Maureen Johnson Quotes.

1. "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

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

3. "Oh, the ongoing love affair between hair and mouths. Hair always goes for the mouth. The mouth opens, and hair says, "I'm going in! I'm going in!" like a manic cave diver."
- Maureen Johnson, The Madness Underneath

4. "when something happens to me - good, bad, boring it doesn't matter - I have to tell someone to make it count. There's no point in anything happening if you can't talk about it."
- Maureen Johnson, The Madness Underneath

5. "You'd been petting a stuffed dog?' she said 'A dead one?' 'It was a really well stuffed dog' I clarified. 'I have seen some bad taxidermy. This was top-notch work. It would have fooled anyone."
- Maureen Johnson, The Madness Underneath

6. "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

7. "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. Stephen would not want to kiss me. He would back up in horror. And yet, I was still going to do it. I reached over, and I put my hand against his chest, then I moved closer. I could feel just the very tips of the gentle stubble on his cheek brushing against my skin. Rory, he said. But it was a quiet protest, and it went nowhere. For the first few seconds, he didn’t move—he accepted the kiss like you might accept a spoonful of medicine. Then I heard it, a sigh, like he had finally set down a heavy weight. I was pretty sure we were both kind of terrified, but I was completely sure that we were both doing this. We kissed slowly, very deliberately, coming together and then pulling apart and looking at each other. Then each kiss got longer, and then it didn’t stop. Stephen put his hand just under the edge of my shirt, holding it on the spot where the scar was. Sometimes the skin around the scar got cold—now it was warm. Now it was alive."
- Maureen Johnson, The Madness Underneath

8. "It was okay to give up. I'd been brave. Everyone would say so. And yet...even as I opened a dresser drawer and figured out which things I would take with me in this hypothetical scenario, I remembered the problem. There would still be ghosts. I would still have a future."
- Maureen Johnson, The Madness Underneath

9. "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

10. "Is this all right?" he asked. He was using that very low, somewhat husky universal kissing voice. "Huh?" I said, because I am sexy."
- Maureen Johnson, The Madness Underneath