Top 500 Jandy Nelson Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “I’m in self-imposed exile, cradled between split branches, in my favorite tree in the woods behind school. I’ve been coming here every day at lunch, hiding out until the bell rings, whittling words into the branches with my pen, allowing my heart to break in private.”

— Jandy Nelson

302. “He was so alone in that story. I breathe him in, all cocooned up in the place he dreams, tenderness crushing into me. And I understand why he shut down like that. Of course I do.”

— Jandy Nelson

303. “It occurs to me with rising concern that a blow-in can also blow away.”

— Jandy Nelson

304. “I’m so happy I’m not a horse!”

— Jandy Nelson

305. “I tell you not to be timid. I tell you to make the choices, make the mistakes, big, terrible, reckless mistakes, really screw it all up. I tell you it is the only way.”

— Jandy Nelson

306. “SELF PORTRAIT: Throwing Armfuls of Air into the Air.”

— Jandy Nelson

307. “I’m convinced the storm’s going to bust down the walls. Then it does and I’m remembering Dad’s dream because it’s happening.”

— Jandy Nelson

308. “I look into his sorrowless eyes and a door in my heart blows open. And when we kiss, i see that on the other side of that door is sky.”

— Jandy Nelson

309. “For days and days, the rain beat its fists on the roof of our house – evidence of the terrible mistake God had made. Each morning, when I woke I listened for the tireless pounding, looked at the drear through the window and was relieved that at least the sun had the decency to stay the hell away from us.”

— Jandy Nelson

310. “I, however, am a different story. I have not taught in years. I will not. Probably not ever again.”

— Jandy Nelson

311. “My heart’s bigger than a blue whale’s, which needs its own parking spot.”

— Jandy Nelson

312. “Yes, so if God can have two tries, why not us? Or three or three hundred tries.”

— Jandy Nelson

313. “I think you might very well be the most eccentric person I’ve ever met.”

— Jandy Nelson

314. “Before they can grin there fake smiles, I mumble something about a toilet, laugh a second too late at some joke, and then, without looking back, I speed-walk to the house like someone whose heart isn’t shaking, whose eyes aren’t filling up, someone who doesn’t feel so sad.”

— Jandy Nelson

315. “She smiles at me and it sends a warm summer breeze around the room.”

— Jandy Nelson

316. “Meeting your soul mate is like walking into a house you’ve been in before.”

— Jandy Nelson

317. “Later, as he plays and plays, as all the fog burns away, I think, he’s right. That’s exactly it – I am crazy sad, and somewhere deep inside, all I want is to fly.”

— Jandy Nelson

318. “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.”

— Jandy Nelson

319. “He’s grinning now. “Also I think you’re really pretty and I’m incredibly shallow.”

— Jandy Nelson

320. “Dad used to make Mom’s eyes shine; now he makes her grind her teeth. I don’t know why.”

— Jandy Nelson

321. “Who wants to know we are just one carefree breath away from the end? Who wants to know that the person you love and need the most can just vanish forever?”

— Jandy Nelson

322. “I suddenly feel left out of a future that isn’t even going to happen.”

— Jandy Nelson

323. “If only the heart listen to reason, right?”

— Jandy Nelson

324. “This is wishing with your hands.”

— Jandy Nelson

325. “I do not know why I do much of anything.”

— Jandy Nelson

326. “If ever there was a boy in love, sweet pea, it’s Joe Fontaine.”

— Jandy Nelson

327. “And then we are kissing, so far into the sky I don’t think we’re ever coming back. If anyone asks where we are, just tell them to look up.”

— Jandy Nelson

328. “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,’” Oscar says to me, still balancing on the back legs of his chair. “William Blake.”

— Jandy Nelson

329. “I do not want to eat or drink, or i will lose the taste of you in my mouth.”

— Jandy Nelson

330. “But boy do I miss proposing, nothing so romantic. Make sure you try it, at least once, Len – it’s skydiving with your feet on the ground.”

— Jandy Nelson

331. “All that matters is the worlds I can make, not this toilet-licking one I have to live in.”

— Jandy Nelson

332. “I don’t know how this can be but it can: A painting is both exactly rhe same and entirely different every single time you look at it.”

— Jandy Nelson

333. “The idea’s an instant mood-lifter. I’m going to take up more space in a room than my father.”

— Jandy Nelson

334. “See? Other mothers don’t have their own private weather.”

— Jandy Nelson

335. “What makes you say the opposite of what every cell in your body wants you to say?”

— Jandy Nelson

336. “Your first lesson: My studio is not a democracy. Have a donut.”

— Jandy Nelson

337. “I’m having a hand problem. How come everyone else seems to know what to do with them? Pockets, I remember with relief, pockets, I love pockets!”

— Jandy Nelson

338. “When glaciers break up due to rising world temperatures, its called calving. I’m calving.”

— Jandy Nelson

339. “You misunderstand”, Guillermo says. “I believe in everything”.”

— Jandy Nelson

340. “Noah once told me he could hear horses galloping inside her. I got it.”

— Jandy Nelson

341. “I was going to show your brother Gemini-the Twins.”

— Jandy Nelson

342. “Do not look so happy. I tell you ahead of time. All my students despise me.”

— Jandy Nelson

343. “What are we going to do with all this love?”

— Jandy Nelson

344. “If she were drowning, I’d hold her head under.”

— Jandy Nelson

345. “And when you’re tired, you crawl into your flower and go to sleep. During the day, everyone talks in colors instead of sounds. It’s so quiet.” She closes her eyes, says slowly, “When people fall in love, they burst into flames.”

— Jandy Nelson

346. “You can’t help who you love, can you?”

— Jandy Nelson

347. “I understand the quicksand of shame.”

— Jandy Nelson

348. “I think about how Mom told Noah it was his responsibility to be true to his heart. Neither of us has been. Why is it so hard? Why is it so hard to know what that truth is?”

— Jandy Nelson

349. “Aber ich kann nicht. Ich bin kein Feigling mehr. Ich habe es satt, auf Pause gestellt zu sein, vergraben und versteckt, vor Angst erstarrt im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes. Ich will mir keine Wiesen vorstellen, ich will durch sie hindurch laufen.”

— Jandy Nelson

350. “And the feeling is unmistakable: I’m free.”

— Jandy Nelson