85+ Jenny Downham Quotes On Education, Friendship And Emotional

Jenny Downham is a British novelist best known for her 2007 novel Before I Die. Her work is often focused on young adult themes and explores difficult topics such as death and mental illness. She has also written a number of other novels, including Unbecoming and You Against Me. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Jenny Downham on love, life, education.

Top 10 Jenny Downham Quotes

1. 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.
2. I want to die in my own way. It's my illness, my death, my choice. This is what saying yes means.
3. Every seven years our bodies change, every cell. Every seven years, we disappear.
4. Then she says, ‘I love you.’ Like three drops of blood falling onto snow.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Keep breathing. Just keep doing it. It's easy. In and out.
8. 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?
9. Don't pretend to care. I don't need you as an anesthetic.
10. 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 Short Quotes

• We make patterns, we share moments.
• I don't think words reach people. Maybe nothing does
• It's a shame i can't be there myself - i like parties. Text me if you think of any good hymns!
• I mean it. Whatever happens, you have to believe that.
• . . . my bones they'll burn or bury. It'll be my death.
• Every breath, every heartbeat, was one less until maybe things stopped hurting this much.
• It hurts and hurts to have him this close. I feel sick with it.
• I said I wouldn't leave her.
• Parents don't know their children at all. No one knows anyone, in fact.
• Humans are made from nuclear ash of dead stars

Jenny Downham Quotes About Love

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! — 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'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

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

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

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

Do you want this to be a love story? — 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

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

Jenny Downham Quotes About Life

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

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

The last few weeks, it was as if someone had taken his life to pieces and let him see the way it worked. — 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

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

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

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

Jenny Downham Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

Are you afraid, Tessa? — 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

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

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

a little bird moves a mountain of sand one grain at a time it picks up one grain every million years and when the mountain has been moved the bird puts it all back again and that's how long eternity is and that's a very long time to be dead — Jenny Downham

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

Hold my hand. Don't let go. — 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

Moments. All gathering towards this one. — Jenny Downham

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. — Jenny Downham

I made a fatal error thinking he could save me. — Jenny Downham

Is this how it is for everyone?' she whispered. 'No.' 'How do you know?' 'I just do. I've never felt this with anyone before.' 'Serious?' 'Serious. That isn't a line.' 'Kiss me,' she said. He did. Everywhere. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The shops in High Street still have their metal grilles down, blank-eyed and sleeping. My name is scrawled across them all. I'm outside Ajay's newsagent's. I'm on the expensive shutters of the health food store. I'm massive on Handie's furniture shop, King's Chicken Joint and the Barbecue Cafe. I thread the pavement outside the bank and all the way to Mothercare. I've possessed the road and am a glistening circle at the roundabout. — Jenny Downham

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

"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

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

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

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

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

I feel something very small growing inside me as I look at her, and I realize in one absolutely clear moment that I don't like her at all. 'You know what?' I say. 'Forget it. I'll do the list by myself.' She stands up, swings her stupid hair about and tries to look offended. It's a trick that works with guys, but it makes no difference to the way I feel about her. — Jenny Downham

The light is heart-breaking. — 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

Her skin tasted expensive. — Jenny Downham

When I first saw Ellie, I knew it was her-- she was my fantasy. I didn't want it to be true, but every time I met her it was obvious, and the funny thing was that she was better than the fantasy, like I got more stuff than I'd imagined. — Jenny Downham

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

Life Lessons by Jenny Downham

1. Jenny Downham's work emphasizes the importance of living life to the fullest and cherishing every moment, no matter how difficult it may be.
2. She also shows that it is important to be kind and understanding to those around you, no matter how difficult it may be to do so.
3. Lastly, her work reminds us that it is important to take risks and not be afraid to challenge the status quo in order to create a better future.