Jenny Downham Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

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

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
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
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.

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

Jenny Downham
Adam strokes my head, my face, he kisses my tears. We are blessed. Let them all go. The sound of a bird flying low across the garden. Then nothing. Nothing. A cloud passes. Nothing again. Light falls through the window, falls onto me, into me. Moments. All gathering towards this one.

Jenny Downham
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.

Jenny Downham
Maybe you should say goodbye, Cal.' 'No.' 'It might be important.' 'It might make her die.

Jenny Downham
Death straps me to the hospital bed, claws its way onto my chest and sits there.I didn't know it would hurt this much. I didn't know that everything good that's ever happened in my life would be emptied out by it.

Jenny Downham
It's a shame i can't be there myself - i like parties. Text me if you think of any good hymns!

Jenny Downham
Maybe I'll come back as somebody else. I'll be the wild-haired girl Adam meets in his first week at university. 'Hi, are you on the horticultural course as well?

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
There's a terrible stillness. I notice a small tear in the wallpaper above her shoulder. I notice finger marks grimed on the light switch. Somewhere down in the house, a door opens and shuts. As Zoey turns to face me, I realize that life is made up of a series of moments, each one a journey to the end.

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
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.

Jenny Downham
Three points for the dead slowly prising open the lids of their coffins. They want to hunt the living. They can't stop. Their throats have turned to liquid and their fingers glint under the weak autumn sun.

Jenny Downham
I'm here, Tess. I'm right here, holding your hand. Adam's here, too, he's sitting on the other side of the bed. And Cal. Mum's on her way, she'll be just a minute. We all love you, Tessa. We're all right here with you.

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

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
Instructions for Adam Look after no one except yourself. Go to university and make lots of friends and get drunk. Forget your door keyes. Laugh. Eat pot-noodles for breakfast. Miss lectures. Be irresponsible.

Jenny Downham
When I was four I almost fell down the shaft of a tin mine and when I was five the car rolled over on the motorway and when I was seven we went on holiday and the gas ring blew out in the caravan and nobody noticed I've been dying all my life

Jenny Downham
Then she says, 'I love you.' Like three drops of blood falling onto snow.

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

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

Jenny Downham