Jandy Nelson Quotes

The sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet. ~ Jandy Nelson

He's grinning now. Also I think you're really pretty and I'm incredibly shallow. ~ Jandy Nelson

For me, there's nothing better than getting immersed in a sprawling, epic, multi-generational family saga, and 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the most sprawling, epic, and multi-generational of them all. ~ Jandy Nelson

The first thing I notice is the sky, so full of blue and the kind of brilliant white clouds that make you ecstatic to have eyes. Nothing can go wrong under this sky ... ~ Jandy Nelson

We are all broken. I mean, aren't we now? I am. The whole wide world is. ~ Jandy Nelson

Because in addition to joining dangerous gangs and having parties, this Noah also goes out with girls, keeps his hair buzzed and tidy, hangs at The Spot, watches sports with Dad. For all other sixteen-year-old boys: fine. For Noah, it signifies one thing: death of the spirit. A book with the wrong story in it. ~ Jandy Nelson

If one twin is cut, the other will bleed ~ Jandy Nelson

He smiles, but I can see his inside face nod it isn't smiling at all. ~ Jandy Nelson

A few times I try to form a question so it sounds casual and normal, but each time the words get caught somewhere in my throat and never make it out. ~ Jandy Nelson

I wish I were a horse. ~ Jandy Nelson

I know from doing portraits that you have to look at someone a really long time to see what they're covering up, to see their inside face, and when you do see it, and get it down, that's the thing that makes people freak out about how much a drawing looks like them. ~ Jandy Nelson

Sarah is the most enthusiastic cynical person on the planet. She'd be the perfect cheerleader if she weren't so disgusted by the notion of school spirit. ~ Jandy Nelson

Sadness pulses out of us as we walk. I almost expect the trees to lower their branches when we pass, the stars to hand down some light. I breathe in the horsy scent of eucalyptus, the thick sugary pine, aware of each breath I take, how each one keeps me in the world a few seconds longer. I taste the sweetness of the summer air on my tongue and want to just gulp and gulp and gulp it into my body
this living, breathing, heart-beating body of mine. ~ Jandy Nelson

And why do English people sound smarter than the rest of us? Like they should be awarded the Nobel Prize for a simple greeting? ~ Jandy Nelson

You can tell your story any way you damn well please ~ Jandy Nelson

I gave up practically the whole world for you," I tell him, walking through the front door of my own love story. "The sun, stars, ocean, trees, everything, I gave it all up for you. ~ Jandy Nelson

I could step out of this sad life like it's an old sorry dress. ~ Jandy Nelson

But then sometimes you make a catastrophic mistake, you think I am going to kill myself because the sculpture is ruined, but in the end it come out more incredible than had you not made the mistake. This is why I love the rocks. When I sculpt with clay, it feel like cheating. It is too easy. It has no will of its own. The rocks are formidable. They stand up to you. It is a fair fight. Sometimes you win. Sometimes they win. Sometimes when they win, you win. ~ Jandy Nelson

Because how could he have done this?
How could he have chosen to leave me here all alone? ~ Jandy Nelson

Beauty is God's handwriting. ~ Jandy Nelson

But why didn't Gram tell us our mother wore a perfume that smelled like sunshine? That she slept in the garden in the springtime? That she made pesto with walnuts? why did she keep this real-life mother from us? But as soon as I ask the question, I know the answer, because suddenly there is not blood pumping in my veins, coursing all throughout my body, but longing for a mother who loves lilacs. Longing like I've never had for the Paige walker who wanders that world. That Paige Walker never made me feel like a daughter, but a mother who boils water for pasta does. Except don't you need to be claimed to be a daughter? Don't you need to be loved? ~ Jandy Nelson

I'd rather sit next to Brian for two hours in a dark theater than have a wall painting party with Jackson Pollock ~ Jandy Nelson

You can't help who you love, can you? ~ Jandy Nelson

Hey maybe you have Alice in Wonderland Syndrome! ~ Jandy Nelson

I can't even remember what he looked like now, but I'll never forget the reaction I had when I first saw him in Noah's drawing pad. I had to have him. I would've given up the real sun, so giving him an imaginary one was nothing. ~ Jandy Nelson

You're going to obliterate me aren't you? ~ 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

So at my old school," he said. "There was this kid on the baseball team. People thought, I don't know. They saw that he went to some website or something." ... "They made it impossible for him to play. Every day, the found another way to mess with him. Then one Friday after school, they locked him in the storage closet." He winced, as if remembering and I knew. I knew then. "All night long and the whole next day. A tiny, dark, disgusting airless space. His parents thought he was at the away game and someone told the coaches he was sick, so no one even looked for him. No one knew he was trapped in there." His chest was heaving and I was remembering how he told me he didn't used to have claustrophobia and now he did. "He was really good too, probably the best player on the team or could have been. And he didn't even do anything. The guy just went to these sites and someone saw. Do you get it? Do you get what it would mean for me? The assistant captain? I want to be captain next year so maybe I can graduate early. No scholarship. No nothing. These guys aren't" - he made finger quotes - "evolved. They're not from Northern California. They don't do all-day sits or draw pictures." The dagger went straight in. "It's brutal in a locker room. ~ Jandy Nelson

