How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Jude can't stop missing Grandma. She hardly left her bedside at the end. When Mom found them that final morning, one asleep, one dead, they were holding hands. (1.71)
Jude lost her grandmother not so long before her mother died. That's a lot of loss for a tween.
Quote #2
I study the time on Mom's old watch—she was wearing it when her car sailed off the cliff two years ago, killing her on impact…. (2.16)
This line of exposition tells us what happened to Dianna Sweetwine very early on. And very unexpectedly, too—last we heard, the twins were about 14 and Mom was alive and well (if not totally perfect at mothering). In other words, hold onto your hat, folks: there's more to her story than meets the eye.
Quote #3
To me, boys don't smell like soap or shampoo or cut grass or sweat from soccer practice or suntan lotion or the ocean from hours spent in the green curl of a wave anymore, they smell like death. (2.190)
Jude loses her virginity on the day of her mother's death—a coincidence that really messes with her head.
Quote #4
Two years ago, a couple weeks after Mom died, he jumped off this same Devil's Drop, got caught in a rip, and almost drowned. (2.218)
Noah says he wasn't trying to kill himself. What do you think?
Quote #5
This Noah also goes out with girls, keeps his hair buzzed and tidy…watches sports with Dad. For all other sixteen-year-old boys: fine. For Noah, it signifies one thing: death of the spirit. (4.26)
There's more than one way to die. And from Jude's way of looking at it, Noah's may be better than drowning, but that doesn't make it anything good. What ends up bringing Noah "back to life"?
Quote #6
How can people die when you're in a fight with them? When you're smack in the middle of hating them? When absolutely nothing between you has been worked out? (4.191)
What Jude doesn't know is that her brother was also in a fight with their mom when she died. Secrets, secrets.
Quote #7
I lie down, rest my head on Oscar's pillow, and breathe in the faint scent of him: peppery, sunny, wonderful. Oscar does not smell like death. (7.775-4.776)
Not smelling like death is evidently what passes for a compliment in the weird world of Jude Sweetwine.
Quote #8
No one tells you how gone gone really is, or how long it lasts. (6.17)
It's been two years since Jude's mom died, and she's still trying to wrap her head around the enormity of that loss.
Quote #9
It's not my fault that a car with my mother in it lost control no matter what I did with this jerkoff beforehand. I didn't bring the bad luck on us, no matter how much it felt that way. (6.176)
Jude no longer associates sex with death. Hey, that's progress.
Quote #10
People die, I think, but your relationship with them doesn't. It continues and is ever-changing. (8.224)
Jude finally realizes that her relationship with her mother didn't freeze at the moment of their final fight. You'd think she'd have got that, since she keeps chatting with Grandma plenty of years after facing her mortality.