Quotes by Jandy Nelson

My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesnt 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. Thats just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you dont 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.

When people fall in love, they burst into flames.

People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesnt. It continues and is ever-changing.

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?

Lifes a freaking mess. In fact, Im 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 Grams right, theres 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. Its all a beautiful calamitous mess. Its like the day Mr. James took us into the woods and cried triumphantly, Thats it! Thats it! to the dizzying cacophony of soloing instruments trying to make music together. That is it.

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.

Thats a misconception, Lennie. The sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.

There once was a girl who found herself dead.She peered over the ledge of heavenand saw that back on earthher sister missed her too much,was way too sad,so she crossed some pathsthat would not have crossed,took some moments in her handshook them upand spilled them like diceover the living world.It worked.The boy with the guitar collidedwith her sister.There you go, Len, she whispered. The rest is up to you.

Everyone has always said I look like Bailey, but I dont.I have grey eyes to her green,an oval face to her heart-shaped one,Im shorter, scrawnier, paler, flatter, plainer, tamer.All we shared is a madhouse of curlsthat I imprison in a ponytailwhile she let hers ravelike madnessaround her head.I dont sing in my sleepor eat the petals off flowersor run into the rain instead of out of it.Im 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 herand pull a strand of her long hairI 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.

Being with boys is more dangerous for me than killing a cricket or having a bird fly into the house.

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

grief is a housewhere the chairshave forgotten how to hold usthe mirrors how to reflect usthe walls how to contain usgrief is a house that disappearseach time someone knocks at the dooror rings the bella house that blows into the airat the slightest gustthat buries itself deep in the groundwhile everyone is sleepinggrief is a house where no one can protect youwhere the younger sisterwill grow older than the older onewhere the doorsno longer let you inor out

[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

The skys 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. Doomsdays most definitely been cancelled. Landscape: When God Paints Outside The Lines

This is our story to tell. He says it in his Ten Commandments way and it hits me that way: profoundly. Youd think for all the reading I do, I would have thought about this before, but I havent. Ive never once thought about the interpretative, the storytelling aspect of life, of my life. I always feel like I was in a story, yes, but not like I was the author of it, or like I had any say in ita telling whatsoever.You can tell your story any way you damn well please.Its your solo.

its okay to be addicted to beauty, Mom says, all dreamy. Emerson said beauty is Gods handwriting.

Mom has a massive sunflower for a soul so big theres hardly any room in her for organs.

The worst thing that could ever happen to Noah has happened. Hes become normal.

SELF PORTRAIT: Throwing Armfuls of Air into the Air

And I see that his brown eye has a splash of green in it and the green one a splash of brown. Like Cezanne painted them. Impressionist eyes.