Jodi Lynn Anderson Quotes

It never occurred to me before, but there could have easily been a world with no buses, no horns honking, no red lights, no shopping carts, no gum stick to the bottom of benches downtown. For that matter I guess there also could have been no sun, no trees, and no ocean. None of those things had to exist, I guess. It makes me feel lucky that they do.

It is just that she was fifteen once for the first time, and Peter walked across her heart and left his footprints there.

She did not believe he could have really gone, because for her, to leave the person you loved was impossible.

I like to think that nothing's final, and that everyone gets to be together even when it looks like they don't, that it all works out even when all the evidence seems to say something else, that you and I are always young in the woods, and that I'll see you sometime again, even if it's not with any kind of eyes I know of or understand. I wouldn't be surprised if that is the way things go after all - that all things end happy.

Somehow as children he and Tiger Lily had been shuttled together - both misfits or, as I liked to think of them, strange exotic birds, one too fierce to be hemmed in as a girl, and the other too hesitant to be respected as a boy.

May was used to strange things like this. Her mom always said all sorts of quirks came with a house as old as theirs. May used to insist it was ghosts. But Mrs. Bird had long ago given her one too many stern looks on the topic. So May simply sank beneath the water and let bubbles drift out of her nose.

Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again.

Adri held her arms around herself, shivering.
"Do you think I can change?" she finally asked.
Lily looked at her, curious and thoughtful. "Well," she replied, "are you dead?

Tiger Lily, you're a fool. he said, and kissed her forehead. And despite his size, and the fact that a boy like him was not built to shoulder much of anything, he shouldered her weight, and carried her home.

You never could tell when someone would stop growing old in Neverland. For Tik Tok, it had been after wrinkles had walked long deep tracks across his face, but for many people, it was much younger. Some people said it occurred when the most important thing that would ever happen to you triggered something inside that stopped you from moving forward.

He even listened to more than her sounds, because Tiger Lily was a girl of few words. He listened with his eyes, watched her facial expressions, judged body language, and therefore read Tiger Lily better than anyone else.

You love me," she said. "That's enough. We love each other."
"Yes. Yes, that's true." He smiled. "We are a love story.

It's the injustice that I hate, more than anything," he'd said to Smee one night, his eyes red and glassy, slurring his words, his head lolling as he tried to focus. He'd vomited, and then promptly passed out on a bush. "I hate the world that does not work out fair.

Peter sank. "I'd give anything to see time.

Pine Sap said once that he would rather die than see Tiger Lily tamed. I guess Tiger Lily felt the same way with Peter, because she stayed behind.

Others wonder, if the Bogey isn't wearing his pants, who is?

How can I describe Peter's face, the pieces of him that stick to my heart? Peter sometimes looked aloof and distant; sometimes his face was open and soft as a bruise. Sometimes he looked completely at Tiger Lily, as if she were the point on which all the universe revolved, as if she were the biggest mystery of life, or as if she were a flame and he couldn't not look even though he was scared. And sometimes it would all disappear into carelessness, confidence, amusement, as if he didn't need anyone or anything on this earth to feel happy and alive.

She tried to decide whether the silence was an empty one or a waiting one.

I think people everywhere are the same. Only these people are my bones.

The day felt almost like any other day of the summer, like they'd rewound and summer was still ahead of them. But this time, from the start, there would be no question of whether they had each other or not.
This time, they would know.

Of all the things Tiger Lily had thought she might have to be for Peter - strong, brave; to be big and to keep up - she had never thought that the one thing he wanted most from her was simply to show that she believed in him, always and without fail. For Peter, who feared losing so much, this was a great comfort indeed.

So many stars are popping out above us it seems you could almost dip your fingers up there and come out with a handful of stars.

I just wanted to see if ... we were okay," she said, feeling relief. "Just to make sure we can be friends. I don't want it to be weird, you know?" Friends? Different parts of Birdie died as she said it. It was like stars exploding and burning one by one. She wondered if this was part of getting older. Parts of your heart exploded and died.

She guarded herself like a secret.

As they grew sloppier and less alert, the twins argued too loudly about whether Tiger Lily was ugly or beautiful, and finally agreed that she was "ugly beautiful".
Tiger Lily pretended she hadn't heard, but her heart slowed to absorb the blow.

Over the ten years since she'd been born, the trees of Briary Swamp, West Virginia, had peered through May's window night after night. They had watched over her thoughtful brown eyes, the imaginative crook of her head, the strong character of her knobby knees. The trees had laughed at the jokes May told her cat. Their leaves had whispered over her wild inventions, her colorful stories, her drawings.

What mattered was stil there. That was what they all felt, and what surprised them all. What mattered couldnt be shaken.

Maybe she feared there were different ways of being trapped than the ones she already knew.

Every king of love, it seems, is the only one. It doesn't happen twice.

And though, truly, she sometimes felt like something inside her had disappeared, it seemed that must be a natural part of growing up. Standing out too much made one feel too alone to do it forever.

This is no place for anyone with a heart.

If you have reasons for not coming back, I don't want to know them. I just want you to come back anyway. Ignorance, see?

I think that's what you say when you can't have something you want, isn't it? You say you don't want it in the first place.

Just for a moment, she could hear the muffled tick tick from inside its mouth before it disappeared underneath the murky surface, and curled away.

It turned out that my curiosity did not outweigh my courage after all. Sometimes love means not being able to bear seeing the one you love the way they are, when they're not what you hoped for.

She let the jealousy slip out of her fingertips.

Sitting there, all delicate and dreamy, she looked as if someone had only given half a life to her.

People say I'm not much of a girl either, Tiger Lily said.
She thought of Tik Tok, who was fond of saying that people were all bits of each thing, boy and girl.

Everyone will think I'm ugly."
Tik Tok smiled. "That's true. But we are a small village. We have narrow tastes. There's no telling who else in the world would think you're beautiful.

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But the outsider in May, the one from Briery Swamp who had never fit quite right, kept her tucked safely in her nook.

I bit Tiger Lily, as hard as I could. I don't know how I thought it would help. Fairie bites are worse than wasp stings - they pierce and burn and ache all at the same time. As best, I knew, I'd be swatted away, and at worst she might crush me by accident in her reaction to the pain. But what happened was worse. She didn't seem to notice it at all. It was like Tiger Lily herself wasn't even really there.

Because watching him love Tiger Lily was better than not watching him at all.

She felt as bevy as a sack of beans. But then, a sack of beans never got embarrassed or did stupid balloon in front of other sacks of beans or forgot to lock the bathroom door. Come to think of it, life was easy for all the beans of the world. Being a sack of them wouldn't be so bad.

I wonder if sometimes you can miss something so much it breaks you, and still be happy you left.

She stands on the cliffs, near the old crumbling stone house. There's nothing left in the house but an upturned table, a ladle, and a clay bowl. She stands for more than an hour, goose-bumped and shivering. At these times, she won't confide in me. She runs her hands over her body, as if checking that it's still there, her heart pulsing and beating. The limbs are smooth and strong, thin and sinewy, her hair long and black and messy and gleaming despite her age. You wouldn't know it to look at her, that she's lived long enough to look for what's across the water. Eighty years later, and she is still fifteen.

I heard now the fear in their brightness. It trickled along underneath them like a secret spring.

What you did was very brave," Aunt Sticky Feet said, her words clipped but not unkind, "but men don't want women who are brave. They want women who make them feel like men."
"I don't care about that," Tiger Lily said quietly.

Tiger Lily, you know Moon Eye isn't for me."
"She is," Tiger Lily said.
"She's like me. They're two different things. You're ... " He swallowed. "You're everything to me. You know that. Don't pretend that you don't.

Sometimes I think that maybe we are just stories. Like we may as well just be words on a page, because we're only what we've done and what we are going to do.

