“I wish I had a boyfriend. I wish he lived in the wardrobe on a coat hanger. Whenever I wanted, I could get him out and he'd look at me the way boys do in films, as if I'm beautiful.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“I love you. I love you. I send this message through my fingers and into his, up his arm and into his heart. Hear me. I love you. And I'm sorry to leave you.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“I love you. It hurts more than anything ever has, but I do. So don't you dare tell me I don't. Don't you ever say it again!”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Bye, Tess. haunt me if you like. I don't mind.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Adam strokes my head, my face, he kisses my tears.
We are blessed.
Let them all go.
The sound of a bird flying low across the garden. Then nothing. Nothing. A cloud passes. Nothing again. Light falls through the window, falls onto me, into me.
Moments.
All gathering towards this one.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Keep breathing. Just keep doing it. It's easy. In and out.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Every few years we disappear, Zoey. All our cells are replaced by others. Not a single bit of me is the same as when I was last in this room.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“We said we'd be friends.'
He looks confused. 'Yeah.'
I don't want to be.'
There's space between us, and in that space there's darkness. I take another step, so close that we share a breath. The same one. In and out.
Tess,' he says. I know it's a warning, but I don't care.
What's the worst thing that can happen?'
It'll hurt,' he says.
It already hurts.'
He nods very slowly. And it's like there's a hole in time, as if everything stops and in this one minute, where we look at each other so close, is spread out between us. As he leans towards me, I feel a strange warmth filtering through me. I forget that my brain is full of every sad face at every window I've ever passed.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Moments.
All gathering towards this one.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“I made a fatal error thinking he could save me.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Hold my hand. Don't let go.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Then she says, ‘I love you.’ Like three drops of blood falling onto snow.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“We make patterns, we share moments. Sometimes, I think I'm the only one to see it.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“I've always wanted to be a cat. Warm and domesticated when you want to be, wild when you don't.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“I want to die in my own way. It's my illness, my death, my choice. This is what saying yes means.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Instructions for Adam
Look after no one except yourself. Go to university and make lots of friends and get drunk. Forget your door keyes. Laugh. Eat pot-noodles for breakfast. Miss lectures. Be irresponsible.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“when I was four I almost fell down the shaft of a tin mine and when I was five the car rolled over on the motorway and when I was seven we went on holiday and the gas ring blew out in the caravan and nobody noticed
I've been dying all my life”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Cal says that humans are made from the nuclear ash of dead stars. He says that when I die, I'll return to dust, glitter,rain. If thats true, I want to be buried right here under this tree. Its roots will reach into the soft mess of my body and suck me dry. I'll be re-formed as apple blossom. I'll drift down in the spring like confetti and cling to my family's shoes. They'll carry me in their pockets to help them sleep. What dreams will they have then?”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Every seven years our bodies change, every cell. Every seven years, we disappear.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“I'm me and you're you, and all of them out there are them. And we're all so different and equally unimportant.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“We make patterns, we share moments.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“All I know is that I have two choices – stay wrapped in blankets and get on with dying, or get the list back together and get on with living.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“She'll understand what I already know - that death surrounds us all. And it tastes like metal between your teeth.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Afterwards, go to a pub for lunch. I've got $260 in my savings account and I really want you to use it for that. Really, I mean it--lunch is on me. Make sure you have pudding--sticky toffee, chocolate fudge cake, ice-cream sundae, something really bad for you. Get drunk too if you like (but don't scare Cal). Spend all the money.
And after that, when days have gone by, keep an eye out for me. I might write on the steam in the mirror when you're having a bath, or play with the leaves on the apple tree when you're out in the garden. I might slip into a dream.
Visit my grave when you can, but don't kick yourself if you can't, or if you move house and it's suddenly too far away. It looks pretty there in the summer (check out the website). You could bring a picnic and sit with me. I'd like that.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“It's utterly beautiful not to know my own edges.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“I said I wouldn't leave her.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
Jenny Downham
Born place: London, The United Kingdom
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“We get along by a symbiotic adjustment of habits and with a minimum of that pale-mauve hostility you often find among women.”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from The Edible Woman
“IMBECILE!" the chef shouted. "Next time why don't you just put your whole HAND in the food, hey? Yes, your whole hand, or maybe your FACE! I arrange the food on plates with care, are you understanding what I am telling you? It is part of the art form of cooking, yes? A lovely plate of food is a thing of beauty! And then you, NUMBSKULL, come along and put your fat greasy FINGERS all over my plate, and SHAKE the plate, and move my food all around the plate until it looks like pigs' vomit!"
"Chef Vlad!" I cried out in delight.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from Skybreaker
“Some things you carry around inside you as though they were part of your blood and bones, and when that happens, there’s nothing you can do to forget
…But I had never been much of a believer. If anything, I believed that things got worse before they got better. I believed good people suffered... people who have faith were so lucky; you didn’t want to ruin it for them. You didn’t want to plant doubt where there was none. You had to treat suck individuals tenderly and hope that some of whatever they were feeling rubs off on you
Those who love you will love you forever, without questions or boundaries or the constraints of time. Daily life is real, unchanging as a well-built house. But houses burn; they catch fire in the middle of the night.
The night is like any other night of disaster, with every fact filtered through a veil of disbelief. The rational world has spun so completely out of its orbit, there is no way to chart or expect what might happen next
At that point, they were both convinced that love was a figment of other people’s imaginations, an illusion fashioned out of smoke and air that really didn’t exist
Fear, like heat, rises; it drifts up to the ceiling and when it falls down it pours out in a hot and horrible rain
True love, after all, could bind a man where he didn’t belong. It could wrap him in cords that were all but impossible to break
Fear is contagious. It doubles within minutes; it grows in places where there’s never been any doubt before
The past stays with a man, sticking to his heels like glue, invisible and heartbreaking and unavoidable, threaded to the future, just as surely as day is sewn to night
He looked at girls and saw only sweet little fuckboxes, there for him to use, no hearts involved, no souls, and, most assuredly no responsibilities.
Welcome to the real world. Herein is the place where no one can tell you whether or not you’ve done the right thing.
I could tell people anything I wanted to, and whatever I told them, that would be the truth as far as they were concerned. Whoever I said I was, well then, that’s who id be
The truths by which she has lived her life have evaporated, leaving her empty of everything except the faint blue static of her own skepticism. She has never been a person to question herself; now she questions everything
Something’s, are true no matter how hard you might try to bloc them out, and a lie is always a lie, no matter how prettily told
You were nothing more than a speck of dust, good-looking dust, but dust all the same
Some people needed saving
She doesn’t want to waste precious time with something as prosaic as sleep. Every second is a second that belongs to her; one she understands could well be her last
Why wait for anything when the world is so cockeyed and dangerous? Why sit and stare into the mirror, too fearful of what may come to pass to make a move?
At last she knows how it feels to take a chance when everything in the world is at stake, breathless and heedless and desperate for more
She’ll be imagining everything that’s out in front of them, road and cloud and sky, all the elements of a future, the sort you have to put together by hand, slowly and carefully until the world is yours once more”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Blue Diary
“This violent state of mind.
This violent state of mine.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“shuffled their way through the cattle shoots in front of each restaurant’s counter.”
― Rachel Vincent, quote from My Soul to Lose
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