Jay > Jay's Quotes

“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.”
― richard siken

“The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater because he is trying to kill you, and you deserve it, you do, and you know this, and you are ready to die in this swimming pool because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means your life is over anyway. You’re in eighth grade. You know these things. You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do long division, and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you didn't do, because you are weak and hollow and it doesn't matter anymore.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly.”
― Richard Siken

“Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.”
― richard siken

“He was pointing at the moon, but I was looking at his hand.”
― Richard Siken

“Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.”
― Richard Siken

“We still groped for each other on the backstairs or in parked cars
                                                                                                                                                      as the road around us
grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through the glass
                    already laced with frost,
but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of
                                                                                                                                                                          lullabies.
But damn if there isn’t anything sexier
                                                            than a slender boy with a handgun,
                                                                                                                                  a fast car, a bottle of pills.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“He was the kind of man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“She's a people-mechanic and always knows when I'm malfunctioning.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“I watch him throw his head back in supreme happiness, like he's hearing that he gets to choose the colors for all the sunsets from now on.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Jude is my favorite of all the saints,” he says. “Patron saint of lost causes. The saint to call on when all hope is gone. The one in charge of miracles.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“When I draw it, I’m going to make my skin see-through and what you’ll see is that all the animals in the zoo of me have broken out of their cages.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“You won’t understand what I mean now, but someday you will: the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and to try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all. But the best, as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“But what was happiness but an extravagance, an impossible state to maintain, partly because it was so difficult to articulate?”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Harold sighs. “Jude,” he says, “there’s not an expiration date on needing help, or needing people. You don’t get to a certain age and it stops.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“It had always seemed to him a very plush kind of problem, a privilege, really, to consider whether life was meaningful or not.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“All the most terrifying ifs involve people. All the good ones do as well.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“Fear is a phoenix. You can watch it burn a thousand times and still it will return.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“I don’t hold a grudge. I cradle it. I coddle it. I feed it fine cuts of meat and send it to the best schools. I nurture my grudges, Rollins.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“This action will have no echo.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“I have been made to protect you. Even in death, I will find a way.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“Her heart was a river that carried her to the sea.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“Everything is a negotiation with you, Brekker. You probably bartered your way out of the womb.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Crooked Kingdom

“You are terrifying and strange and beautiful, someone not everyone knows how to love.”
― Warsan Shire

“later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.”
― Warsan Shire

“At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.”
― Warsan Shire