Jen St. Jude > Quotes

“She was so bright she could belong to everyone and no one, just like the sun, just like the stars.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“I had always known grief was a type of loneliness, but when I went to college, I learned loneliness was a type of grief.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“There's nothing to know." Except I'm in love with you, I can never tell you that, and I know you'll be happier without me.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“We were never just friends, were we?’
I tried to remember. Had there ever been a time when my heart didn’t race around her? When my hands weren’t drawn to her hands? When fighting with her didn’t feel like the end of the world? When she wasn’t untangling my life? When we weren’t tangled together?
‘No,’ I said. ‘I guess we were never just.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“It's not a problem to be nineteen and unsure of what you want to do with the rest of your life.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“Loving you is a reflex.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“If I was drowning on land, in oxygen, maybe the floor of the river was the only place I’d be able to breathe. [...] I thought, again, I’m so tired. I’m such a disappointment. I don’t want to do this anymore. I could kill myself. I should. I might. I want to.
But, no, I can fix this, still. I just have to try harder.
But I could.
And I might.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“My whole chest hurt with yearning. I'd wanted this from the moment I'd watched her dance without me at prom.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“Her knee touched mine, and it was all I could think about, but neither of us moved to put inches between us.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“Thank you from the very bottom of my heart to you, reader, for taking the time to read Avery’s story. My life—and this world—will always be better with you in it. Tomorrow will come. It will, I swear it. I’ll meet you in the morning.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“I can't stop thinking about how a star is going to kill us,' she said, her voice cracking, 'I don't want to die. I was just becoming myself.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“Oceans, rivers, they're like hope for what's beyond us. But lakes remind me there's beauty where we are.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“But who even am I? I feel like I'm ten people and no one all at once. I show different sides of myself to different groups of people.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“Actually, yes. I try to reach outside myself, even when I'm alone. Inside myself, well. That's a darker tale.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“You know, you can't ask the universe for what you want; you have to demand it.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“You know what's funny, though?"
"What?"
"In every version of my future, I see myself back here in New Hampshire in the end. With you." My heart sank a little. I was starting to realize more and more that was an ending I couldn't give her. As if on cue, a loon sang sadly nearby.
"You don't want to come back here. You deserve the world, Cass," I said.
She slung her arm around me. "You too, Ave. But you should know - in the movie of my life, you're in every frame.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“All my life I'd been telling people I love them. I'd been so careful with those three words.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“Did I believe I could love all of who I was, including my screaming flaws, my biggest failures, and my cruel, relentless brain?
I wasn't sure, but I could choose to try.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“She looked so much like me, not just in her coloring but in a certain expression she wore. I'd seen it in the mirror so many times, not sadness, exactly, but an exhaustion that had nothing to do with the body. It was like there should be a light there and there wasn't. It was like she should be dreaming, but she couldn't.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“We were coated in sweat, smelling like each other, pressing our skin together, running our hands through each other's hair.
The electric lamp swung above us. It was the best thing I had ever done in this body. Cass was me, and I was Cass, and we were maybe dying. And here, I thought, here I am. Finally alive.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“Kissing her felt like the answer to every question I had ever asked. It felt like the period at the end of a breathless sentence. It felt like we were giants, like I could reach up to swat the asteroid from the sky and we could fold into each other like that forever, so big nothing could destroy us.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“Ooh, yeah. Looks inspired by cosmic chaos, celestial mayhem, and stardust pandemonium.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“...Cass was with a girl like that, and that girl was not me. And I had always wanted it to be me.
My ribs iced over and cracked one by one right down my chest. My hands, knees, neck, back, hair all burned in the places Cass had touched me recently and froze again without her hands there still. I pulled my own hands away from the boy in front of me and crossed them over my chest.
"Oh my God. I'm in love with her.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“I love you," she screamed over the rushing air, "because you're my home."

"I love you because you have been my greatest adventure," I yelled. Cass smiled and held my hands harder.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“I kissed Cass under the constellations. She held me in the middle of the ice-glass night.
Even if I shouldn't have, even if she deserved more than me - for the first time in my life, I pulled her closer. I let her love me.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“I have never loved you more." She sat up, reached across my body, and grabbed the scrapbook. "Let's read through this together tonight," she said, "and then..." She skipped to the blank pages, counted them, and ripped half of them out. "I'll take these. You take the rest. When we're apart, we'll both write our stories, what happens to us. What it looks like. What we feel. That way if one of us makes it and the other one doesn't..."
"We'll have left something behind," I said.
"Answers," she said, "and a whole museum of thinly veiled love letters.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“Why do you want to leave me, then?” “I don’t”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“...and I felt a door inside me close, though I wasn't sure what was on the other side of it.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“Kissing her felt like like the answer to every question I had ever asked. It felt like the period at the end of a breathless sentence. It felt like we were giants, like I could reach up to swat the asteroid from the sky and we could fold into each other like that forever, so big nothing could destroy us.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come

“I tried to catch my reflection one more time, but I didn't know the girl who flickered below me, and I didn't know how to save her. I dared her to want something, to wish for something. Anything. I begged her. I missed, not for the first time, having someone to pray to.”
― Jen St. Jude, If Tomorrow Doesn't Come