Jandy Nelson Quotes

“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, The Sky Is Everywhere

“How can the word love, the word life, even fit in the mouth?”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

“Everyone has always said I look like Bailey, but I don't.
I have grey eyes to her green,
an oval face to her heart-shaped one,
I'm shorter, scrawnier, paler, flatter, plainer, tamer.
All we shared is a madhouse of curls
that I imprison in a ponytail
while she let hers rave
like madness
around her head.
I don't sing in my sleep
or eat the petals off flowers
or run into the rain instead of out of it.
I'm the unplugged-in one,
the side-kick sister,
tucked into a corner of her shadow.
Boys followed her everywhere;
they filled the booths at the restaurant where she waitressed,
herded around her at the river.
One day, I saw a boy come up behind her
and pull a strand of her long hair
I understood this-
I felt the same way.
In photographs of us together,
she is always looking at the camera,
and I am always looking at her.”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

“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, The Sky Is Everywhere

“Someone might as well roll up the whole sky, pack it away for good.”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

“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, The Sky Is Everywhere

“She's a sun-kissed beach girl who goes gothgrungepunkhippierockeremocoremetalfreakfashionistabraingeekboycrazyhiphoprastagirl to keep it under wraps.”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

“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, The Sky Is Everywhere

“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, The Sky Is Everywhere

“How could a mother who boils water for pasta leave two little girls behind?”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

“The worst thing that could ever happen to Noah has happened. He's become normal.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“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, I'll Give You the Sun

“You can tell your story any way you damn well please”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

“The sky's gone blue: azure, the ocean bluer: cerulean, the trees are swirls of every hella freaking green on earth and bright thick eggy yellow is spilling over everything. Awesome. Doomsday's most definitely been cancelled. Landscape: When God Paints Outside The Lines”
― Jandy Nelson

“The feet of ghosts never touch the ground.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“...we need to start a new philisophical movement: messessentialism instead of existentialism: For those who revel in the essential mess that is life.”
― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

“There's nothing giggly about Heather usually. She's the opposite; hanging out with her is like sitting in an empty church. That's why I like her. She's quiet and serious and a thousand years old and seems like she can talk to the wind.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun