be easily dismissed. You can beat them with a shovel, and they’ll just keep getting back up.”
Maureen Johnson
Scarlett Fever

“The real magic rocks are the friends we make along the way.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“The thing about looking just a little bit means it’s really easy to look a little bit more.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“The truth was that she had managed to betray everyone by doing nothing. No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong. Not cheating on a non-boyfriend with the non-boyfriend of a friend. The pressure of thinking that one through made her swollen body ache.” (Maureen Johnson Quotes)
Maureen Johnson
Girl at Sea

“The whole “weak in the knees” thing, which she always thought was just some idiotic expression back from the golden age of idiotic expressions, was real.”
Maureen Johnson
Suite Scarlett

“The wonderful thing about reality is that it is highly flexible. One minute, all is doom; the next, everything is abloom with possibility.”
Maureen Johnson
The Hand on the Wall

“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 possibly be true. Human experience is far too varied.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“There is nothing so serious as a game.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“There is something about early mornings that changes your perceptions subtly. The light is new; no one has put on the defenses of the day. All is reset and not quite real yet.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“There were for sure snakes at the camp. It was entirely made of snakes. Why hadn’t she thought of the snakes?”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“There’s really only one reason you’d all be so specific and all tell that same story over and over in the same way. It’s because it wasn’t true.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“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

“Things change. Never act is if situations won’t change”
Maureen Johnson
The Boy in the Smoke

“This is England,” he explained. “Tell someone it’s a procedure, and they’ll believe you. The pointless procedure is one of our great natural resources.”
Maureen Johnson
The Madness Underneath

“This is how she had learned to release some of her anxiety—thoughts may come, but she didn’t have to follow them everywhere they wanted her to go.”
Maureen Johnson
The Box in the Woods

“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

“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

“This report claims that after the kidnapping and murders, Albert Ellingham rewrote his will, leaving his fortune to anyone who could find his daughter, dead or alive, provided they were not responsible for the crimes.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“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
Girl at Sea

“Two hours later, Paulina, their housekeeper, pulled up in her car. Her job was to clean the house twice a week, not to drive all the way to the outskirts of Cheltenham to pick up forgotten children. Paulina’s English was poor, and she had little to say to Stephen or the people at the school. She was always kind, though, and greeted him with a Twix bar and a sympathetic manner. Stephen tried to make some conversation on the drive back. He didn’t really speak Polish, but had taken the first two levels of an online, self-teaching course in order to try to communicate with her. She always appreciated his efforts and smiled, though it was a wincing smile that suggested he was destroying her language with the dull edge of his tongue.”
Maureen Johnson
The Boy in the Smoke

“We all know what we’re doing. Whether we realize it or not.”
Maureen Johnson
Suite Scarlett

“We Deveauxs preferred to talk you to death, rather than face you in physical combat.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“Welsh is an actual, currently used language and our next-door neighbors Angela and Gaenor spoke it. It sounds like Wizard.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“We’re both broken right now. Something’s happened to us. But we can do this. We have to. I’m with you. Whatever is going on in your mind right now, I’m with you.”
Maureen Johnson
The Shadow Cabinet

“What do you do when the devil turns up in your living room and offers you everything you want?”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“What serves on either side, and if you wish to hide, may protect you from your foe, or show him where to go?”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“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
The Boy in the Smoke

“What you lack in any investigation is time. With every passing hour, evidence slips away. Crime scenes are compromised by people and the elements. Things are moved, altered, smeared, shifted. Organisms rot. Wind blows dust and contaminants. Memories change and fade. As you move away from the event, you move away from the solution.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“When you have enough power and money, you can dictate the meanings of words.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“Where her books were, she was. Get the books right and the rest will follow. Now she could address the rest of the room.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“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 Quotes)
Maureen Johnson
The Last Little Blue Envelope

“With that, I splashed some water on my face, fixed on a smile, and stepped out. I would find Jerome. I would make him explain to me what I was missing. We would laugh, then we would kiss with tongue, and all would be well.”
Maureen Johnson
The Name of the Star

“Yes, she still smelled a bit of night funk, but that was fine. Sometimes detectives smell like night funk.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“You can never visit some 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

“You could be naked, you could scream and hang out on the roof, but you do not mess with the place with the books.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“You could make something amazing out of something awful.”
Maureen Johnson
The Last Little Blue Envelope

“You could wear the same outfit every single day and no guy – who isn’t gay – will notice.”
Maureen Johnson
Suite Scarlett

“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

“You have to take things as they are, not how you hear they’re supposed to be.”
Maureen Johnson
Truly Devious

“You have to try. Trying is the first step to whatever comes next.”
Maureen Johnson
The Vanishing Stair

“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
Suite Scarlett