Top 500 Jandy Nelson Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “That’s just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don’t get one without the other.”

— Jandy Nelson

52. “I didn’t know you could get buried in your own silence.”

— Jandy Nelson

53. “Her careless beauty so huge it had to walk a few paces ahead of her, announcing itself.”

— Jandy Nelson

54. “When people fall in love, they burst into flames.”

— Jandy Nelson

55. “If one twin is cut, the other will bleed.”

— Jandy Nelson

56. “We wish with our hands, that’s what we do as artists.”

— Jandy Nelson

57. “I gave up practically the whole world for you,” I tell him, walking through the front door of my own love story. “The sun, stars, ocean, trees, everything, I gave it all up for you.”

— Jandy Nelson

58. “Every picture taken of you reduces your spirit and shortens your life.”

— Jandy Nelson

59. “Where the hell is Ralph?”

— Jandy Nelson

60. “No hot guys should be allowed to have an English accent and drive a motorcycle. Not to mention wear the leather jacket or sport the cool shades. Hot guys should be forced into footie pajamas.”

— Jandy Nelson

61. “The smell of jasmine makes people tell their secrets.”

— Jandy Nelson

62. “I’m thinking the reason I’ve been so quiet all those years is only because Brian wasn’t around yet for me to tell everything to.”

— Jandy Nelson

63. “The worst thing that could ever happen to Noah has happened. He’s become normal.”

— Jandy Nelson

64. “Wear only oversized hoodies, oversized jeans, and sneakers. Stay quiet.”

— Jandy Nelson

65. “Listen to me. It takes a lot of courage to be true to yourself, true to your heart. You always have been very brave that way and I pray you always will be. It’s your responsibility, Noah. Remember that.”

— Jandy Nelson

66. “Then I enter the crawlspace deep inside me and shut the hatch. Because I’m not coming back out. Ever.”

— Jandy Nelson

67. “People think people are in charge, but they’re wrong; it’s the trees.”

— Jandy Nelson

68. “Okay,” she says. “Trees, stars, oceans. Fine.” “And the sun, Jude.” “Oh, all right,” she says, totally surprising me. “I’ll give you the sun.” “I practically have everything now!” I say. “You’re crazy!”

— Jandy Nelson

69. “So Plato talked about these beings that used to exist that had four legs and four arms and two heads. They were totally self-contained and ecstatic and powerful. Too powerful, so Zeus cut them all in half and scattered all the halves around the world so that humans were doomed to forever look for their other half, the one who shared their very soul. Only the luckiest humans find their split-apart, you see.”

— Jandy Nelson

70. “Because, as corny as it may be: I want to be a wobbly people pole that tries to bring joy into the world, not one that takes joy from it.”

— Jandy Nelson

71. “The Color Of Extraordinary.”

— Jandy Nelson

72. “Nothing curdles love in the heart like lemon on the tongue.”

— Jandy Nelson

73. “But then I think about my sister and what a shell-less turtle she was and how she wanted me to be one too. C’mon, Lennie, she used to say to me at least ten times a day. C’mon Len. And that makes me feel better, like it’s her life rather than her death that is now teaching me how to be, who to be.”

— Jandy Nelson

74. “Always walk right foot first to avert calamity, which comes at you from the left.”

— Jandy Nelson

75. “I wonder why bereaved people even bother with mourning clothes when the grief itself provides such an unmistakable wardrobe.”

— Jandy Nelson

76. “Everything is true at once. Life is a contradiction. We take in every lesson. We find what works.”

— Jandy Nelson

77. “I always imagined music trapped inside my clarinet, not trapped inside of me. But what if music is what escapes when a heart breaks?”

— Jandy Nelson

78. “Porque para mi, la vida se parece a darte cuenta de que vas a toda marcha en el tren equivocado, en el sentido equivocado, sin que puedas hacer nada para remediarlo.”

— Jandy Nelson

79. “How could a mother who boils water for pasta leave two little girls behind?”

— Jandy Nelson

80. “What slumbers in the heart is what slumbers in the stone, understand?”

— Jandy Nelson

81. “When he plays all the flowers swap colors and years and decades and centuries of rain pour back into the sky.”

— Jandy Nelson

82. “I am the author of my story and I can tell it any way I want.”

— Jandy Nelson

83. “In every set of twins, there is one angel, one devil.”

— Jandy Nelson

84. “No woman can resist a man who has tidal waves and earthquakes beneath the skin.”

— Jandy Nelson

85. “He floated into the air high above the sleeping forest, his green hat spinning a few feet above his head. In his hand was the open suitcase and out of it spilled a whole sky of stars.”

— Jandy Nelson

86. “He has on The Poor Motherless Girl Look – all adults get it at some point when they talk to me, like I’m doomed, shoved out of the airplane without a parachute because mothers are the parachutes.”

— Jandy Nelson

87. “The first thing I notice is the sky, so full of blue and the kind of brilliant white clouds that make you ecstatic to have eyes. Nothing can go wrong under this sky...”

— Jandy Nelson

88. “Any marked peculiarity in the face indicates a similar peculiarity of disposition.”

— Jandy Nelson

89. “I’m filled with something I can only describe as recognition. Not because he looks familiar on the outside this time, but because he feels familiar on the inside.”

— Jandy Nelson

90. “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

91. “And some thoughts once thought are very hard to unthink.”

— Jandy Nelson

92. “Each new self standing on the last one’s shoulders until we’re these wobbly people poles?”

— Jandy Nelson

93. “At least, the sun had the decency to stay the hell away from us.”

— Jandy Nelson

94. “It’s as if someone vacuumed up the horizon while we were looking the other way.”

— Jandy Nelson

95. “The sunset has turned the sky into a carnival of color as Noah and Brian walk out of the forest, hand in hand. Brian notices Dad and me first and shrugs his hand away, but Noah immediately finds it again. At this, Brian’s eyes squint up and his face cracks open in a heart-crushing smile. Noah, like always around Brian, can barely keep his head on his neck, he’s so happy.”

— Jandy Nelson

96. “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?”

— Jandy Nelson

97. “It’s always: two rocks, two papers, two scissors. When I don’t draw us like this, I draw us as half-people.”

— Jandy Nelson

98. “A lo mejor estamos siempre acumulando nuevos yoes. Sumando personalidades a medida que tomamos decisiones, buenas y malas, que metemos la pata o progresamos, que perdemos la cabeza y recuperamos el sentido, que nos hundimos, nos enamoramos, lloramos a un ser querido, crecemos, nos apartamos del mundo o lo agarramos por los cuernos, a medida que creamos cosas y las destruimos.”

— Jandy Nelson

99. “Let me just unsubscribe to my own mind already, because I don’t get any of it.”

— Jandy Nelson

100. “I know from doing portraits that you have to look at someone a really long time to see what they’re covering up, to see their inside face, and when you do see it, and get it down, that’s the thing that makes people freak out about how much a drawing looks like them.”

— Jandy Nelson