Do you think magic exists if it can be explained?

She hated his need to always win and he hated her coldness during their arguments.

When Peter made mistakes, Wendy cheered for him anyway. One afternoon he beat her and everyone else in a race organized by Slightly. She only laughed and squeezed his wrist with easy affection and told him how fast he was. She was so undeterred by losing that it made the boys wonder if winning was exactly what they'd thought it was or if in England it was different.

It seemed, when all was said and done, that all souls were a little wild, in some way or another.

Look," Peter said.
To the north was a series of vast grassy plains, and there, just looking like specks at first, was a herd of horses, a species that in Neverland had never been tamed. They were beautiful, flashes of brown and black and tan, their coats gleaming. There was no reason for them to be running that Tiger Lily could see. It was likely that they just loved to run.
"That's what I want my life to be," Peter said, staring down at the horses.
Tiger Lily sank against him and watched the herd, and thought that was what she wanted too.

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I began to see that Wendy had something Tiger Lily hadn't even known she was supposed to have. Of all the things Tiger Lily had thought she might have to be for Peter-strong, brave; to be big and to keep up-she had never thought that the one thing he wanted most from her was simply to show that she believed in him, always and without fail.

Still, the longer I was around her, the more I could see the colors of her mind and the recesses of her heart. There was a beast in there. But there was also a girl who was afraid of being a beast, and who wondered if other people had beasts in their hearts too. There was strength, and there was also just the determination to look strong. She guarded herself like a secret.

I didn't do it to look nice," she said.
"But you do care."
Tiger Lily studied the tree and decided if she did care, she would now choose not to.

It didn't fit her ideas of who was bad, and who was good, and what was a happy ending, and what wasn't.

Wendy's heart beat for Peter immediately-there was no slow growing, no dark distrustfulness like Tiger Lily had had, no hesitation. Wendy didn't believe in situations she couldn't bend to fit her, so there was no need to be distrustful. She had the blissful confidence of someone who had never been put in a pot of turkey broth to die.

But I don't want to lose my guts answered Pumpkin

And as fall turned to winter, the Darlington peach trees started dropping their leaves again, gently, like they were letting them go. It wasnt the same as giving them up. It wasnt the same as losing them.

It was funny how you could go somewhere and your whole life could stretch out and then you could come home and have it all shrink back to the way it was before. It was funny that it didn't stay stretched.

Love can't be taken back once it's given

I think we could be friends," he said, falling into step with her. "It's perfect because I wouldn't fall in love with you, like I do with the mermaids. Girls always seem so exotic. But it would be okay with you, because you're more like ... you know. Not like a girl." He shrugged.

When they made up, it was as if nothing had happened at all. In fact, it was like they were stuck even closer together, like they had gotten even more tangled in each other.

So many lights you'd think we were living in a constellation

Maggie shook her head. I'm not calm, I'm just ... hesitant. It's like, I always think pretty soon my life will be this great story, as soon as it starts.

She thought of all the things she'd forgotten to be scared of.

It was almost as if he was giving her his silence, so that all of her anger had a place to go.

Let me tell you something straight off. This is a love story, but not like any you've ever heard. The boy and the girl are far from innocent. Dear lives are lost. And good doesn't win.

She actually liked the idea that she might be made out of stars.

A faerie heart is different from a human heart. Human hearts are elastic. They have room for all sorts of passions, and they can break and heal and love again and again. Faerie hearts are evolutionarily less sophisticated. They are small and hard, like tiny grains of sand. Our hearts are too small to love more than one person in a lifetime.

Because I think people must be the same everywhere. Only these people are in my bones.

It took several minutes, but he was meticulous about each letter. IN MEMRY OF THE STRANJER, it said. HE LIVD AND DID.

And age was just a trait, like the color of your hair, or the amount of freckles on your skin.

