Jenny Downham Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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
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
But all that is warm will go cold. My ears will fall off and my eyes will melt. My mouth will be clamped shut. My lips will turn to glue....No taste or smell or touch or sound.Nothing to look at. Total emptiness for ever.

Jenny Downham
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.

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

Jenny Downham
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.

Jenny Downham
And in bed, deep inside the building, are all the headaches that won't go away. The failed kidneys, the rashes, the ragged-edged moles, the lumps on the breast, the coughs that have turned nasty. In the Marie Curie Ward on the fourth floor are the kids with cancer. Their bodies secretly and slowly being consumed. And then there's the mortuary, where the dead lie in refrigerated drawers with name tags on their feet.

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

Jenny Downham
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.

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

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

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
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
That slow smile again. I love that smile! DId I think he was ugly just now? No, his face is transformed.

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 want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things.

Jenny Downham
I can see inside planes!' he yells. 'Come and look!' It's difficult climbing in a mini dress...I haul myself up even though my arms ache. I want to see inside planes too. I want to watch the wind and catch birds in my fist.

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
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
Her face crashes. She hasn't dealt with a single transfusion or lumbar puncture. She wasn't allowed near me for the bone-marrow transplant, but she could have been there for any number of diagnoses, and wasn't. Even her promises to visit more often have faded away with Christmas. It's her turn to taste some reality.

Jenny Downham