Girl Unmoored Quotes

“Love doesn't always mean rings and veils and walks down the aisle.
Sometimes love means broken windows and broken hearts,
and not being able to fix either.
And sometimes love means telling you,
there's no such thing as time in Heaven so don't rush to meet me.
Stay a while, and pick, girl, the roses.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“Love. The opposite of fear is love, and every minute of every day, we choose between the two.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“Sometimes things get broken and people make mistakes. It's just what happens. And then, if you're lucky, they get fixed again, before it's too late.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“I sat there looking normal but thinking about how much I wished we were going to see the real Jesus. Everyone needed a miracle once in a while.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“I stared at the phone and swallowed the piece of my heart that was lodged in my throat now.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“At the door, I looked back at all those people I didn’t know and thought about how small your heart is but how big of a space it takes up. And how, even though you can’t see it, that heart space grows so quietly across a room or up some stairs into someone else’s living room, that even if you never step foot in it again, the air in there is changed forever.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“Already in love with her, huh?” she said. I jerked my eyes away and thought about it. But there it was, that tiny heart space, already spreading out between us, my sister and me.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“Inside, the air smelled so fragile you could break it with a sneeze.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“We turned away from each other at the same time, the space between us getting longer, until it looked like we hadn’t even been standing together in the first place. But we had, and it was there: another heart layer on top of that sidewalk, changing it forever.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“High tide spilled over my lashes.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“I missed Chad in the same way that I missed my mom now: always.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“I walked around the counter and straight into his white T-shirt. Then we stood like that, him holding my red head, and me listening to the part of his chest where his heart used to be.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“What’s that?” he asked.

“A picture of my mom,” I said, opening his ice-cold hand and putting the frame in it gently.

“But Apron,” Chad said. “I can’t see.”

“I know. But it’s not for now. It’s for when you get there, so you can find her.”

Chad tapped his finger on my mom’s cheek. “Does she look like you?”

I thought about it hard enough for Chad to take in another long breath. “A little bit,” I said.

“Not quite as pretty?”

“Well,” I said. “You’ll have to see for yourself.”

Chad raised his eyebrows. “I’ll find her, Apron. I promise. If you promise me something, too.”

I nodded, but then remembered he couldn’t see me. “What?”

“Don’t stay sad. Remember our poem. What it means. Promise?”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“But what are you supposed to do now? I mean, how are you supposed to act normal?”

Mike looked at me, his blueberry eyes searching. “I don’t know, Apron,” he said. “I was hoping you could tell me.”

And then, just like that, I understood what my real job was this summer, and it had nothing to do with flowers.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“I watched her shuffle around, reading tags and smelling flowers, laughing every time or smiling nice—what flowers were supposed to make you do.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“The lady shuffled around, bending over to inspect the flowers and holding up one of the tags. “Oh nuts. Are these already sold?” she asked. I shook my head. “No.”

“Goody,” she smiled, looking at a tag that said Adulescenita Deferbui, on the outside and The Fires of Youth have Cooled – But you’re still looking foxy!”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“I wrote Vis consilii epers mole ruit sua on the front of the first tag, and on the inside I put the translation: Force lacking judgment collapses under its own weight. And in case they still didn’t get it, I wrote Sorry! I’m just a big dummy.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“I’m an oncologist, not a podiatrist.” My skin unzipped. Those were the worst kinds of doctors. They never saved anyone.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“I folded up that last bit of hope and put it away on the top shelf of my life.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“Draco dormiens nunquam titillandu.

A sleeping dragon is never to be tickled.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“What Love Means to Me,” Chad said, writing. “By Apron Bramhall, the loveliest noun I know. Get over here, noun.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“And suddenly it smelled like someone forgot to turn on the gravity. The air was so fresh and light you could practically float on it. Flowers were everywhere, all of them bursting with color.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“But the truth was that Laura Ingalls Wilder was the nicest girl I’d ever not known. Rennie would throw me under a bus for a piece of chocolate.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“Mary made him lie down in the middle of the stage. Then she started singing, “Everything’s all right, yes, everything’s fine …” and rubbing something on his forehead, which wasn’t going to help him. No one ever gets saved by a forehead rub. Ask Laura Ingalls Wilder if you don’t believe me. But Mary kept doing it anyway, begging him to let the world turn without him tonight because everything was all right—which it wasn’t, because even his best friend, Judas, was acting weird.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“She wouldn’t even hold her own baby.” His voice cracked when he said that, and something shivered inside my heart. I used to think the saddest thing had happened to me, but now I knew it had happened to my sister instead.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“Without lifting her head, she said, “I want you to get out.”

And right then I was sure: M had been born with the mean gene.
It’s the way we come out, Toby said. Maybe M being mean wasn’t any different than Mike and Chad being gay, or me having freckles. Mean was just the way she came out. She hated me all right, but it was nothing personal.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“I lifted my hand and pulled the blue paper cap back a little, until a piece of my red fell out, then I reached my hand back inside the case. I slid my finger under some tubes and into her tiny purple hand. And just like that, like she had known it was me all along, she squeezed it.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“Laura Ingalls Wilder should have been in class with us, too. With friends like us, she never would have had to put up with Nelly Olsens or Jenny Pratts. With friends like us, she never would have had to feel bad about wearing her same dress every single day of her life.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“Apron,” Chad said, sounding a little nervous. “I’ve been wondering. Do you think you and me would have been friends, if, you know, we were in seventh grade together?”

I thought about it for a second. I thought about Rennie and Jenny Pratt making fun of Chad, his swishy way of walking down the halls, and Johnny Berman and Sherman Howl writing faggot on the top of his desk and picking him last for dodge ball. And I thought about how, if I ignored them all and decided to be friends with Chad anyway, he would have been my only one.

“Yes,” I nodded. “We’d be friends.”

“Yup,” Chad said smiling as far as his cracked lips would let him. “That’s what I think, too.”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored

“You watch. Someday you’re going to love those freckles.”

“No I’m not.”

Mr. John leapt through the air after that, feet flailing and his back arched too far away from his knees: his worst one yet.

After both of our ankles got splashed again, Grandma Bramhall picked up my chin and said, “You are as beautiful as your mom was,” and then kissed my cheek with hers.

I looked down at the mirrors in her sarong again, tiny little pieces of blue sky in them. “Thanks,” I said quietly.

“You’re welcome,” Grandma Bramhall said squeezing my hand.

“How was that?” Mr. John yelled, popping up and dog paddling toward us.

I snuck a look at Grandma Bramhall. “A ten,” I said.

“Yes!” Mr. John yelled, raising both fists this time and sinking back into the water.

Grandma Bramhall and I had to suck in our cheeks not to laugh. “See how beautiful you are, Apron?”
― Jennifer Gooch Hummer, Girl Unmoored