Top 450 Jennifer Niven Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “This is my secret – that any moment I might fly away. Everyone on earth but me – and now Violet – moves in slow motion, like they’re filled with mud. We are faster than all of them.”

— Jennifer Niven

202. “I want to get away from the stigma they all clearly feel just because they have a n illness of the mind as opposed to, say, an illness of the lungs or blood. I want to get away from all the labels, “I’m OCD,” “I’m depressed,” “I’m a cutter,” they say, like these are the things that define them.”

— Jennifer Niven

203. “I shut down again. I went blank. One minute I was spinning, and the next minute my mind was dragging itself around in a circle, like an old arthritic dog trying to lie down. And then I just turned off and went to sleep, but not sleep in the way you do every night. Think a long, dark sleep where you don’t dream at all.”

— Jennifer Niven

204. “There’s a built-in ending to everything in the world, right?”

— Jennifer Niven

205. “Angry at him for leaving without a word, angry at myself for being so easy to leave and for not being enough to make him want to stick around.”

— Jennifer Niven

206. “Here’s what I think: I think I’ve got a map in my car that wants to be used, and I think there are places we can go that need to be seen. Maybe no one else will ever visit them and appreciate them or take the time to think they’re important, but maybe even the smallest places mean something. And, if not, maybe they can mean something to us. At the very least, by the time we leave, we know we will have seen it. So come on. Let’s go. Let’s count for something.”

— Jennifer Niven

207. “Because in this house there’s no such thing as being sick unless you can measure it with a thermometer under the tongue.”

— Jennifer Niven

208. “Your identifier is you. I remember your eyes. Your mouth. The freckles on both cheeks that look like constellations. I know your smiles, at least three of them, and at least eight of your expressions, including the ones you only do with your eyes. If I could draw, I would draw you, and I wouldn’t need to look at you to do it. Because your face is stuck in my mind.”

— Jennifer Niven

209. “Too many people in this world think small is the best they can do. Not you, Libby Strout. You weren’t born for small! You don’t know how to do small! Small is not in you!”

— Jennifer Niven

210. “Loss does that, hits you out of the blue. You can be in the car or in class or at the movies, laughing and having a good time, and suddenly it’s as if someone has reached directly into the wound and squeezed with all their might.”

— Jennifer Niven

211. “You’re no hero. You’re a coward. You only saved them from yourself.”

— Jennifer Niven

212. “This is followed by laughter because we’re in high school, which means we’re predictable and almost everything is funny, especially if it’s someone else’s public humiliation.”

— Jennifer Niven

213. “I walk through the black Indiana night, under a ceiling of stars, and think about the phrase “elegance and euphoria,” and how it describes exactly what I feel with Violet.”

— Jennifer Niven

214. “You need shoving, not pushing.”

— Jennifer Niven

215. “I love the thrill of impending, weightless doom, so I built something to give me those feelings all the time... I like the idea of something that can give you those feelings all the time. I want something like that, and then I look at Violet and think: There she is.”

— Jennifer Niven

216. “Not to mention if I don’t pay attention and you decide to go back up there and jump off, I’m looking at a lawsuit, and on the salary they pay me, believe me when I say I do not have the money to be sued.”

— Jennifer Niven

217. “I feel sorry for everyone in this town who’s sleeping.”

— Jennifer Niven

218. “You’re so worried that you can’t ever be close to anyone, but it’s not the face blindness that’s to blame; it’s you. All the smiling and the faking and pretending to be what you think people want you to be. That’s what keeps you isolated. That’s what screws you up. You need to try being a real person.”

— Jennifer Niven

219. “Because I’m sitting next to you on this swing and you’re beautiful.”

— Jennifer Niven

220. “Theodore Finch, April 3. “Today is your day. You’re off to Great Places! You’re off and away!”

— Jennifer Niven

221. “Because we all have to die someday. I just want to be prepared.”

— Jennifer Niven

222. “Because after suffering a loss, you become a ghost in your own body. You observe yourself doing things and saying things that you might not normally do or say. You need something to ground you and prove to you that you’re still here. As a way of feeling something. Anything.”

