Jandy Nelson famous quotes

My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Sad #Grief #Loss

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

#Dog #Believe #Heart

But then I think about my sister and what a shell-less turtle she was and how she wanted me to be one too. C'mon, Lennie, she used to say to me at least ten times a day. C'mon Len. And that makes me feel better, like it's her life rather than her death that is now teaching me how to be, who to be.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Teaching #Feel Better #Thinking

Who wants to know that the person you love and need the most can just vanish forever
-- Jandy Nelson

#Forever #Needs #Want

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

#Photography #Badass #Flower

Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of peopleMaybe 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

#Falling In Love #Grieving #Self

What kind of world is this? And what do you do about it? What do you do when the worst thing that can happen actually happens?
-- Jandy Nelson

#World #Kind #Worst

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 on 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

#Wall #Grief #Sleep

How can the word love, the word life, even fit in the mouth?
-- Jandy Nelson

#Mouths #Fit

And then he smiles, and in all the places around the globe where it's night, day breaks.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Night #Break #Globes

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

#Eye #Clouds #Blue

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

#Wall #Book #Writing

Someone might as well roll up the whole sky, pack it away for good.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Sky #Might #Wells

How could a mother who boils water for pasta leave two little girls behind?
-- Jandy Nelson

#Girl #Mother #Two

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

#Girl #Beach #Sun

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

#Simple #People #Sound

But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks?
-- Jandy Nelson

#Heart #What If #Break

We were all heading for each other on a collision course, no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.
-- Jandy Nelson

#People #Stories #Matter

At least, the sun had the decency to stay the hell away from us.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Sun #Hell #Decency

I don't know how the heart withstands it.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Heart

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

#Horizon #Way

I didn't know love felt like this, like turning into brightness.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Brightness

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

#Talking #Use #Paper

If bad luck knows who you are, become someone else.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Luck #Bad Luck #Who You Are

We wish with our hands, that's what we do as artists.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Artist #Hands #Wish

... every available inch of his face busts into a smile - whoa. Has he blown into our school on a gust of wind from another world? The guy looks unabashedly jack-o'-lantern happy, which couldn't be more foreign to the sullen demeanor most of us strove to perfect.
-- Jandy Nelson

#School #Wind #Perfect

He smiles and takes his index finger and presses it to my lips, leaves it there until my heart lands on Jupiter: three seconds, then removes it, and heads back into the living room. Whoa - well, that was either the dorkiest or sexiest moment of my life, and I'm voting for sexy on account of my standing here dumbstruck and giddy, wondering if he did kiss me after all.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Sexy #Heart #Kissing

I'm layering away: sauce, noodles, I belong to you, cheese, sauce, my heart is yours, noodles, cheese, I hear your soul in your music, cheese, cheese, CHEESE...
-- Jandy Nelson

#Heart #Soul #Sauce

For the first time in our lives, I’m somewhere she can’t find, and I don’t have the map to give her that leads to me.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Giving #Maps #Firsts

My grandmother thinks it's really funny to put all sorts of things in our - my lunch. I never know what'll be inside: e.e. cummings, flower petals, a handful of buttons. She seems to have lost sight of the original purpose of the brown bag." - Lennie "Or maybe she thinks other forms of nourishment are more important." - Joe
-- Jandy Nelson

#Flower #Grandmother #Thinking

Dreams change, yes, that makes sense, but I didn't know dreams could hide inside a person.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Dream #Make Sense #Persons

He's bent over the strings tuning his guitar with such passionate attention I almost feel I should look away but I can't. In fact I'm full on gawking wondering what it would be like to be cool and casual and fearless and passionate and so freaking alive just like he is- and for a split second I want to play with him. I want to disturb the birds. Later as he plays and plays as all the fog burns away I think he's right. That's exactly it- I am crazy sad and somewhere deep inside all I want is to fly.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Crazy #Thinking #Guitar

... if you're someone who knows the worst thing can happen at any time, aren't you also someone who knows the best thing can happen at any time too?
-- Jandy Nelson

#Worst

I wonder why bereaved people even bother with mourning clothes when the grief itself provides such an unmistakable wardrobe.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Grief #Clothes #People

Sometimes you think you know things, know things very deeply, only to realize you don't know a damn thing.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Thinking #Sometimes #Realizing

In one split second I saw everything I could be, everything I want to be. And all that I'm not.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Splits #Want #Saws

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

#Fall #Thinking #Air

This is the secret I kept from you, Bails, from myself too: I think I liked that Mom was gone, that she could be anybody, anywhere, doing anything. I liked that she was our invention, a woman living on the last page of the story with only what we imagined spread out before her. I liked that she was ours, alone.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Mom #Thinking #Secret

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

#Feels #Left Out

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

#Sorry #Sad Life #Dresses

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

#People #Stories #Meant To Be

Life’s a freaking mess… there’s not one truth ever, just a bunch of stories, all going on at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It’s all a beautiful calamitous mess.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Beautiful #Heart #Stories

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

#Grief #Sleep #Blow

Reality is crushing. The world is a wrong-sized shoe. How can anyone stand it?
-- Jandy Nelson

#Crush #Reality #Shoes

It’s never occurred to me that the stars are still up there shining even in the daytime when we can’t see them.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Stars #Shining #Stills

Take a (second or third or fourth) chance. Remake the world,
-- Jandy Nelson

#World #Chance #Remakes

No hot guys should be allowed to have an English accent and drive a motorcycle. Not to mention wear the leather jacket or sport the cool shades. Hot guys should be forced into footie pajamas.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Sports #Guy #Motorcycle