Mom has a massive sunflower for a soul so big there's hardly any room in her for organs. Jude and me have one soul between us that we have to share: a tree with its leaves on fire. And Dad has a plate of maggots for his. ~ Jandy Nelson

It's time for second chances. It's time to remake the world. ~ Jandy Nelson

Pockets are hand jails. ~ Jandy Nelson

Oscore is my favorite model," he says. "He has a very strange face. I don't know if you notice. God was very drunk when he made him. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Brown eye. Green eye. Crooked nose, crooked mouth. Lunatic smile. Chipped tooth. Scar here, scar there. It is a puzzle. ~ Jandy Nelson

I start to think about all the things I haven't said since Bailey died, all the words stowed deep in my heart, in our orange bedroom, all the words in the whole world that aren't said after someone dies because they are too sad, too enraged, too devastated, too guilty, to come out - all of them begin to course inside me like a lunatic river. ~ Jandy Nelson

His nose is like a capsized ship, his mouth the size of three, his jaw and cheekbones hefty as armor, and his eyes are iridescent. His face is a room overstuffed with massive furniture. ~ Jandy Nelson

The.
World.
Is.
Not.
A.
Safe.
Place. ~ Jandy Nelson

I've forgotten quite how luminous he is, like another species of human that doesn't have blood but light running through their veins. ~ Jandy Nelson

Isn't there something you want to say? Something you need to say?...We wish with our hands, that's what we do as artists...Is there something you need in the world that only your two hands can create? ~ Jandy Nelson

I watch the vein in his neck pulse. I watch him convert oxygen to carbon dioxide. I watch him existing and existing and existing. ~ Jandy Nelson

They're my ladies," she'd tell Bails and me. "Halfway between here and there. ~ Jandy Nelson

What's your major, Lennie? Oh yeah: Dorkology. ~ Jandy Nelson

Hummingbirds laze around him. Fruit falls out of trees right into his open palms ... I've never felt this relaxed in my life. I keep forgetting my body and then have to go back and get it. ~ Jandy Nelson

Wear only oversized hoodies, oversized jeans, and sneakers. Stay quiet. ~ Jandy Nelson

The worst thing that could ever happen to Noah has happened. He's become normal. ~ Jandy Nelson

Because who knows? Who knows anything? Who knows who's pulling the strings? Or what is? Or how? Who knows if destiny is just how you tell yourself the story of your life? Another son might not have heard his mother's last words as a prophecy but as drug-induced gibberish, forgotten soon after. Another girl might not have told herself a love story about a drawing her brother made. Who knows if Grandma really thought the first daffodils of spring were lucky or if she just wanted to go on walks with me through the woods? Who knows if she even believed in her bible at all or if she just preferred a world where hope and creativity and faith trump reason? who knows if there are ghosts (sorry, Grandma) or just the living, breathing memories of your loved ones, inside you, speaking to you, trying to get your attention by any means necessary? Who knows where the hell Ralph is? (Sorry, Oscar.) No one knows.
SO we grapple with the mysteries, each in our own way. ~ Jandy Nelson

I think about how Mom told Noah it was his responsibility to be true to his heart. Neither of us has been. Why is it so hard? Why is it so hard to know what that truth is? ~ Jandy Nelson

It's like a hand at your throat all the time, isn't it? Nothing's inevitable anymore. Not the next heartbeat, not anything. ~ Jandy Nelson

When I wear her clothes, I just feel safer, like she's whispering in my ear. ~ Jandy Nelson

You have to see the miracles for there to be miracles. ~ Jandy Nelson

If only words hadn't eluded me today, if only I yelled back at him: I do get it! I get that as long as you live no one will ever love you as much as I do - I have a heart so I can give it to you alone! That's exactly the way I feel - but unfortunately, people don't talk like that outside of Victorian novels. ~ Jandy Nelson

I'm convinced the storm's going to bust down the walls. Then it does and I'm remembering Dad's dream because it's happening. ~ Jandy Nelson

This is how it all begins. With Zephyr and Fry - reigning neighborhood sociopaths - torpedoing after me and the whole forest floor shaking under my feet as I blast through air, trees, this white-hot panic. You're going over, you ~ Jandy Nelson

Then he bestows the final commandment onto me: Thou shalt remake the world. This is something I would very much like to do, though no clue how carving a rock will achieve it.
- Jude Sweetwine ~ Jandy Nelson

What happened between us has colonized every last brain cell. I can barely tie my shoelaces. I forgot how to chew this morning. ~ Jandy Nelson

...I am the two-dimensional one in a 3-D family. ~ Jandy Nelson

But the guilt didn't have much of a chance against the dawning realisation that I was falling in love. I had stared out the window at the early-morning fog, wondering for a moment if she had sent Joe to me so I would know that in the same world where she could die, this could happen. ~ Jandy Nelson

