Jenny Downham Quotes

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.

I want to die in my own way. It's my illness, my death, my choice. This is what saying yes means.

It was strange how words meant something when they came out of your mouth. Inside your head they were safe and silent, but once they were outside, people grabbed hold of them.

Every seven years our bodies change, every cell. Every seven years, we disappear.

Then she says, ‘I love you.’ Like three drops of blood falling onto snow.

We make patterns, we share moments.

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.

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.

It's all right, Tessa, you can go. We love you. You can go now.' 'Why are you saying that?' 'She might need permission to die, Cal.' 'I don't want her to. She doesn't have my permission.

Bye, Tess. haunt me if you like. I don't mind.

Keep breathing. Just keep doing it. It's easy. In and out.

Don't pretend to care. I don't need you as an anesthetic.

Perhaps I'm dead. Perhaps this is all it will be. The living will carry on in their world – touching, walking. And I'll continue in this empty world, tapping soundlessly on the glass between us.

Moments. All gathering towards this one.

I lean back on the pillows and look at the corners of the room. When I was a kid, I always wanted to live on the ceiling - it looked so clean and uncluttered, like the top of a cake.

It's as if a child with a brush and too much enthusiasm has been set free with a tin of black paint inside me.

Do you want this to be a love story?

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!

We make patterns, we share moments. Sometimes, I think I'm the only one to see it.

Hold my hand. Don't let go.

I've always wanted to be a cat. Warm and domesticated when you want to be, wild when you don't.

The inside of the door is glossy white. A total re-paint. I touch it with my fingers, but it stays the same. It's so bright it makes the room waver at the edges. Every few years we disappear.

Like a tree losing its leaves. I forget even the thing I was thinking.

She'll understand what I already know - that death surrounds us all. And it tastes like metal between your teeth.

No, really. I free you.' I don't want to be free.

If you want a girl to like you, you have to listen like a woman and love like a man.

The light is heart-breaking.

. . . my bones they'll burn or bury. It'll be my death.

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.

Are you afraid, Tessa?

I imagine horses in the engine, their manes flying, their breaths steaming, their nostrils flaring as they gallop.

I don't think words reach people. Maybe nothing does

I mean it. Whatever happens, you have to believe that.

It hurts and hurts to have him this close. I feel sick with it.

I made a fatal error thinking he could save me.

Life is made up of a series of moments, each one a journey to the end.

Every breath, every heartbeat, was one less until maybe things stopped hurting this much.

Parents don't know their children at all. No one knows anyone, in fact.

You changed the rules of the universe when you fell in love with the enemy.

She needed food. Diets didn't count in a crisis.

And now he's down this for me. He's made me famous. He's put my name on the world.

I miss him as soon as he goes. When he isn't with me, I think I made him up.

I didn't understand that when you make love, you actually do MAKE love. Stir things. Affect each other. The breath that escapes from me is dazzled. He breathes it in with a gasp.

I shrug him off. 'Can't you just go away?" There's a moment. It has a sound in it, as if something very small got broken.

Don't think you have to be good because you're the only one left. Be as bad as you like.

I'm me and you're you, and all of them out there are them. And we're all so different and equally unimportant.

Humans are made from nuclear ash of dead stars

It's utterly beautiful not to know my own edges.

Nurses never tell you what they know. They're hired for their cheeriness and the thickness of their hair. They need to look alive and healthy, to give the patients something to aim for.

I want you to be with me in the dark. To hold me. To keep loving me. To help me when I get scared. To come right to the edge and see what's there.