Top 500 Jandy Nelson Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “All women write stories. It’s just that only some transcribe them.”

— Jandy Nelson

452. “I nodded and something really big and bright in me crushed to nothing in an instant. I’m pretty sure it was my soul.”

— Jandy Nelson

453. “It’s very hard to unbelieve stuff from when you were little, isn’t it? So hard to shake off the stories we were raised on.”

— Jandy Nelson

454. “No matter where I look inside myself, I come across more love for him, for everything about him, his anger as much as his tenderness – he’s so alive, he makes me feel like I could take a bite out of the whole earth.”

— Jandy Nelson

455. “I’m at the edge of the world looking for my brother.”

— Jandy Nelson

456. “The stars have bewitched the sky of darkness.”

— Jandy Nelson

457. “What’s weird is that she looks like she’s in a windstorm all of a sudden. Her hair’s blowing and her dress is slightly billowing. I check under the table to see if there’s a vent or something, but there isn’t. See? Other mothers don’t have their own private weather. She’s smiling at us so warmly, like we’re puppies, and something catches in my chest.”

— Jandy Nelson

458. “She’d said not to feel like we had to copy exactly. I didn’t copy at all. I shook up the originals in my head and let them out all covered in me.”

— Jandy Nelson

459. “She didn’t know people could stop loving you. She’d thought friendship was permanent, like matter.”

— Jandy Nelson

460. “Real life blows. I’m allergic to it too.”

— Jandy Nelson

461. “As I make my way back to the table, something becomes clear: 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 whole 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

462. “There’s an invisible artery joining the hearts of mothers and daughters through which pain is transferred from one generation to the next.”

— Jandy Nelson

463. “It’s like he’s fallen out of time.”

— Jandy Nelson

464. “Only the luckiest humans find their split-apart, you see.”

— Jandy Nelson

465. “He liked trees more than people.”

— Jandy Nelson

466. “Sometimes, I’d see Sarah and her mom share a look across a room and I’d want to heave myself over like a table.”

— Jandy Nelson

467. “Maybe you stomped it to nothing and now he’s hollow and empty, a shell with no turtle inside.”

— Jandy Nelson

468. “What people say before they die will come true.”

— Jandy Nelson

469. “Catches me by my shirt, whips me around, and with one strong hand flat against my chest, he pushes me against a tree and kisses me so hard I go blind.”

— Jandy Nelson

470. “Plus, now that color has refastened itself to everything, it’s supernaturally amazing to be in the trees.”

— Jandy Nelson

471. “Well-known fact: Life was a soggy sock you can’t take off.”

— Jandy Nelson

472. “I have a very low eerie threshold.”

— Jandy Nelson

473. “How is it possible that something can seem like such a brilliant idea one day and such a bonehead one the next?”

— Jandy Nelson

474. “If only we could have joys without sorrows, blessings without curses.”

— Jandy Nelson

475. “I feel guilty that I’m still here...”

— Jandy Nelson

476. “You are remaking the world, Noah. Drawing by drawing.”

— Jandy Nelson

477. “I have a heart so I can give it to you alone!”

— Jandy Nelson

478. “Miles wished he’d stop being a human roller coaster, careening from one extreme to the next, whenever he thought about his brother.”

— Jandy Nelson

479. “This boy beaming before me, however, seems to glow in a class all his own. He must be from a very friendly part of the Milky Way.”

— Jandy Nelson

480. “We will never be those people again. She took them all with her.”

— Jandy Nelson

481. “Like he owns the air in the Northern Hemisphere.”

— Jandy Nelson

482. “Are stories prayers? Invitations? Mirrors? Storms? Or maybe they’re homes.”

— Jandy Nelson

483. “I’ve never been to a party before, didn’t know it was like being miles and miles underground, where demons walk around with their hair on fire.”

— Jandy Nelson

484. “During the day, everyone talks in colors instead of sounds. It’s so quiet.”

— Jandy Nelson

485. “Most of the time people look less like you remember when you see them again. Not him. He’s shimmering in the air exactly like he’s been in my mind. He’s a light show.”

— Jandy Nelson

486. “Doesn’t he know popular people aren’t revolutionaries?”

— Jandy Nelson

487. “The truck blasts through the trees and I stick my hand out the window, trying to catch the wind in my palm like bails used to, missing her, missing the girl I used to be around her, missing who we all used to be. We will never be those people again. She took them all with her.”

— Jandy Nelson

488. “We’re petal people. I think about the earthquake kiss in the alcove and want to cry again.”

— Jandy Nelson

489. “Sometimes platonic loves are the most profound.”

— Jandy Nelson

490. “It’s about magic.” He shakes his head. “How could I have forgotten that?”

— Jandy Nelson

491. “Bailey loved both Toby and me so much – he and I almost make up her whole heart, and maybe that’s it, what we were trying to do by being together, maybe we were trying to put her heart back together again.”

— Jandy Nelson

492. “I don’t know if you notice. God was very drunk when he made him.”

— Jandy Nelson

493. “If people bear the trauma of their ancestors, doesn’t it follow that they also bear their rhapsodies? If there is generational pain passed down, mustn’t there also be generational joy? If there are family curses that drop through time, mustn’t there also be family blessings that do the same?”

— Jandy Nelson

494. “We’re sprinting at the speed of light when the ground gives way and we rise into the air as if racing up stairs.”

— Jandy Nelson

495. “Desiderium, n. an ardent desire for something lost.”

— Jandy Nelson

496. “Los actos de atrapar al vuelo, lanzar, patear y golpear me producen alergia en todas sus versiones.”

— Jandy Nelson

497. “I want to, though, want to do something, have to do something. Like kiss Brian. The idea snags me and then I can’t get out of it. I totally should’ve tried. But what if he’d punched me? Cracked my head open with a meteorite? Oh, but what if he hadn’t? What if he’d kissed me back? Because I’d catch him staring at me sometimes when he didn’t think I was paying attention to him. I was always paying attention to him.”

— Jandy Nelson

498. “Guillermo taps his foot impatiently. Oscar winks at me, sending my stomach on an elevator ride. “To be continued,” he says.”

— Jandy Nelson

499. “His nose is like a capsized ship, his mouth the size of three, his jaw and cheekbones hefty as armor, and his eyes are iridescent. His face is a room overstuffed with massive furniture.”

— Jandy Nelson

500. “Music was never a noun for you, it was always a verb. The only verb. You music-ed through the days and nights of your life.”

— Jandy Nelson