Jandy Nelson Quotes & Sayings

Before he finally hops on his borad, he hugs me good-bye and we hold on to each other so tightly under the sad, starless sky that for a moment I feel as if our heartbreak were one instead of two. — Jandy Nelson

The feet of ghosts never touch the ground. — Jandy Nelson

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

In a flash, we're through the door, across the street and into the woods, running for no reason and laughing for no reason and totally out of breath and out of our minds when Brian catches me by my shirt, whips me around, and with one strong hand flat against my chest, he pushes me against a tree and kisses me so hard I go blind. — Jandy Nelson

But sometimes I think Dad suspects. Sometimes I think the toaster suspects. — Jandy Nelson

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

Her careless beauty so huge it had to walk a few paces ahead of her, announcing itself. — Jandy Nelson

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

There should be a horn or gong or something to wake God. Because I'd like to have a word with him. Three words actually: WHAT THE FUCK?! — 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

I don't know how this can be but it can: A painting is both exactly the same and entirely different every single time you look at it. That's the way it is between Jude and me now. — Jandy Nelson

This is what I want: I want to grab my brother's hand and run back through time, losing years like coats falling from our shoulders. — Jandy Nelson

She looks like she's holding in a dictionary of bad words or a nuclear war. — Jandy Nelson

I go behind the telescope, peer into the eyepiece, and all the stars crash down on my head. It's like taking a shower in the cosmos. I gasp. — Jandy Nelson

But I don't even care. I don't even care that the sun's going to burn out in a matter of years, ending all life on Earth, well, five billion years, but still, guess what? I don't care. Well-being is a wonderful thing. — Jandy Nelson

Thanks,' I say, and the cloak of being fine that I wear with everyone else slips right off my shoulders. — Jandy Nelson

They are father and son, just not by blood. I didn't know that family members could just find each other, choose each other like they have. I love the idea. And I'd like to trade in Dad and Noah for these two. — 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

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

Grief is a house
where the chairs
have forgotten how to hold us
the mirrors how to reflect us
the walls how to contain us
grief is a house that disappears
each time someone knocks at the door
or rings the bell
a house that blows into the air
at the slightest gust
that buries itself deep in the ground
while everyone is sleeping
grief is a house where no one can protect you
where the younger sister
will grow older than the older one
where the doors
no longer let you in
or out — Jandy Nelson

I felt a springing in my chest. Could Dad and I be close? Like a real father and son? — 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 am the author of my story and I can tell it any way I want. — Jandy Nelson

You two will figure it out. I know you will." Maybe we will, maybe we are, but not if she tells him. "You're very much alike. You both feel things very deeply, too deeply sometimes." What? "Jude and I have quite a bit of armor on us," she continues. "It takes a lot to break through it. Not you and Dad." This is news. I never thought I was anything like Dad. But what she's really saying is that we're both wusses. That's what Brian thinks too. I'm just someone who "draws pictures." And it burns in my chest that she thinks Jude's like her and I'm not. How come everything I think about our family keeps changing? How come the teams keep switching? Is this how all families are? And most importantly, how do I know she's not lying to me about not telling Dad? — 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

I know I'm smiling just to look at him. I know that what he just said is making something unfurl inside. I know that all around the porch, a thick curtain of fog hides us from the world. — Jandy Nelson

I have to go," I say, helpless.
What makes you say the opposite of what every cell in your body wants you to say? — Jandy Nelson

Each new self standing on the last one's shoulders until we're these wobbly people poles? — Jandy Nelson

I suddenly feel left out of a future that isn't even going to happen. — Jandy Nelson

See? Other mothers don't have their own private weather. — Jandy Nelson

Any marked peculiarity in the face indicates a similar peculiarity of disposition — Jandy Nelson

You can tell your story any way you damn well please — 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

I watch him hypnotize the girls as he does the fruit in the trees, the clouds in the sky, as he did me. — Jandy Nelson

We breathe and breathe and breathe together. She takes my hand and I think how otters sleep floating on their backs in water, holding hands exactly like this, so they don't drift apart in the night.
After a while, she picks up her fist. I do the same.
Rock/Rock
Scissors/Scissors
Rock/Rock
Paper/Paper
Scissors/Scissors
"Yes!" she cries. "We still got it, yes we do! — 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 feel a smile sweep across my face, remembering all the light showers, the dark showers, picking up rocks and finding spinning planets, days with thousands of pockets, grabbing moments like apples, hopping fences into forever. — Jandy Nelson

When I'm with him, there is someone with me in my house of grief, someone who knows its architecture as I do, who can walk with me, from room to sorrowful room, making the whole rambling structure of wind and emptiness not quite as scary, as lonely as it was before. — Jandy Nelson

He doesn't have to say it, i feel it too; it's not subtle - like every bell for miles and miles is ringing at once, loud and clanging, hungry ones and tiny, happy, chiming ones, all of them sounding off in this moment. I put my hands around his neck, pull him to me, and then he's kissing me hard and so deep, and i am flying, sailing, soaring ... — Jandy Nelson

A comfortable quiet falls over us. Really comfortable, like we've lain on filthy floors corpselike together for several lifetimes now. — Jandy Nelson

all the animals in the zoo of me have broken out of their cages. "Maybe — Jandy Nelson

The architecture of my sister's thinking, now phantom. I fall down stairs that are nothing but air. — Jandy Nelson

His laugh cartwheels across the room. — Jandy Nelson

Pockets are hand jails. — Jandy Nelson

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

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

I love art, and it plays a huge role in my life. It's definitely one of my greatest joys, and I'm a bit fanatical about certain painters and poets and musicians and sculptors. — Jandy Nelson

Beauty is God's handwriting. — 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