— Jennifer Niven

223. “I run until time stops. Until my mind stops.”

— Jennifer Niven

224. “I know the way you move. I know the way you look at me. I see you see me, and you’re the only one who looks at me that way. Whether I’m with you or away from you, I don’t have to think about it or put the puzzle pieces together. It’s just you. That’s what I know.”

— Jennifer Niven

225. “I can already feel myself falling hard, something I’ve been known to do. All because she smiled at me.”

— Jennifer Niven

226. “I’m always amazed by people and their sleep. I wouldn’t ever sleep if I didn’t have to.”

— Jennifer Niven

227. “No one can lock you back in, Libby. You choose whether you let them.”

— Jennifer Niven

228. “Stars in the sky, stars on the ground. It’s hard to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins. I feel the need to say something grand and poetic, but the only thing I come up with is “It’s lovely.”

— Jennifer Niven

229. “There aren’t many people who would say this about me, but the great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to everybody.”

— Jennifer Niven

230. “As he talks, I lie back against the ground, the blanket wrapped around me, and say to the sky, “May your eye go to the Sun, To the wind your soul, You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.”

— Jennifer Niven

231. “I don’t want to hear about the cardinal again. Because the thing of it is, that cardinal was dead either way, whether he came inside or not. Maybe he knew it, and maybe that’s why he decided to crash into the glass a little harder than normal that day. He would have died in here, only slower, because that’s what happens when you’re a Finch. The marriage dies. The love dies. The people fade away. I.”

— Jennifer Niven

232. “Just like I will decide my life. No more waiting for other people to decide things for me. I’m writing it right now.”

— Jennifer Niven

233. “Jessamyn West said, ‘Writing is so difficult that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.”

— Jennifer Niven

234. “You deserve better. I can’t promise you I’ll stay around, not because I don’t want to. It’s hard to explain. I’m a fuckup. I’m broken, and no one can fix it. I’ve tried. I’m still trying. I can’t love anyone because it’s not fair to anyone who loves me back.”

— Jennifer Niven

235. “The air is full of things we aren’t saying, and I wonder if he feels it too.”

— Jennifer Niven

236. “All you have to do is today.”

— Jennifer Niven

237. “There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. None of us knows how long we have, maybe another month, maybe another fifty years -I like living as if I only have two days.”

— Jennifer Niven

238. “What would I have said to him if I’d known I would never see him again?”

— Jennifer Niven

239. “Ladies and gentlemen,” I shout, “I would like to welcome you to my death!”

— Jennifer Niven

240. “I learned that there is good in this world, if you look hard enough for it. I learned that not everyone is disappointing, including me, and that a 1,257-foot bump in the ground can feel higher than a bell tower if you’re standing next to the right person.”

— Jennifer Niven

241. “I am broken and no one can fix it.”

— Jennifer Niven

242. “I am carried off. We yield to this slow flood... In and out, we are swept;... we can not step outside its sinuous, its hesitating, its abrupt, its perfectly encircling walls.”

— Jennifer Niven

243. “You have to live your life like you’ll never be sorry.”

— Jennifer Niven

244. “If you’re not careful, you’re going to run into someone angrier than you.”

— Jennifer Niven

245. “The thing is, there are good days and bad days. I feel almost guilty saying they aren’t all bad. Something catches me off guard – a TV show, a funny one-liner from my dad, a comment in class – and I laugh like nothing ever happened.”

— Jennifer Niven

246. “I feel homesick for this London I left behind.”

— Jennifer Niven

247. “Yesterday at this time, I didn’t even know her.”

— Jennifer Niven

248. “My mom used to say sometimes it’s actually about the other person and you just happen to be there. Like sometimes the other person needs to learn a lesson or go through an experience, good or bad, and you’re just and accessory in some way, like a supporting actor in whatever their scene happens to be.”

— Jennifer Niven

249. “Overdrive for a girl I barely know, all because she’s the first person I’ve met who seems to speak my language. A few words of it anyway.”

— Jennifer Niven

250. “I wanted to write something tough, hard, sad, but funny.”

— Jennifer Niven