Top 500 Jandy Nelson Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

406. “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

407. “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

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

412. “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

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

416. “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

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

419. “Lots of questions go unanswered.”

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

421. “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

422. “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

423. “A sorrowing heart poisons recipes.”

— Jandy Nelson

424. “Then I lie down on my back on the spongy forest floor. I love doing this – giving it all up to the enormity of they sky, or to the ceiling if the need arises while I’m indoors.”

— Jandy Nelson

425. “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

426. “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

427. “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

428. “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

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

432. “I’m standing on my own head!”

— Jandy Nelson

433. “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

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

— Jandy Nelson

435. “He didn’t know the moment he left in the morning, I’d go through the secret sketchpads he hid under his bed. It was like he’d discovered a whole new color spectrum. It was like he’d found another galaxy of imagery. It was like he’d replaced me.”

— Jandy Nelson

436. “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

437. “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

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

440. “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

441. “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

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

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

444. “He liked trees more than people.”

— Jandy Nelson

445. “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

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

— Jandy Nelson

447. “Grief is a house where the chairs have forgotten how to hold us the mirrors how to reflect us the walls how to contain us Grief is a house that disappears each time someone knocks at the door or rings the bell a house that blows into the air at the slightest gust that buries itself deep in the ground while everyone is sleeping Grief is a house where no one can protect you where the younger sister will grow older than the older one where the doors no longer let you in or out.”

— Jandy Nelson

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

— Jandy Nelson

449. “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

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

— Jandy Nelson