Jennifer Niven Quotes

Just be careful" implies that there's an end to it all, maybe in an hour, maybe in three years, but an end just the same.
Jennifer Niven
This is followed by laughter because we're in high school, which means we're predictable and almost everything is funny, especially if it's someone else's public humiliation.
Jennifer Niven
I have songs to write and songs to sing and planes to fly and I want to see my old yellow truck again.
Jennifer Niven
There are no rules, because life is made up of too many rules as it is.
Jennifer Niven
If a song's meant to stay around, you carry it with you in your bones.
Jennifer Niven
The only way around it is to stay with one guy forever." But does forever have a built-in ending...?
Jennifer Niven
You’re probably better at math than I am, because pretty much everyone’s better at math than I am, but it’s okay, I’m fine with it. See, I excel at other, more important things—guitar, sex, and consistently disappointing my dad, to name a few.
Jennifer Niven
In case you haven't noticed, we're already involved, Finch. And in case you haven't noticed, I'm broken too.
Jennifer Niven
I didn't know that my life forever changing would be because you loved me and then left, and in such a final way.
Jennifer Niven
I know life well enough to know you can't count on things staying around or standing still, no matter how much you want them to. You can't stop people from dying. You can't stop people from going away. You can't stop yourself from going away either.
Jennifer Niven
Because it's not a lie if it's how you feel.
Jennifer Niven
You are driving me crazy. You have been driving me crazy for weeks.
Jennifer Niven
In 1912, a man named Franz Reichelt jumped off the Eiffel Tower wearing a parachute suit he designed himself. He jumped to test his invention--he expected to fly--but instead he fell straight down, hitting the ground like a meteor and leaving a 5.9-inch-deep crater from the impact. Did he mean to kill himself? Doubtful. I think he was just cocky, and also stupid.
Jennifer Niven
Across the seat our eyes are holding hands.
Jennifer Niven
I think it's early. Early in our lives. Early in the night. Early in the new year. If you're counting, you'll notice the earlys outnumber the lates.
Jennifer Niven
I want you to remember that you can’t feel responsible for everything. We’re your parents, and we will figure us out. All you need to do— any of you”— she looks at my brothers—” is be a kid for now and let us be there for you.”“All of us?” Dusty says. “Even those of us without neurological disorders?” “All of you.
Jennifer Niven
I have this feeling, like I'm waiting for something. But I have no idea what.
Jennifer Niven
The Parents, as my mother and father refer to Mr. Finch and Mrs. Finch, are insisting it was an accident, which, I guess, means we're free to mourn him out in the open in a normal, healthy, unstigmatised way. No need to be ashamed or embarrassed since suicide isn't involved.
Jennifer Niven
What do you know about bipolar disorder?” I almost say, What do you know about it? But I make myself breathe and smile. “Is that the Jekyll-Hyde thing?” My voice sounds flat and even. Maybe a little bored, even though my mind and body are on alert. “Some people call it manic depression. It’s a brain disorder that causes extreme shifts in mood and energy. It runs in families, but it can be treated.” I continue to breathe, even if I’m not smiling anymore, but here is what is happening: my brain and my heart are pounding out different rhythms; my hands are turning cold and the back of my neck is turning hot; my throat has gone completely dry. The thing I know about bipolar disorder is that it’s a label. One you give crazy people. I know this because I’ve taken junior-year psychology and I’ve seen movies and I’ve watched my father in action for almost eighteen years, even though you could never slap a label on him because he would kill you. Labels like “bipolar” say This is why you are the way you are. This is who you are. They explain people away as illnesses.
Jennifer Niven
I meant what I said to Embryo about drugs. We don’t mix. What it comes down to for me is I have a hard enough time keeping control over my brain without something else getting in the way.
Jennifer Niven
You have been in every way all that anyone could be... If anybody could have saved me it would have been you.
Jennifer Niven
I'd rather be judged on what I can do instead of who I'm not.
Jennifer Niven
Water is peaceful. I am at rest. In the water, I am safe and pulled in where I can't get out. Everything slows down-the noise and the racing of my thoughts.
Jennifer Niven
Stars on the sky, stars on the ground. It's hard to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins.
Jennifer Niven
Let me ask you something. Do you think there's such a thing as a perfect day?""What?""A perfect day. Start to finish. When nothing terrible or sad or ordinary happens. Do you think it's possible?""I don't know.""Have you ever had one?""No.""I've never had one either, but I'm looking for it.
Jennifer Niven
I can already feel myself falling hard, something I've been known to do. All because she smiled at me.
Jennifer Niven
When he smiles like that, there's a single dimple. It was the thing that got me the very first time I saw him.
