Jandy Nelson Quotes

I can't shove the dark out of my way.

~ Jandy Nelson

Let me just unsubscribe to my own mind already, because I don't get any of it.

~ Jandy Nelson

I look into his sorrowless eyes and a door in my heart blows open. And when we kiss, i see that on the other side of that door is sky.

~ Jandy Nelson

The.World.Is.Not.A.Safe.Place.

~ Jandy Nelson

I'd been making desicions for days.I picked out the dress Bailey would wear forever-a black slinky one- innapropriate- that she loved.I chose a sweater to go over it, earrings, bracelet, necklace, her most beloved strappy sandals.I collected her makeup to give to the funeral director with a recent photo-I thought it would be me that would dress her;I didn't think a strange man should see her nakedtouch her bodyshave her legsapply her lipstickbut that's what happened all the same.I helped Gram pick out the casket,the plot at the cemetery.I changed a few linesin the obituary that Big composed.I wrote on a piece of paper what I thoughtshould go on the headstone.I did all this without uttering a word.Not one word, for days,until I saw Bailey before the funeraland lost my mind.I hadn't realized that when people say so-and-sosnappedthat's what actually happens-I started shaking her-I thought I could wake her upand get her the hell out of that box.When she didn't wake,I screamed: Talk to me.Big swooped me up in his arms, carried me out of the room, the church,into the slamming rain,and down to the creekwhere we sobbed togetherunder the black coat he held over our headsto protect us from the weather.

~ Jandy Nelson

If she were drowning, I'd hold her head under

~ Jandy Nelson

Me would like an invisibility cloak to get the hell out of this mess.

~ Jandy Nelson

I have a very low eerie threshold.

~ Jandy Nelson

I'm thinking the reason I've been so quiet all those years is only because Brian wasn't around yet for me to tell everything to.

~ Jandy Nelson

There's nothing giggly about Heather usually. She's the opposite, hanging out with her is like sitting in an empty church. That's why I like her. She's quiet and serious and a thousand years old and seems like she can talk to the wind.

~ Jandy Nelson

In photographs of us together, she is always looking at the camera, and I am always looking at her.

~ Jandy Nelson

What is bad for the heart is good for art.

~ Jandy Nelson

Love does as it undoes. It goes after with equal tenacity: joy and heartbreak. Her happiness was his unhappiness and that's the unfair way it was.

~ Jandy Nelson

They do make love stories for girls with black hearts after all. They go like this.

~ Jandy Nelson

My heart leaves, hitchhikes right out of my body, heads north, catches a ferry across the Bering Sea and plants itself in Siberia with the polar bears and ibex and long-horned goats until it turns into a teeny-tiny glacier. Because I imagined it.

~ Jandy Nelson

You can tell your story any way you damn well please.Its your solo.

~ Jandy Nelson

Male leads in love stories need to be devoted, need to chase trains, cross continents, give up fortunes and thrones, defy convention, face prosecution, take apart rooms and break the backs of angels, sketch the beloved all over the cement walls of their studios, build sculptures as homages. They don't flirt shamelessly with the likes of me when they have Transylvanian girlfriends. What an effing jerk.

~ Jandy Nelson

The sky's always falling. Always. You'll see. People have no idea.

~ Jandy Nelson

This is how he came out: he floated into the air high above the sleeping forest, his green hat spinning a few feet above his head. In his hand was the open suitcase and out of it spilled a whole sky of stars.

~ Jandy Nelson

There were once two sisterswho were not afriad of the darkbecause the dark was full of the other's voiceacross the room,because even when the night was thickand starlessthey walked home together from the riverseeing who could last the longestwithout turning on her flashlight,not afraidbecause sometimes in the pitch of nightthey'd lie on their backsin the middle of the pathand look up until the stars came backand when they did,they'd reach their arms up to touch themand did.

~ Jandy Nelson

And it's just dawned on me that I might be the author of my own story, but so is everyone else the author of their own stories, and sometimes, like now, there's no overlap.

~ Jandy Nelson

I tell you not to be timid. I tell you to make the choices, make the mistakes, big, terrible, reckless mistakes, really screw it all up. I tell you it is the only way.

~ Jandy Nelson

The eye-roll is a 10.5 on the Ritcher. The Big One. California has slipped into the ocean.

~ Jandy Nelson

Maybe what my sister wanted was to stay here and get married and have a family.Maybe that was her color of extraordinary.

~ Jandy Nelson

I have an impulse to write all over the orange walls- I need an alphabet of endings ripped out of books, of hands pulled off of clocks, of cold stones, of shoes filled with nothing but wind.

~ Jandy Nelson

The feet of ghosts never touch the ground.

~ Jandy Nelson

You have to see the miracles for there to be miracles.

~ Jandy Nelson

I know the expression love bloomed is metaphorical, but in my heart in this moment, there is one badass flower, captured in time-lapse photography, going from bud to wild radiant blossom in ten seconds flat.

~ Jandy Nelson

The smell of jasmine makes people tell their secrets

~ Jandy Nelson

She's a sun-kissed beach girl who goes gothgrungepunkhippierockeremocoremetalfreakfashionistabraingeekboycrazyhiphoprastagirl to keep it under wraps.

~ Jandy Nelson

You are remaking the world, Noah. Drawing by drawing

~ Jandy Nelson

And even as I'm kissing him and kissing him and kissing him, I wish I were kissing him, wanting more, more, more, more, like I can't get enough, never will be able to get enough.

~ Jandy Nelson

I run my hands through his hair, finally, finally, finally, then bring his head to mine and kiss him so hard our teeth collide, planets collide, kissing him now for each and every time we didn't all summer long. I know absolutely how to kiss him too, how to make his whole body tremble just from biting his lip, how to make his whole body tremble just from biting his lip, how to make him moan right inside my mouth by whispering his name, how to make his head fall back, his spine arch, how to make him groan through his teeth.

~ Jandy Nelson

Isn't that what I always think when I get The Poor Motherless Girl Look? Like I've been shoved out of the airplane without a parachute because mothers are the parachutes.

~ Jandy Nelson

It's like having explosives on board 24/7, the way I feel. I can't believe when I touch things they don't blow to bits. I can't believe I was so way off.I thought, I don't know, I thought wrong.

~ Jandy Nelson

The guy's life drunk, I think, makes Candide look like a sourpuss. Does he even know that death exists?

~ Jandy Nelson

I do find the sibling connection endlessly fascinating, as I do all family dynamics. I like how siblings seem to create their own parentless mini-civilization within a family, one that has its own laws, myths, language, humor, its own loyalties and treacheries.

~ Jandy Nelson