Jenny Downham Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“Help me, Mikey, she wanted to say. I’m afraid. More afraid than you’d ever believe.’ And he’d take her hand and they’d fly across the rooftops and up into space and sit on some planet and watch a double sunrise or maybe a star being born or some other event that no human had ever seen, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her. And she’d tell him everything.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“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 -
“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.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“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 -
“Humans are made from nuclear ash of dead stars”
-- Jenny Downham -
“Statement: A girl and a boy jump into a river. The boy swims over to the girl and says, "God, it's cold." Question: What's the probability they will kiss?”
-- Jenny Downham -
“That slow smile again. I love that smile! DId I think he was ugly just now? No, his face is transformed.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“There's a gang of boys on bikes blocking the road ahead. They've got their hoods up, cigarettes shielded. The sky's a really strange colour and there's hardly anyone else about. I slow right down. "What shall I do?" "Reverse," Zoey says. "They're not going to move." I wind down the window. "Oi!" I yell "Move your arses!" They turn languid, shift lazily to the edge of the road and grin as I blow kisses at them. Zoey looks stunned, "What's got into you?" "Nothing- I just haven't learned reversing yet.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“I'm here. Soon I won't be. Zoey's baby is here. Its pulse tick-ticking. Soon it won't be. And when Zoey comes out of that room, having signed on the dotted line, she'll be different. She'll understand what I already know- that death surrounds us all. And it tastes like metal between you teeth.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“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.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“She'd never in her whole life bunked school, smoked dope, or kissed a boy whose name she didn't know, and yet in the last few days, she'd done all these things.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“Was this love? Because it hurt. It was like a bit of glass stuck somewhere important--his heart or his head, and it was throbbing.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“Don't think you have to be good because you're the only one left. Be as bad as you like.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“How late is it? How long have we been sitting here? I look at my watch – three thirty and the day is almost ending. It’s October. All those kids recently returned to classrooms with new bags and pencil cases will be looking forward to half term already. How quickly it goes. Halloween soon, then firework night. Christmas. Spring. Easter. Then there’s my birthday in May. I’ll be seventeen. How long can I stave it off? I don’t know. 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 -
“Every seven years our bodies change, every cell. Every seven years, we disappear.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“Should we say something?’ Cal asks. ‘Goodbye, bird?’ I suggest. He nods. ‘Goodbye, bird. Thank you for coming. And good luck.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I get lonely? I promise not to scare you.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“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 -
“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.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“Maybe you should say goodbye, Cal.' 'No.' 'It might be important.' 'It might make her die.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“I like you," he said. He made it sound as if she was bound to disagree with him. She nodded. His face said he was telling her something very important. He said, "I mean it. Whatever happens, you have to believe that.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“Sometimes if you want something badly enough, you can make it happen. If you miss someone so desperately that it wrecks your insides, you say their name over and over until you conjure then. It's called sympathetic magic and you just have to believe in it to make it work.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“Don't pretend to care. I don't need you as an anesthetic.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“Life is made up of a series of moments, each one a journey to the end.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“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.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“As an actor I worked for seven years with a community theater company based in London. We used improvisation techniques to take stories to young people who wouldn't normally have access to them - in prisons, hospitals, young offender's units, youth clubs and housing estates.”
-- Jenny Downham -
“If I learnt anything at all about terminal illness in my research, it's that the experience is different for everyone. I do believe that life becomes concentrated when it's boundaried and that death is the biggest boundary of all.”
-- Jenny Downham