Kitty Johnson > Quotes

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that if you have a crush on your best friend’s brother when you’re eleven—flat chested and too shy to say boo to a goose—he is always going to see you that way.”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“Don’t let life happen to you. Have a long, hard think about what you want and a long, hard look at what you’ve got, and see what syncs.”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“Think of all the time we’ve wasted.” “Maybe not. Maybe we needed all that wrong stuff, all that life, to get to this perfect moment.”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“to”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“Sometimes what’s best for us is staring us right in the face, and we can’t see it.”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“A biting wind was blowing across the farmyard from the sea”
― Kitty Johnson, Where the Sea Lavender Grows

“rustle”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“Maybe the hardest things are the most worthwhile,”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“very top was a photograph of a smiling woman holding a little dog close to her face so that they were cheek to cheek. “There’s Lilias, with her fool of a dog Compass. He was always running off, that dog. Went missing for over a year after Harry vanished, then turned up again out of the blue. Thin as anything, he was. Weak too. Didn’t think he’d pull through for a while.” “Did you ever find out what happened to him?” Ruth shook her head. “No. I always thought he must have jumped into some trade person’s vehicle and ended up miles from home; something like that. And of course we couldn’t tell Lilias he was back, because I suppose by then she was in France. Symonds and his wife took care of him for a while, and then the poor dog had to put up with me looking after him after I was discharged from the Wrens. Mind you, we rubbed along together pretty well most of the time. Both missed Lilias, I suppose. Until I packed up Marsh House and took him with me when I moved to London, he’d often sit outside staring down the garden path as if he was waiting for Lilias to come home, poor boy.” “Was he happy in London?” “He was, actually, very much to my surprise. I suppose it was a new start for both of us. I could never find it in my heart to sell Marsh House, though—too many memories. I returned to live there after I retired. But please, do keep looking through the photographs.”
― Kitty Johnson, Where the Sea Lavender Grows

“The world just lost a nugget of kindness. It will be a far colder, bleaker place as a result.”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“Everyone was vulnerable beneath the surface. Some people just hid it better than others.”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“we’re all at sixes and sevens.”
― Kitty Johnson, Where the Sea Lavender Grows

“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

–Annie Dillard, The Writing Life”
― Kitty Johnson

“projectile”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“Guilt is all wrapped up in grief, and you’re grieving, mate.”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters

“You couldn’t will yourself to love people, just as—apparently—you couldn’t will yourself to stop loving them.”
― Kitty Johnson, Five Winters