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

#Running #Brother #Fall

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

#Second Chance #World #Chance

When people fall in love, they burst into flames.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Falling In Love #Fall #Flames

I heard this expression once: Each time someone dies, a library burns.  I'm watching it burn right to the ground.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Expression #Library #Heard

Years ago, I was crashed in gram’s garden and Big asked me what I was doing. I told him I was looking up at the sky. He said, “That’s a misconception, Lennie, the sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Garden #Years #Sky

Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you've been in before - you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall,the books on the shelves, the contents of drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Wall #Book #Dark

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

#Mind #Let Me

People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesn't. It continues and is ever-changing.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Thinking #People #Our Relationship

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

#Miracle

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

#Dark #Way #My Way

This is it--what all the hoopla is about, what Wuthering Heights is about--it all boils down to this feeling rushing through me in this moment with Joe as our mouths refuse to part. Who knew all this time I was one kiss away from being Cathy and Juliet and Elizabeth Bennet and Lady Chatterley!?
-- Jandy Nelson

#Kissing #Rushing #Feelings

It's such a colossal effort not to be haunted by what's lost, but to be enchanted by what was.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Effort #Enchanted #Lost

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

#Witty #Thinking #Drunk

When he plays all the flowers swap colors and years and decades and centuries of rain pour back into the sky
-- Jandy Nelson

#Rain #Flower #Play

I gasp, because Isn't that just exactly what I've been doing too: writing poems and scattering them to the winds with the same hope as Gram that someone, someday, somewhere might understand who I am, who my sister was, and what happened to us.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Writing #Who I Am #Wind

The Color Of Extraordinary.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Color #Extraordinary

There once was a girl who found herself dead. She peered over the ledge of heaven and saw that back on earth her sister missed her too much, was way too sad, so she crossed some paths that would not have crossed, took some moments in her hand shook them up and spilled them like dice over the living world. It worked. The boy with the guitar collided with her sister. "There you go, Len," she whispered. "The rest is up to you.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Girl #Boys #Guitar

He murmers into my hair, "Forget what I said earlier, let's stick with this, I might not survive anything more." I laugh. Then he jumps up, finds my wrists, and pins them over my head. "Yeah, right. Totally joking, I want to do everything with you, whenever you're ready, I'm the one, promise?" He's above me, batting and grinning like a total hooplehead. "I promise," I say. "Good. Glad that's decided." He raises an eyebrow. "I'm going to deflower you, John Lennon.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Eyebrows #Hair #Laughing

I wish my shadow would get up and walk beside me.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Wish #Shadow #Walks

[Lennie meets Joe - he works out that she was named after John Lennon] I nod. "Mom was a hippie." This is northern Northern California after all - the final frontier of freakerdom. Just in the eleventh grade we have a girl named Electricity, a guy named Magic Bus, and countless flowers: Tulip, Begonia, and Poppy - all parent-given-on-the-birth-certificate names. Tulip is a two-ton bruiser of a guy who would be the star of out football team if we were the kind of school that has optional morning meditation in the gym
-- Jandy Nelson

#Girl #Mom #Football

Life's a freaking mess. In fact, I'm going to tell Sarah we need to start a new philosophical movement: messessentialism instead of existentialism: For those who revel in the essential mess that is life. Because Gram's right, there's not one truth ever, just a bunch of stories, all going on at once, in our heads, in our hearts, all getting in the way of each other. It's all a beautiful calamitous mess. It's like the day Mr. James took us into the woods and cried triumphantly, "That's it! That's it!" to the dizzying cacophony of soloing instruments trying to make music together. That is it.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Beautiful #Philosophical #Heart

Remember how it was when we kissed? Armfuls and armfuls of light thrown right at us. A rope dropping down from the sky. How can the word love and the word life even fit in the mouth?
-- Jandy Nelson

#Sky #Light #Rope

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

#Kissing #Hands #Sailing

This is our story to tell. You’d think for all the reading I do, I would have thought about this before, but I haven’t. I’ve never once thought about the interpretative, the story telling aspect of life, of my life. I always felt like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in its telling whatsoever.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Reading #Thinking #Stories

Our tongues have fallen madly in love and gotten married and moved to Paris.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Paris #Tongue #Married

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

#Cheer Up #Sky #Feet

According to all the experts, it's time for me to talk about what I'm going through... I can't. I'd need a new alphabet, one made of falling, of tectonic plates shifting, of the deep devouring dark.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Fall #Dark #Alphabet

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

#Lonely #Grief #Wind

That's exactly it—I am crazy sad, and somewhere deep inside, all I want is to fly.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Crazy #Want #I Am Crazy

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

#Sound

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

#Grief #Forever #Going Away

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

#World #Safe #Safe Places

Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Grief #Joy #And Love

Each time someone dies, a library burns.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Library

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

#Thinking #Expression #Secret

I always imagined music trapped inside my clarinet, not trapped inside of me. But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks?
-- Jandy Nelson

#Heart #What If #Break

There were once two sisters who were not afriad of the dark because the dark was full of the other's voice across the room, because even when the night was thick and starless they walked home together from the river seeing who could last the longest without turning on her flashlight, not afraid because sometimes in the pitch of night they'd lie on their backs in the middle of the path and look up until the stars came back and when they did, they'd reach their arms up to touch them and did.
-- Jandy Nelson

#Sister #Stars #Lying