Top 500 Jandy Nelson Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “I held on to his arm, which was belted securely around me, feeling safe because Dad was in charge and it was his hand that pulled the sun up each morning and down at night.”

— Jandy Nelson

402. “A comfortable quiet falls over us. Really comfortable, like we’ve lain on filthy floors corpselike together for several lifetimes now.”

— Jandy Nelson

403. “Sadness pulses out of us as we walk. I almost expect the trees to lower their branches when we pass, the stars to hand down some light. I breathe in the horsy scent of eucalyptus, the thick sugary pine, aware of each breath I take, how each one keeps me in the world a few seconds longer. I taste the sweetness of the summer air on my tongue and want to just gulp and gulp and gulp it into my body – this living, breathing, heart-beating body of mine.”

— Jandy Nelson

404. “Who knows if destiny is just how you tell yourself the stroy of your life?”

— Jandy Nelson

405. “I blow up the freaking country. No one notices.”

— Jandy Nelson

406. “We’re petal people. I think about the earthquake kiss in the alcove and want to cry again. This time because I am sad. And scared. And because my skin has never fit this badly before.”

— Jandy Nelson

407. “Las personas, cuando se enamoran, arden en llamas.”

— Jandy Nelson

408. “There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds.”

— Jandy Nelson

409. “He smiles wildly, looks like love itself stuffed into a pair of jeans, black T-shirt, and backward baseball cap.”

— Jandy Nelson

410. “Es bastante aburrido, pero los jugadores, bueno, ya saben...”

— Jandy Nelson

411. “I’m awake, I guess, and maybe that’s good, but it’s more complicated than that because now I’m someone who knows the worst thing can happen at any time.”

— Jandy Nelson

412. “I did four pastel drawings from the permanent collection – a Chagall, a Franz Marc, and two Picassos. I picked those because I could tell the paintings were looking at me as hard as I was looking at them.”

— Jandy Nelson

413. “Then our eyes meet and we both crack up like we’re made of the same air.”

— Jandy Nelson

414. “Ninguna mujer se puede resistir a un hombre que alberga maremotos y terremotos bajo la piel.”

— Jandy Nelson

415. “The music continues its fiery revolution all around us and there is a girl inside of me that wants to give in to the fanatical beat – she wants to dance wild and free all around the thumping, but unfortunately, that girl’s in me, not me.”

— Jandy Nelson

416. “I want my sister. I want to hurl a building at God. I take a breath and exhale with enough force to blow the orange paint right off the walls.”

— Jandy Nelson

417. “Het hart overmeestert het verstand. Hoop of angst overmeestert de rede.”

— Jandy Nelson

418. “But I’m his son, his gargantuan son. I’m a whirling, ass-kicking Goliath, a typhoon wrapped in skin, and then I’m writhing and thrashing and trying to break free and they’re wrestling me back down, laughing and saying things like “what a crazy mother.”

— Jandy Nelson

419. “Was the sky always this shade of magenta?”

— Jandy Nelson

420. “Then he bestows the final commandment onto me: Thou shalt remake the world.”

— Jandy Nelson

421. “Mom used to say when you look at art, it’s half seeing, half dreaming. Same with ghosts, maybe.”

— Jandy Nelson

422. “El amor hace y deshace. Atrae la dicha y la desdicha con igual intensidad.”

— Jandy Nelson

423. “Man overboard,” he murmurs, wrapping me up in his arms and we’re laughing and then the laughing dies out because who knew kissing could be like this, could so alter the landscape within, tipping over oceans, sending rivers up mountains, unpouring the rain.”

— Jandy Nelson

424. “You’re the author of you own story.”

— Jandy Nelson

425. “That’s what happened to him then: love. Tragic, impossible love.”

— Jandy Nelson

426. “I try to calm myself by counting his freckles to see if there are any that are new.”

— Jandy Nelson

427. “As the days pass, Paige Walker’s love of lilacs and ability to boil water have the singular effect of washing sixteen years of myth right off of her.”

— Jandy Nelson

428. “Forget shutters, if I could put the Great Wall of China around him and me, I would.”

— Jandy Nelson

429. “I’m so happy, I feel like I’m jumping on a trampoline, just boinging around inside myself.”

— Jandy Nelson

430. “Lots of questions go unanswered.”

— Jandy Nelson

431. “It’s like finally going to confession only to find out the priest has earplugs in.”

— Jandy Nelson

432. “I go up to The Sanctum and put on the most obnoxious head-banging punk music I have, a San Francisco band called Filth.”

— Jandy Nelson

433. “I’ve disappeared, which is good really, because suddenly I don’t have a clue what to do with my face or body or smashed-up heart.”

— Jandy Nelson

434. “A sorrowing heart poisons recipes.”

— Jandy Nelson

435. “She dies over and over again, all day long.”

— Jandy Nelson

436. “And even as I’m kissing him and kissing him and kissing him, I wish I were kissing him, wanting more, more, more, more, like I can’t get enough, never will be able to get enough.”

— Jandy Nelson

437. “My first day back to school is just as I expect, the hall does a red sea part when I come in, conversations hush, eyes swim with nervous sympathy, and everyone stares as if I’m holding Bailey’s dead body in my arms, which I guess I am. Her death is all over me, I can feel it and everyone can see it, plain as a big black coat wrapped around me on a beautiful spring day.”

— Jandy Nelson

438. “What’s up with the plant?” He points to the despairing Lennie houseplant in the middle of the table. It looks like it has leprosy. We all go silent, because what do we say about my doppelganger houseplant? “It’s Lennie, it’s dying, and frankly, we don’t know what to do about it,” Big booms with finality.”

— Jandy Nelson

439. “And the right thing is turning our backs on what might be the love story of our lives? The right thing is denying destiny, denying all the forces that have conspired to bring us together, forces that have been at work for years now? No way.”

— Jandy Nelson

440. “Except don’t you need to be claimed to be a daughter? Don’t you need to be loved?”

— Jandy Nelson

441. “And it’s just dawned on me that I might be the author of my own story, but so is everyone else the author of their own stories, and sometimes, like now, there’s no overlap.”

— Jandy Nelson

442. “Y ahora hay caballos galopando dentro de ella. Los oigo.”

— Jandy Nelson

443. “I want to hurl a building at God.”

— Jandy Nelson

444. “I’m standing on my own head!”

— Jandy Nelson

445. “His eyes warm at that- it kills me. What are we going to do with all this love?”

— Jandy Nelson

446. “We. Are. Off. Our. Feet. I look up. The air’s shimmering with light. The world is. Or I’m imagining this. Of course I am.”

— Jandy Nelson

447. “I wait in the cold air where his body was.”

— Jandy Nelson

448. “When men have it, no one seems to notice, they become astronauts or pilots or cartographers or criminals or poets. They don’t stay around long enough to know if they’ve fathered children or not. When women get it, well, it’s complicated, it’s just different.” “How?” I asked. “How is it different?” “Well, for instance, it’s not customary for a mother to not see her own girls for this many years, is it?” She had a point there.”

— Jandy Nelson

449. “He has his arms out like wings and is turning around and around, the wind rippling his clothes, the glow of the fire lighting him up like a phoenix.”

— Jandy Nelson

450. “Yes. Everything is true at once. Life is contradiction.”

— Jandy Nelson