MDS > MDS's Quotes

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
― Louis L'Amour

“I know life well enough to know you can’t count on things staying around or standing still, no matter how much you want them to. You can’t stop people from dying. You can’t stop them from going away. You can’t stop yourself from going away either. I know myself well enough to know that no one else can keep you awake or keep you from sleeping.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Sorry wastes time. You have to live your life like you'll never be sorry. It's easier just to do the right thing from the start so there's nothing to apologize for.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“You deserve better. I can’t promise you I’ll stay around, not because I don’t want to. It’s hard to explain. I’m a fuckup. I’m broken, and no one can fix it. I’ve tried. I’m still trying. I can’t love anyone because it’s not fair to anyone who loves me back. I’ll never hurt you, not like I want to hurt Roamer. But I can’t promise I won’t pick you apart, piece by piece, until you’re in a thousand pieces, just like me. You should know what you’re getting into before getting involved.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Listen, I’m the freak. I’m the weirdo. I’m the troublemaker. I start fights. I let people down. Don’t make Finch mad, whatever you do. Oh, there he goes again, in one of his moods. Moody Finch. Angry Finch. Unpredictable Finch. Crazy Finch. But I’m not a compilation of symptoms. Not a casualty of shitty parents and an even shittier chemical makeup. Not a problem. Not a diagnosis. Not an illness. Not something to be rescued. I’m a person.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I do my best thinking at night when everyone else is sleeping. No interruptions. No noise. I like the feeling of being awake when no one else is.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Your hope lies in accepting your life as it now lies before you, forever changed. If you can do that, the peace you seek will follow. Forever changed. I am forever changed.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I am broken. I am a fraud. I am impossible to love.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I should be happy, but instead I feel nothing. I feel a lot of nothing these days. I've cried a few times, but mostly I'm empty, as if whatever makes me feel and hurt and laugh and love has been surgically removed, leaving me hollowed out like a shell.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“The last wandering”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Because it's not a lie if it's how you feel.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Even when we weren’t wandering, even from the floor of your closet, you showed the world to me.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Disguise the pain. Don’t call attention. Don’t be noticed.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Is today a good day to die?”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“What would I have said to him if I’d known I would never see him again?”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“We all have a shelf life.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“But that isn’t why. The why is that none of it matters. Not school, not cheerleading, not boyfriends or friends or parties or creative writing programs or …” She waves her arms at the world. “It’s all just time filler until we die.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“You don’t know how it is. It’s like I’ve got this angry little person inside me, and I can feel him trying to get out. He’s running out of room because he’s growing bigger and bigger, and so he starts rising up, into my lungs, chest, throat, and I just push him right back down. I don’t want him to come out. I can’t let him out.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“They are strong and brave and caring, and even though I know they must cry and get angry and maybe even throw things when they’re alone, they rarely show it to me. Instead, they encourage me to get out of the house and into the car and back on the road, so to speak. They listen and ask and worry, and they’re there for me. If anything, they’re a little too there for me now. They need to know where I’m going, what I’m doing, who I’m seeing, and when I’ll be back. Text us on the way there, text us on your way home.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“A string of thoughts run through my head like a song I can't get rid of, over and over in the same order: I am broken. I am a fraud. I am impossible to love.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Finch scribbles something and slaps it to the wall. Welcome. He scribbles something else. Freak. He shows it to me before destroying it. He writes Belong, which goes on the wall, and Label, which doesn’t. Warmth, Saturday, Wander, You, Best friend go up, while Cold, Sunday, Stand still, Everyone else go into the heap.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“I’m always amazed by people and their sleep. I wouldn’t ever sleep if I didn’t have to.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“The thing I can’t, won’t, mention to him is that I see Finch everywhere—in the hallways at school, on the street, in my neighborhood. Someone’s face will remind me of him, or someone’s walk or someone’s laugh. It’s like being surrounded by a thousand different Finches. I wonder if this is normal,”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Because in this house there’s no such thing as being sick unless you can measure it with a thermometer under the tongue.”
― Jennifer Niven

“Labels like “bipolar” say This is why you are the way you are. This is who you are. They explain people away as illnesses.”
― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.”
― Italo Calvino