Jaclyn Moriarty > Quotes

“I hope you feel better today. Please ring me at work if you are dead.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, Feeling Sorry for Celia

“I'm screwed up, mixed up, messed around, dive-bombing, crashing and burning.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“She's always getting into trouble because she gets bored really really easily. [...]
My mum says it's because Celia has an attention span the size of a sesame seed.
Celia's mum says it's because Celia's identity is unfurling itself slowly, like a tulip bud, and it's a breathtakingly beautiful thing to see.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, Feeling Sorry for Celia

“I saw your name in lights last night.
It's the middle of the night,
and I can't sleep,
thinking all my trumpeting thoughts,
and I get out of bed,
open the curtains,
and look into the night full of stars,
and you know what I saw?
Your name.
Like the stars joined up and spelled the word for me.
Like a sign.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“Emily: YOU CAN'T SPEAK AND TYPE AT THE SAME TIME, BINDY!

Bindy: Watch me.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“Well, first you have to be very, very funny. I have realized that it is essential for a boy to be funny. Otherwise, what is the point in a boy?”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“It's a lot easier to be crazy or mad than to just get on with living.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“...a choice had to be made when your husband said something unkind. Specifically: be cruel, be strong, or sulk. 'Be cruel' by saying an unkind thing back. 'Be strong' by choosing not to mind. But to do this, you have to use up a piece of your love. You have to shave off enough of the love to forgive. After a while, the piece might grow back, but sometimes not. And if you shave off all the soft curves, you'll be left with a sharp-edged love. 'Sulk' by sulking. Sulking is simply delaying the choice to be cruel or strong.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Spell Book of Listen Taylor

“What does it mean?" Emily said, in a low, panicked voice: "What does it mean if a rainbow comes before rain?”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie

“I was just peeling some potatoes for dinner and they all looked like crisp white potatoes until I cut them in half. Every single one had a rotten, gray core. [. . .] I feel like the whole world is black, rotting, and evil. Even when it looks crisp on the outside, that's a lie, because you can't trust anything - on the inside it's nothing like mold. [. . .] So, see, nothing good is ever going to happen, and anyone who says it is, is lying to you.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“My father, I never knew, except for this one time when he threw a ball and told me to go fetch it.

"Dad," I said. "Am I a dog?"

"Lydia," he said. "I apologize.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“Dear Complete and Utter Stranger,
The first thing that I have to say is that I hate oatmeal. I really hate it. And you know what? If you like oatmeal at all? I mean even the tiniest bit? I mean, say you were lost in the Himalayas, right, and you hadn't eaten anything except a Mars Bar for about seven years, right, and you're really cold and your fingers are all dropping off, right, and you look behind this rock, and there's this bowl of oatmeal?
Say you would even think about eating the oatmeal?
Well, JUST DON'T BOTHER WRITING TO ME, OKAY?”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, Feeling Sorry for Celia

“I never saw anything like it. He was like the bit in the movie where Tom Cruise is a lawyer and he's decided he's really going to win this case, for the sake of justice and the American way, and that? And it's suddenly like bang-bang-bang—grabbing files off shelves and slamming them down on the desk and punching numbers in the telephone and shaking out the phone cord dramatically , and you know, snapping out instructions to all the assistants around the desk, like: "Get me all the phone records of the President of the United States for the last fifty years," and "Get me the names of every client who ever ate a banana," and "Let's get some Chinese take-out up here, on the double!”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, Feeling Sorry for Celia

“Her skin is pale as watermelon sucked free of its juices.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Ghosts of Ashbury High

“You're making me nervous by being so weird.
But your weirdness is what I like about you.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“Are you sure you want me to go after Christina? Lately I've kind of thought I might just give up on that. Plus, didn't you and I need to gaze into each other's eyes first? How will I know how to gaze at Christina? And my pebble kicking? Disaster.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“When she got back from taking Cassie to school Fancy knew that she ought to be working on her wilderness romance. She had promised thirty thousand words to her editor by tomorrow, and she had only written eleven. Specifically:
His rhinoceros smelled like a poppadom: sweaty, salty, strange and strong.
Her editor would cut that line.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Spell Book of Listen Taylor

“And then something happened. It was a fragment of time, a breath of time. It was like being in a car in pouring rain and driving under an overpass, and for just that second there is a profound, powerful sense of reprieve- the utter silence of non-rain.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, A Corner of White

“THERE IS A GAS LEAK IN THE BASEMENT OF THE SCHOOL. THERE IS NO NEED TO PANIC. IT IS JUST A GAS LEAK WHICH MAY LEAD TO AN EXPLOSION AT ANY MOMENT. PLEASE ALL GO TO THE OVAL, AS PER THE FIRE DRILLS.

-Charlie on the P.A.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“and if we can change
things that have
already happened

if those planes can fly in
uneasy formation

if that splinter moon
can blow away the shadows

then anything,
anything at all.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Ghosts of Ashbury High

“And she looks at me with her eyes open wide and a face that says: Oh my God, I'm muckin' around in my sexy Jesus-boots, in my crazy dreamworld, and I've opened the door and let you in on my crazy dreamworld and that's so embarrassing but, actually, who cares? because it's funny.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Ghosts of Ashbury High

“This is what I want you all to do. I want you to open a new document and type up a list of three problems in your life. Not the universe's life - your own. Underneath, type the solutions."

"If we know the solutions," said Belle, "they're not problems."

"Exactly," said Denny. "You do know the answers to most of your problems. Somewhere deep inside, you know.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, A Corner of White

“Who knows if all our brains are inventing the same thing? I mean, how do we know that the thing YOUR eyes see and call "red" is the same thing that I call "red"?”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, A Corner of White

“The Irish people didn't get on that well with each other either. They hated the Catholics, was the main issue, as I see. You can't blame them for that. If I understand correctly, Catholics do not believe in contraception. So, you know, sex is not relaxing.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Ghosts of Ashbury High

“Emily said ... Well, I read that it's important to sleep. While you sleep, the hippopotamus in your brain replays things that happend during the day, e.g. what you studied. So therefore it remembers it for you.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Ghosts of Ashbury High

“I've been sniffing out the guys in my English class (to the extent that this is possible without getting my throat cut), but they smell the same way they always do: like feet and testicles. As opposed to freesias.

I don't want to keep sniffing them, Lyd.

- Letter from Seb to Lyd.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Year of Secret Assignments

“3:12 pm
Secretly, I admit, I find many of my classmates annoying. I've often thought to myself, 'Good grief, these people are five-year-olds. Why must I spend my days among them?' But have I ever said such things aloud? No. I have been nothing but generous to them, and kept these thoughts to myself.
And how have they repaid me? Have they been grateful or kind? Ho NO!”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie

“It's a vicious cycle. It's like a washing machine with the lid jammed down. -Christina Kratovac (pg 53)
”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, Feeling Sorry for Celia

“I am a student of love.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, The Ghosts of Ashbury High

“Early on, when they'd just started home schooling together, he'd written a note on the margin of her page: "What's your star sign?"

She'd turned to him, "What does my star sigh?" and he'd seen how much she'd liked the idea that she owned a star, and that it sighed; he'd seen in her eyes that her mind was rushing through the possible words that it could sigh.

It's true that his handwriting was bad: the "n" looked a lot like an "h."

But when he's crossed it out and written "sign," underlining the "n" three times, a vagueness had wandered onto her face, and she'd thought for a moment, then said, "Pisces," and smiled.”
― Jaclyn Moriarty, A Corner of White