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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: People
Don't think you have to be good because you're the only one left. Be as bad as you like.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Two
I'm me and you're you, and all of them out there are them. And we're all so different and equally unimportant.Collection: Different
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.Collection: Hair
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.Collection: Journey
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.Collection: Glasses
Humans are made from nuclear ash of dead starsCollection: Stars
It's utterly beautiful not to know my own edges.Collection: Beautiful
I want to die in my own way. It's my illness, my death, my choice. This is what saying yes means.Collection: Mean
It's really going to happen. I really won't ever go back to school. Not ever. I'll never be famous or leave anything worthwhile behind. I'll never go to college or have a job. I won't see my brother grow up. I won't travel, never earn money, never drive, never fall in love or leave home or get my own house. It's really, really true. A thought stabs up, growing from my toes and ripping through me, until it stifles everything else and becomes the only thing I'm thinking. It fills me up like a silent scream.Collection: Falling In Love
We make patterns, we share moments.Collection: Patterns
Life is made up of a series of moments, each one a journey to the end.Collection: Journey
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.Collection: Reality
Cal says that humans are made from the nuclear ash of dead stars. He says that when I die, I'll return to dust, glitter,rain. If thats true, I want to be buried right here under this tree. Its roots will reach into the soft mess of my body and suck me dry. I'll be re-formed as apple blossom. I'll drift down in the spring like confetti and cling to my family's shoes. They'll carry me in their pockets to help them sleep. What dreams will they have then?Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Love
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.Collection: School
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.Collection: Easter
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.Collection: Sad
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.Collection: Love You
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.Collection: Block
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?Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Doors
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.Collection: Life
The last few weeks, it was as if someone had taken his life to pieces and let him see the way it worked.Collection: Taken
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.Collection: Funny Things
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.Collection: Baby
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.Collection: Hurt
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.Collection: Kissing
Her skin tasted expensive.Collection: Skins
Maybe you should say goodbye, Cal.' 'No.' 'It might be important.' 'It might make her die.Collection: Goodbye
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.Collection: Fall
She'll understand what I already know - that death surrounds us all. And it tastes like metal between your teeth.Collection: Teeth
Dad, you played rounders with me, even though you hated it and wished I'd take up cricket. You learned how to keep a stamp collecion because I wanted to know. For hours you sat in hospitals and never, not once, complained. You brushed my hair like a mother should. You gave up work for me, friends for me, four years of your life for me. You never moaned. Hardly ever. You let me have Adam. You let me have my list. I was outrageous. Wanting, wanting so much. And you never said, 'That's enough. Stop now.Collection: Mother
I said I wouldn't leave her.Collection: Said
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.Collection: Broken
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.Collection: Cells
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.Collection: Climbing
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.Collection: Blessed
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.Collection: Hurt
I've always wanted to be a cat. Warm and domesticated when you want to be, wild when you don't.Collection: Life
Should we say something?’ Cal asks. ‘Goodbye, bird?’ I suggest. He nods. ‘Goodbye, bird. Thank you for coming. And good luck.Collection: Goodbye
Every seven years our bodies change, every cell. Every seven years, we disappear.Collection: Cells
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?Collection: Girl
"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."Collection: I Like You
Do you want this to be a love story?Collection: Stories
That slow smile again. I love that smile! DId I think he was ugly just now? No, his face is transformed.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Kids