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

What are we going to do with all this love? — Jandy Nelson

To be clear, when you're me, guys like him are kryptonite, not that I've ever met a guy like him before, one who makes you feel like you're being kissed, no, ravished, from across a room. — Jandy Nelson

What is bad for the heart is good for art. The terrible irony of our lives as artists. — Jandy Nelson

I want to get my invisibility sweatshirt and skullcap out of my bag and put it on. But I don't. I want to believe the red ribbon around my wrist will keep me safe always. But it won't. I want to play How Would You Rather Die? instead of figuring out how to live. But I can't. I'm over being a coward. I'm sick of being on pause, of being buried and hidden, of being petrified, in both senses of the word.
I don't want to imagine meadows, I want to run through them. — Jandy Nelson

A broken heart is an open heart. — Jandy Nelson

I do have a tendency to want to go back to school at all times in my life. Maybe I'll do the Ph.D. in art history when I'm 50, or maybe divinity school. I like teaching, too. — Jandy Nelson

The sun, stars, ocean, trees, everything, I gave it all up for you.
- Jude Sweetwine to Oscar Ralph — Jandy Nelson

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

It's as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way. — 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

I can't seem to keep you out like I can everyone else. That I think you could devastate me. — Jandy Nelson

I'm in self-imposed exile, cradled between split branches, in my favorite tree in the woods behind school. I've been coming here every day at lunch, hiding out until the bell rings, whittling words into the branches with my pen, allowing my heart to break in private. — Jandy Nelson

What am I doing? Well, I'm doing it. — Jandy Nelson

Dad used to make Mom's eyes shine; now he makes her grind her teeth. I don't know why. — Jandy Nelson

I didn't know you could get buried in your own silence. — Jandy Nelson

I sit up in bed, lean my back against the sill to better enjoy their verbal tennis match. I can feel the summery day through the window, deliciously warming my back. But when I look over at Bailey's bed, I'm leveled. How can something this momentous be happening to me without her? And what about all the momentous things to come? How will I go through each and every one of them without her? — Jandy Nelson

She gives off light, I give off dark. — Jandy Nelson

Music: what life, what living itself sounds like. — Jandy Nelson

I turn around, remembering again that we got made together, cell for cell. We were keeping each other company when we didn't have any eyes or hands. Before our soul even got delivered. — Jandy Nelson

That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. — Jandy Nelson

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

I'm fairly penis-neutral in life class, but not at the moment, no siree. "You — Jandy Nelson

Your first lesson: My studio is not a democracy. Have a donut. — Jandy Nelson

Then our eyes meet and we both crack up like we're made of the same air. — Jandy Nelson

Really, most of the time, I feel like a hostage. — 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

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

How will I survive this missing? How do others do it? People die all the time. Every day. Every hour. There are families all over the world staring at beds that are no longer slept in, shoes that are no longer worn. Families that no longer have to buy a particular cereal, a kind of shampoo. There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. For years. For their whole lives. I don't believe time heals. I don't want it to. If I heal, doesn't that mean I've accepted the world without her? — Jandy Nelson

So Plato talked about these beings that used to exist that had four legs and four arms and two heads. They were totally self-contained and ecstatic and powerful. Too powerful, so Zeus cut them all in half and scattered all the halves around the world so that humans were doomed to forever look for their other half, the one who shared their very soul. Only the luckiest humans find their split-apart, you see. — Jandy Nelson

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

I'm filled with something I can only describe as recognition. Not because he looks familiar on the outside this time, but because he feels familiar on the inside. — Jandy Nelson

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

(Self Portrait: Boy Remakes World Before World Remakes Boy) — Jandy Nelson

I believe in nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination. - JOHN KEATS — Jandy Nelson

When I draw it, I'm going to make my skin see-through and what you'll see is that all the animals in the zoo of me have broken out of their cages. — Jandy Nelson

There were once two sisters who shared the same room,
the same clothes,
the same thoughts at the same moment.
These two sisters did not have a mother
but they had each other.
The older sister walked ahead of the younger
so the younger one always knew where to go.
The older one took the younger to the river
where they floated on their backs
like dead men.
The older girl would say:
Dunk your head under a few inches,
then open your eyes and look up at the sun
The younger girl:
I'll get water up my nose
The older:
C'mon, do it
and so the younger girl did it
and her whole world filled with light. — Jandy Nelson

I'm falling forward with the force of two years of buried grief, the sorrow of ten thousand oceans finally breaking inside me-
I let it. I let my heart break. — Jandy Nelson

I think you might very well be the most eccentric person I've ever met. — Jandy Nelson

Her smile grows bigger and more welcoming and I realize she's misinterpreted my leap across the hall as excitement to see her when all I want is to protect the kissing guys from her, from the whole world. — Jandy Nelson

Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes part of you, step for step, breath for breath. — Jandy Nelson

Who knows if [maybe] destiny is just how you tell yourself the story of your life? — Jandy Nelson

Grief is a house that disappears each time someone knocks at the door or rings the bell a house that blows into the air at the slightest gust that buries itself deep in the ground while everyone is sleeping — Jandy Nelson

Guillermo taps his foot impatiently. Oscar winks at me, sending my stomach on an elevator ride. "To be continued," he says. — 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

I've chickened out. Because what if he says no? What if he says yes? What if he bludgeons me with a chisel? What if the English guy is there? What if he isn't? What if he bludgeons me with a chisel? What if my m other breaks stone as easily as clay? What if this rash on my arm is leprosy? Etc. — 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

She glitters like she walked out of a Klimt painting — Jandy Nelson

Quick, make a wish.
Take a (second or third or fourth) chance.
Remake the world. — Jandy Nelson

There's a sob building inside me so immense and powerful it's going to break all my bird bones. It's Judemageddon. — Jandy Nelson