Jennifer Niven
This is what I want to do with Violet - give her only the good, keep away the bad, so that good is all we ever have around us
Jennifer Niven
I'm not a vain person, but I am human...
Jennifer Niven
I don't know what brings you up here, but to me the town looks prettier and the people look nicer and even the worst of them look almost kind.
Jennifer Niven
Besides, I kind of like my face intact like this, two eyes, one nose, one mouth, a full set of teeth, which, if I'm being honest, is one of my better features.
Jennifer Niven
I like writing, but I like a lot of things. Maybe out of those things, I'm best at writing. Maybe it's what I like best of all. Maybe it's where I've always felt most at home. Or maybe the writing part of me is over. Maybe there's something else I'm supposed to do instead. I don't know.
Jennifer Niven
It's okay to laugh, you know. The earth's not going to split open. You're not going to hell. Believe me. If there's a hell, I'll be there ahead of you, and they'll be too busy with me to even check you in.
Jennifer Niven
On all sides of us, spread out below, are little white lights and black pockets of trees. Stars in the sky, stars on the ground. It’s hard to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins. I hate to admit it, but it’s beautiful.
Jennifer Niven
I should be happy, but instead I feel nothing. I feel a lot of nothing these days. I've cried a few times, but mostly I'm empty, as if whatever makes me feel and hurt and laugh and love has been surgically removed, leaving me hollowed out like a shell.
Jennifer Niven
A string of thoughts run through my head like a song I can't get rid of, over and over in the same order: I am broken. I am a fraud. I am impossible to love.
Jennifer Niven
You are all the colours in one, at full brightness.
Jennifer Niven
As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.
Jennifer Niven
May your eye go to the Sun, To the wind your soul... You are all the colors in one, at full brightness.
Jennifer Niven
Too many people in this world think small is the best they can do. Not you, Libby Strout. You weren't born for small! You don't know how to do small! Small is not in you!
Jennifer Niven
Is today a good day to die?Is today the day?And if not today–when?
Jennifer Niven
You make me lovely, and it's so lovely to be lovely to the one I love...
Jennifer Niven
You know, that's what you've been doing in a way--coming out. Coming out of your room. Coming out of your house. Coming out of your shell.
Jennifer Niven
I thought of the pieces of me I'd left behind, a piece here, a piece there, scattered like bread crumbs. How much of me was left?
Jennifer Niven
Music did that to me, just like God was supposed to, because music seemed both magic and holy.
Jennifer Niven
I don't want to tiptoe around her or him or you anymore. The only thing that's doing us making it harder for me to remember her. Sometimes i try to concentrate on her voice just so i can hear her again-The way she always said 'Hey there' when she was in a good mood,An 'Vi-o-let' when she was annoyed.For some reason, these are the easiest ones.I concentrate on them, and when i have them. I hold on to them because i don't ever want to forget how she sounded.Like it or not,She was here and now she's gone.But she doesn't have to be completely gone.
Jennifer Niven
There aren't many people who would say this about me, but the great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to everybody.
Jennifer Niven
Water is peaceful. I am at rest. In thewater, I am safe and pulled in where Ican’t get out. Everything slows down—the noise and the racing of my thoughts.
Jennifer Niven
I can be both of us at once so no one will have to miss her, most of all me. I I
Jennifer Niven
Never bullshit a bullshitter.
Jennifer Niven
In those moments, none of it matters. It’s like that stuff is happening to someone else because all you feel is dark inside, and that darkness just kind of takes over. You don’t even really think about what might happen to the people you leave behind, because all you can think about is yourself.
Jennifer Niven
I think about Finch and Sir Patrick Moore and black holes and blue holes and bottomless bodies of water and exploding stars and event horizons, and a place so dark that light can't get out once it's in.
Jennifer Niven
I’m sorry about Finch. He was a good, screwed up kid who should have had more help.” “I feel responsible.
Jennifer Niven
It's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.
Jennifer Niven
Since I stopped writing, I read more than ever. Other people's words, not my own--my words are gone.
Jennifer Niven
Now, if you asked him what he was going to do with himself, he'd tell you he guessed he might do anything he set his mind to. But he'd say it in a far-off way, as if he didn't really mean it or care much at all.
Jennifer Niven
Who cares for Algebra?Who delights in solving math?I only want to live my lifeAlong the creative path.
Jennifer Niven
I love the thrill of impending, weightless doom...
Jennifer Niven
Angry at him for leaving without a word, angry at myself for being so easy to leave and for not being enough to make him want to stick around.
Jennifer Niven
She waves her arms at the world. "It's all just time filler until we die.
Jennifer Niven