Tiger Lily made an attempt at a smile. After having felt the need to glower at other children for most of her life, smiles never came easily to her face. But this one was half all right.
"I miss you already," he said.
Tiger Lily wanted to say it back. But she held on to the words greedily, too caught in the habit of keeping herself a secret.
And Peter-half sadly, half-expectantly-let her go.

I'm nothing to you, am I' Peter said once in a particularly intense arguement about where to find wild turnips. To these kinds of accusations, Tiger Lily would reply that he was trying to make her into his little chicken, and that she would never be anyone's 'little obedient chicken

Earth," Alexa finally said. "It's not that great anyway." And they all smiled sadly. Because, of course, it was everything.

Sometimes I can't see myself when I'm with you. I can only just see you.

And always, I could see that, despite his weakness for her or because of it, he seemed uncatchable, as if he might slip away at any moment.

I'm not myself," she offered, guiltily. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish.
He smiled. "You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like.

You're the main character of your life," Jacie said. "You're too important to die. That's how everybody feels.

Tiger Lily drifted down underneath herself. This was her one gift more than any other. Silently, she nodded. "Yes. Everything is more than okay.

By the time she was fifteen, the age she was the day of the shipwreck, opinions by the dozen landed in each hollow track left by her feet.

But you are the only person I can show myself to. You always made my rough edges feel real.

I can't even hear what I'm thinking most of the time. My brain's noisy.

Manhattan can be beautiful, Ellis, if you are willing to see it and not compare it to what you loved before

West Virginia was mysterious and it liked to keep to itself. It hid in the folds of mountains, resting in the cool shade. It was sweet, beautiful, and bashful. Its woods held its secrets or at least it seemed that way to May.

I don't know when Tiger Lily stopped growing older; I can't pinpoint that moment. But I do know I never saw her visibly age beyond the days when she was with Peter. I like to think her growing stopped the day they were on the plateau, watching the horses.

You think you know that someone sees you one way, and barely at all, and then you realize that they see you in another. That was the night I realized (She) had seen- really seen- me all along.

You are the only person I've ever met who goes the other direction from the things she wants

The moment slipped away, but because it wasn't perfect, it was the most perfect one she could remember having

The way I see it, ignoring things is important.

Peter sighed into the water, and his breath sent a small circle of it into tiny ripples. "It seems cowardly, getting old. Don't you think?"
She rolled onto her side to look at him, pillowing her ear with her right arm, and letting her fingers dangle in the water beyond her head. "How is it cowardly?"
Peter kept his eyes on his reflection. "You just curl up around yourself, and sit by the fire, and try to be comfortable. When you get old, you just get smaller inside, and you try not to pay attention to anything but your blankets and your food and your bed."
"Being comfortable is not a bad thing."
Peter shrugged and turned his head to look at her as if it was a matter of fact. "Of course it is. Old people lock out all the scary, wild things. It's like they don't exist."
She wanted to say that she would have liked for those things not to exist, either, but she held her tongue, because she didn't want to sound like a coward.

You looked strange climbing in the tree like that."
Tiger Lily pulled her braids between her fingers, her sudden self-consciousness feeling foreign and strange to her.
"I didn't do it to look nice," she said.
"But you do care."
Tiger Lily studied the tree and decided if she did care, she would now choose not to. "I don't," she said.
"All girls do," he added, pushing the point.
"You must not know many girls."
"I know a million," Peter said, dark and serious. There was a long awkward silence, but if Peter regretted his words, I couldn't tell.

That is what all creatures great and small are made of. Leftover stardust. An atom exploded, and all the dust became the planets, the stars...and us. That's all anything amounts to.

Forget him. Forget him.

Leeda knew friends never turned out to be what you expected. They came and went in waves, pulling away and coming back, leaving you feeling safe one minute and lost the next.

To love someone was not what she had expected. It was like falling from somewhere high up and breaking in half, and only one person having the secret to the puzzle of putting her back together.

But Tik Tok believes everything's circular, including men and women. He says nature seems to go around and around, and that we all have bits of everything.