Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Jojo Moyes

We want a macho high-earner - with the sensitivity of Gok Wan. We want a man with Brad Pitt's six-pack - but one who's prepared to overlook our own muffin top. No wonder most men don't know if they're coming or going.

I always say that in any roomful of people, I could hive a novel out of any one person's family or life story.

Rejection is part of the process, so you can't let it crush you. My first three novels never made it into publication, but my fourth, 'Sheltering Rain,' was translated into 11 languages.

I try to read writers who are better than me because it inspires me to be better.

We seem to live in an age where we are quietly appalled by the idea of appetites, whether they be for sex, food or diamonds.

I've always been a focused person who knows how to get what I want.

Try to write at least 500 words a day. You may ditch 499 of them tomorrow, but you will still be moving forward.

What love is depends on where you are in relation to it. Secure in it, it can feel as mundane and necessary as air - you exist within it, almost unnoticing. Deprived of it, it can feel like an obsession; all consuming - a physical pain.

In 'Me Before You,' the two characters popped into my head fully formed, which is really strange and unusual. Other books, I sit on them for two or three months. I have a whole routine: I buy a nice book; I hand-write all their characteristics. I put them through little tests just to see how they would react to things.

I find my best writing time is actually 6 A.M., before the detritus of the day - the fish fingers and the school uniform and dogs and bills - have had a chance to clog up my brain. I can usually get 500 words done before 7 A.M. But it is difficult, and the Internet, and social networking, are terrible timesucks.

If chick-lit really is taking a commercial battering, I'd suggest it's because the marketing has been done to death. Covering everything in girlie pink and putting chocolate in the title may once have been a clever Pavlovian device but now makes readers feel a bit sick.

Chick-lit may be staggering on its heels, but women's fiction is alive and kicking.

Marriage is a decades-long experiment, conducted mostly in private; a test of will in the face of unexpected obstacles.

If the characters are compelling, readers will follow anywhere.

The fragrance I always wear is Coco by Chanel. I've worn it for 20 years. It suits me, it's classic, and I like the simplicity of only ever wearing one fragrance.

My writing life has included the struggle to bring up three children. What I do three or four times a year is take myself off to a hotel room to unblock a problem.

You have to write the story that's at the front of your head. There is no point in trying to write for the market; it won't ring true.

I started writing novels by not thinking about actually writing a whole novel - that felt altogether too daunting. I thought out a rough idea, then wrote chapter by chapter, and then by the time I'd hit 40,000 words, it was a challenge just to see if I could get to the end.

I always imagined a writer was someone who lived in an attic in Paris, but my mum instilled in me a belief that I could do anything - so I ended up writing my first novel while working nights as a news reporter.

Novelists seem to fall into two distinct categories - those that plan and those that just see where it takes them. I am very much the former category.

I have read books that are so cliched and lazy, my eyes have bled. But I also have read books marketed under the chick-lit umbrella that are so honest, clever and gritty that I've wanted to give up writing and paint walls instead.

Writers divide fairly cleanly into those who only work through what they hear and those who are more visual. I am the latter, where I lie down on my office floor and play scenes through my head to - cinematically, several times with different elements - to see what works. I can't write a scene until I can see it.

I have always written. I was one of those kids who would always fill exercise books with girls and telepathic ponies.

I love 'To Kill A Mockingbird' - it seems to offer up new layers every time you read it. I also love Kate Atkinson's 'Behind The Scenes At The Museum' - that's the book that started me writing.

I write in all sorts of places; it's a legacy of my time as a journalist, where I could turn out copy in a hotel corridor. But I have a little office that I rent in my local town, and that's my ideal place.

My Writers Guild of America card is one of my proudest possessions. I was given it after being invited to write the script for a film of my last novel, 'Me Before You,' which is being made by MGM. Whenever I look at it, I think, 'I'm a Hollywood writer!'

For every book that I write... I develop a history for each person and make sure they are well rounded and flawed. You have to know everything about them from their shoe size, to where they went to school, to what their first pet was, to what they like to eat, to what they want out of life.

If I don't cry while writing a key emotional scene, my gut feeling is it's failed.

My characters make incomprehensible decisions until you stand in their shoes. Then it makes more sense. Life is very rarely black and white, and most people are trying to do their best. I try not to judge.

Love is the driver for all great stories: not just romantic love, but the love of parent for child, for family, for country.

Unless you sell millions, I think it's very hard as a writer not to feel anxious about what you put out. I always feel I could do better.

My go-to winter recipe is beef and butternut squash stew, cooked in the slow oven all day.

I wrote three books before I got one published. Most writers do. Have faith, and know that with each work you are getting better.

Don't set pen to paper until you know your main characters inside out. Create files detailing their appearances, likes, dislikes, and personal background. You may not use all the information, but it is a crucial step in planning your story.

A stylish person, for me, is one who draws your eye without necessarily being showy; they wear clothes that are beautifully cut, flatter the wearer, and show that they are not impervious to fashion, but not a slave to it either.

I think there is an awful lot of technology for technology's sake. I have yet to be convinced by my husband that persuading our mobiles to talk to our computers is going to be quicker and more straightforward than scribbling a note in our kitchen diary.

She does not want to feel even the faintest temptation to call his mobile number, as she had done obsessively for the first year after his death so she could hear his voice on the answering service. Most days now his loss is a part of her, an awkward weight she carries around, invisible to everyone else, subtly altering the way she moves through the day. But today, the Anniversary of the day he died, is a day when all bets are off.

Because even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you still had your mother or father at your back, you'd be okay.

But just as nature abhors a vacuum -- so does the human heart.

How could you live each day knowing that you were simply whiling away the days until your own death?

??????You're going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. It always does feel strange to be knocked out of your comfort zone.

There is a hunger in you. A fearlessness. You just buried it, like most people do.

Sometimes when you get hammered till the small hours you feel pretty good in the morning, but really it's just because you're still a bit drunk. That old hangover is just toying with you, working out when to bite.

There is a whole lot more to life than winning.

Some mistakes... Just have greater consequences than others. But you don't have to let the result of one mistake be the thing that defines you. You, Clark, have the choice not to let that happen.

Push yourself. Don't Settle. Just live well. Just LIVE.

I let him know a hurt had been mended in a way that he couldn’t have known, and for that alone there would always be a piece of me indebted to him.

You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.

I thought, briefly, that I would never feel as intensely connected to the world, to another human being, as I did at that moment.

I told him I loved him,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “And he just said it wasn’t enough.” Her eyes were wide and bleak . “How am I supposed to live with that?

He smelt of the sun, as if it had seeped deep into his skin, and I found myself inhaling silently, as if he were something delicious.

All I can say is that you make me... you make me into someone I couldn't even imagine. You make me happy, even when you're awful. I would rather be with you - even the you that you seem to think is diminished - than with anyone else in the world.

When you put someone down all the time, eventually they stop listening to the sensible stuff.

You know, you spend your whole life feeling like you don't quite fit in anywhere. And then you walk into a room one day, whether it's at university or an office or some kind of club, and you just go, 'Ah. There they are.' And suddenly you feel at home.

I will never, ever regret the things I've done. Because most days, all you have are places in your memory that you can go to.

I chose to believe that God, a benign God, would understand our sufferings and forgive us our trespasses.

We are all part of some great cycle, some pattern that it was only God's purpose to understand.

You can only actually help someone who wants to be helped.

And it was suddenly very simple: There was no choice.

The thing about being catapulted into a whole new life--or at least, shoved up so hard against someone else's life that you might as well have your face pressed against their window--is that it forces you to rethink your idea of who you are. Or how you might seem to other people.