Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun
36 quotes
"I have to go," I say, helpless.What makes you say the opposite of what every cell in your body wants you to say?"
"it's okay to be addicted to beauty," Mom says, all dreamy. "Emerson said 'beauty is God's handwriting."
"Mom has a massive sunflower for a soul so big there's hardly any room in her for organs."
"The worst thing that could ever happen to Noah has happened. He's become normal."
"SELF PORTRAIT: Throwing Armfuls of Air into the Air"
"And I see that his brown eye has a splash of green in it and the green one a splash of brown. Like Cezanne painted them. Impressionist eyes."
"Nor that he's regarding my face with the same intensity I am his. We're two paintings staring at each other across a room."
"No I contradict myself. Picasso he do too. He say pull out your brain, yes, he also say, 'Painting is a blind man's profession' and 'To draw you must close your eyes and sing.' And Michelangelo, he say he sculpts with his brains, not his eyes. Yes. Everything ia true at once. Life is contradiction. We take in every lesson. We find what works. Okay, now pick up the charcoal and draw."
"Are you an artist?""I'm a mess is what I am," he says, holding on to the building for support. "A bloody mess. You 're the artist, mate." Then he's gone."
"Good. That is it. You will see with your hands, I promise you."
"Was the sky always this shade of magenta?"
"For the sun, stars, oceans, and all the trees, I’ll consider it."
"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."
"Because how could he have done this?How could he have chosen to leave me here all alone?"
"Reality is crushing. The world is a wrong-sized shoe. How can anyone stand it?"
"Mom has a massive sunflower for a soul so big there's hardly any room in her for organs. Jude and me have one soul between us that we have to share: a tree with its leaves on fire. And Dad has a plate of maggots for his."
"She's a people-mechanic and always knows when I'm malfunctioning."
"What if I'm in charge of my own damn light switch?"
"I don't know how this can be but it can: A painting is both exactly rhe same and entirely different every single time you look at it."
"Maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people," I say. "Maybe we're accumulating these new selves all the time."
"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."
"What is bad for the heart is good for art."
"They do make love stories for girls with black hearts after all. They go like this."
"My heart leaves, hitchhikes right out of my body, heads north, catches a ferry across the Bering Sea and plants itself in Siberia with the polar bears and ibex and long-horned goats until it turns into a teeny-tiny glacier. Because I imagined it."
"The feet of ghosts never touch the ground."