Jandy Nelson

“Love does as it undoes. It goes after with equal tenacity: joy and heartbreak. Her happiness was his unhappiness and that's the unfair way it was.”

“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.”

“The sky's gone blue: azure, the ocean bluer: cerulean, the trees are swirls of every hella freaking green on earth and bright thick eggy yellow is spilling over everything.”

“Someone might as well roll up the whole sky, pack it away for good.”

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

“Was the sky always this shade of magenta?”

“I do have a tendency to want to go back to school at all times in my life. Maybe I'll do the Ph.D. in art history when I'm 50, or maybe divinity school. I like teaching, too.”

“That's a misconception, Lennie. The sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.”

“The coolest guys aren't afraid to be feminists.”

“For the sun, stars, oceans, and all the trees, I’ll consider it.”

“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 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. It's like the day Mr. James took us into the woods and cried triumphantly, "That's it! That's it!" to the dizzying cacophony of soloing instruments trying to make music together. That is it.”

“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.”

“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.”

“That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other.”

“I do find the sibling connection endlessly fascinating, as I do all family dynamics. I like how siblings seem to create their own parentless mini-civilization within a family, one that has its own laws, myths, language, humor, its own loyalties and treacheries.”

“My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.”

“I am insanely superstitious. All the woman in my family are, beginning with my grandmother, who would leave red ribbons under the beds and taught us how to find four-leaf clovers.”

“I have to go," I say, helpless.What makes you say the opposite of what every cell in your body wants you to say?”

“[Lennie meets Joe - he works out that she was named after John Lennon]I nod. "Mom was a hippie." This is northern Northern California after all - the final frontier of freakerdom. Just in the eleventh grade we have a girl named Electricity, a guy named Magic Bus, and countless flowers: Tulip, Begonia, and Poppy - all parent-given-on-the-birth-certificate names. Tulip is a two-ton bruiser of a guy who would be the star of out football team if we were the kind of school that has optional morning meditation in the gym”

“Reality is crushing. The world is a wrong-sized shoe. How can anyone stand it?”