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

I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. ~ Jandy Nelson

Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story. ~ Jandy Nelson

Being with boys is more dangerous for me than killing a cricket or having a bird fly into the house. ~ Jandy Nelson

She smiles at me and it sends a warm summer breeze around the room. ~ Jandy Nelson

Love's so complicated, Noah, isn't it?" I ~ Jandy Nelson

I have an allergy to catching and throwing and kicking and dribbling of any kind. Noah is not a team player. Well, duh. Revolutionaries aren't team players. ~ Jandy Nelson

I love pizza, meaning: Even when I'm in the middle of eating pizza, I wish I were eating pizza. ~ Jandy Nelson

This is us. Our pose. The smush. It's even how we are in the ultrasound photo they took of us inside Mom and how I had us in the picture Fry ripped up yesterday. Unlike most everyone else on earth, from the very first cells of us, we were together, we came here together. This is why no one hardly notices that Jude does most of the talking for both of us, why we can only play piano with all four of our hands on the keyboard and not at all alone, why we can never do Rochambeau because not once in thirteen years have we chosen differently. It's always: two rocks, two papers, two scissors. When I don't draw us like this, I draw us as half-people. ~ Jandy Nelson

Remake the world. ~ Jandy Nelson

What makes you say the opposite of what every celling your body wants you to say? ~ Jandy Nelson

If Mom died, the sun would go out. Period. ~ Jandy Nelson

His eyes have become gentle. I'm swimming in them. ~ Jandy Nelson

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

The music continues its fiery revolution all around us and there is a girl inside of me that wants to give in to the fanatical beat - she wants to dance wild and free all around the thumping, but unfortunately, that girl's in me, not me. ~ Jandy Nelson

Thou shalt remake the world ~ Jandy Nelson

I've no use for talking, would just as soon store paper clips in my mouth. ~ Jandy Nelson

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. - RUMI ~ Jandy Nelson

Noah once told me he could hear horses galloping inside her. I got it. ~ Jandy Nelson

I'm having a hand problem. How come everyone else seems to know what to do with them? Pockets, I remember with relief, pockets, I love pockets! ~ Jandy Nelson

I can see sound, the dark green howling wind, the crimson crush of rain - all ~ Jandy Nelson

Life is contradiction. ~ Jandy Nelson

And I know [other] faces aren't this colorful, this vivid, this lived-in, this superbly off-site, this brimming with dark unpredictable music. NOT THAT I EFFING NOTICE ... For the record, breathing is overrated. ~ Jandy Nelson

English people are so not asshats! I'm going to move there. William Blake was English. ~ Jandy Nelson

Nothing curdles love in the heart like lemon on the tongue ~ Jandy Nelson

Before they can grin there fake smiles, I mumble something about a toilet, laugh a second too late at some joke, and then, without looking back, I speed-walk to the house like someone whose heart isn't shaking, whose eyes aren't filling up, someone who doesn't feel so sad. ~ Jandy Nelson

Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people," I say. "Maybe we're accumulating these new selves all the time." Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, find our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things. ~ Jandy Nelson

All that matters is the worlds I can make, not this toilet-licking one I have to live in. ~ Jandy Nelson

She mesmerized lecture halls of students with her drama and passion, with ideas critics called daring and groundbreaking. ~ Jandy Nelson

Maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people," I say. "Maybe we're accumulating these new selves all the time. ~ Jandy Nelson

I don't understand. I don't. How can the same guy who took those photos of me and wrote those notes to me be making out with another girl on the other side of this door? ~ Jandy Nelson

I want to be a wobbly people pole that tries to bring joy into the world, not one that takes joy from it. ~ Jandy Nelson

It occurs to me with rising concern that a blow-in can also blow away. ~ Jandy Nelson

Do not look so happy. I tell you ahead of time. All my students despise me. ~ Jandy Nelson

But sometimes I think Dad suspects. Sometimes I think the toaster suspects. ~ 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

All her knowledge is gone now. Everything she ever learned, or heard, or saw. Her particular way of looking at Hamlet or daisies or thinking about love, all her private intricate thoughts, her inconsequential secret musings – they're gone too. I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns. I'm watching it burn right to the ground. ~ Jandy Nelson

I want to put my hands on your chest. I want to be in a thimble with you. ~ Jandy Nelson

And when you're tired, you crawl into your flower and go to sleep. During the day, everyone talks in colors instead of sounds. It's so quiet. ~ Jandy Nelson

No woman can resist a man who has tidal waves and earthquakes beneath the skin. ~ Jandy Nelson

His laugh cartwheels across the room. ~ Jandy Nelson

I suspect that inside the impenetrable fortress of conventionality he's become, there's one crazy-ass museum. ~ Jandy Nelson

In every set of twins, there is one angel, one devil. ~ Jandy Nelson

I'd give ten finger, both arms. I'd give anything. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Meet me 5 p.m. Thursday. You know where. I'll be there every week at that time for the rest of my life. ~ Jandy Nelson

I can't believe Gram just said sex appeal. ~ Jandy Nelson