I’ll Give You The Sun: Book Review and Quotes
Rating: 3
Review with SPOILERS:
The writing itself is exquisite. For example, when she talks about how fast he can run she says, “I can unzip the air and disappear inside it” (p6), glowing blood and revolutionaries. I really liked that we got Noah’s perspective in the past and Jude’s perspective in the future and had to put all the pieces together. I just wasn’t head over heels in love with the story as I know so many have been. I’m sad that I wasn’t because I expected this to be added to my favorites list. However, it was still very good but I don’t think it’s something I would ever reread. I keep watching the YouTube book reviews and watching them gush over the book and wonder if I read the same one... it wasn’t awful but it wasn’t anything special. This is just a reminder to me that our favorite books speak a lot of who we are and what we need / want to learn and I guess this book just didn’t resonate with who I am.
One of my favorite parts of the narrative was when Noah creates paintings in his mind PLUS it reminds me of Feyre from ACOTAR, whom I love. I think Jude is a little too weird for my liking and I rarely ever agree with her little Biblical sayings. Though I love who she turned into in the end and how she found a new meaning for “that girl.” The character development, for EACH character, was so wonderful and thoughtful.
Also, the fact that Oscar was Ralph (in a way) was freaking hilarious and adorable. All of the foreshadowing in their lives, Oscar’s mother’s dying declarations, Noah’s drawing, and their mother knowing they would fall in love, were so cute. Also Noah and Brian... I won’t even attempt to put into words how much I ship them...
Quotes:
“I need my skull in one piece. Crushing it would be like taking a wrecking ball to some secret museum before anyone ever got to see what’s inside it.” (p4)
“There should really be a horn or gong or something to wake God. Because I’d like to have a word with him. Three words actually: WHAT THE F***” (p6-7)
“Embrace the mystery, Professor.” (p11)
“I keep thinking of that quote by Picasso: ‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once one grows up.” (p12)
“When people fall in love, they burst into flames.” (p15)
“I could tell the paintings were looking at me as hard as I was looking at them.” (p21)
“‘Is it about the journey of the destination, so to speak?’ The whole class hums like a happy hive at this and Sandy launches them into a theoretical discussion about whether the artist even matters after the art has been created.” (p28)
“We wish wish our hands, that’s what we do as artists.” (p34)
“He was the kind of man who walks into a room and all the walls fall down.” (p37)
“Every picture taken of you reduces your spirit and shortens your life.” (42)
“I’ve never met a guy like him before, one who makes you feel like you’re being kissed, no ravished, from across the room.” (45)
*Zephyr to Jude on the beach* “You can totally say no, Jude. That’s what he said, but it seemed like he meant the opposite.” (p46)
“Because the worst thing that could ever happen to Noah happened. He’s become normal. He has the proper amount of buttons.” (p54)
“His soul might be a sun. I’ve never met anyone who had the sun for a soul.” (p70)
“Can you see the Twins?” he asks. “They’re in the upper right quadrant.” I can’t see a thing because my eyes are closed. All I care about the cosmos is happening right here on this roof.” (p108)
“A painting is both exactly the same and entirely different every single time you look at it. That’s the way it is between Jude and me now.” (p119)
“What if there was a time when I was going through hell too, but I didn’t have the courage to keep going? So I just stopped. Pressed paude. What if I’m still on pause?” (p185)
“I didn’t know that family members could just find each other, choose each other like they have.” (p185)
“Everything is true at once. Life is contradiction. We take in every lesson. We find what works.” (p197)
“If a man doesn’t give his beloved the letter he writes, his love is true.” (p204)
“No woman can resist a man who has tidal waves and earthquakes beneath the skin.” (p204)
“You have to see the miracles for there to be miracles.” (p212)
“A broken heart is an open heart.” (p212)
“He’s like a rollercoaster that talks.” (p220)
“Meeting your soulmate is like walking into a house you’ve been in before - you will recognize the furniture, the pictures on the wall, the books on the shelf, the contents of the drawers: You could find your way around in the dark if you had to.” (p221)
“When I get sick of every last person, I am not sick of him.” (p226)
“I would give all ten fingers. I would give anything.” (p240)
“They not only make art, they are art.” (p241)
“Because I’d catch him staring at me sometimes when he didn’t think I was paying attention to him. I was always paying attention to him.” (242)
“I say to you carving is not for cowards. Cowards stick to clay, yes?” . . . “I tell you, you must take risks in my studio” . . . “I tell you not to be timis. I tell you to make the choices, make the mistakes, big, terrible, reckless mistakes, really screw it all up. I tell you it is the only way.” (p245)
“We are remaking the world, nothing less” (p247)
“I love the BIble Noah. He was 950 years old when he dies. He got to leave with the animals. He started the whole world over: blank canvas and endless tubes of paint. Freaking the coolest.” (p252)
“Sometimes you think you know things, know things very deeply, only you realize you don’t know a damn thing.” (p258)
“Listen to me. It takes a lot of courage to be true to yourself, true to your heart. You always have been very brave that way and I pray you always will be. It’s your responsibility, Noah. Remember that.” (p281)
“How can love be such a wrecking ball?” (p291)
“You can’t help who you love, can you?” (p291)
“What is bad for the heart is good for art.” (p301)
“The chisel, like life, allows for second chances. . . Even God, he have to make the world twice.” His hands take to the air. “He make the first world, decide it is a very terrible world he made, so he destroy with the flood. Then he try again, start it all over with - “ “ With Noah,” I say, finishing his sentence. “Yes, so if God can have two tries, why not us? Or three or three hundred tries.” (p301 - 302)
“But what if I don’t need her permission, her approval, her praise to be who I want to be and do what I love> What if I’m in charge of my own damn light switch?” (p307)
“Maybe I’ve been looking at the world, living in the world, in too much of a stingy cowardly way to see much at all.” (p322)
“I gave up practically the whole world for you,” I tell him, walking through the front door of my own love story. “The sun, stars, ocean, trees, everything, I gave it up all for you.” (p329)
“A perfect fit like we’re split-aparts”“Split-aparts?” His face brightens. “So Plato talked about these beings that used to exists that had four legs and four arms and two heads.they were totally self-contained and ecstatic and powerful. Too powerful, so Zeus cut them all in half and scattered all the halves around the world so that humans were doomed to forever look for their other half, the one who shared their very soul. Only the luckiest humans find their split-apart, you see.” (p333)
“It’s like I forgot how awesome it was before I cared if I was any good or good enough to get into some stupid art school. I mean, seriously, who fucking cares?” (p351-352)
“Or maybe a person is just made up of a lot of people,” I say. “Maybe we’re accumulating these new selves all the time.” Hauling them in as we make choices, good and bad, as we screw up, step up, lose our minds, fall apart, fall in love, as we grieve, grow, retreat from the world, dive into the world, as we make things, as we break things. He grins. :Each new self standing on the last one’s shoulders until we’re these wobbly people poles?” (p354)
“Love does as it undoes. It goes after, with equal tenacity: joy and heartbreak.” (p355)
“We were all heading for each other on a collision course, no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.” (p365)
“I remember Guillermo saying the cracks and breaks in my portfolio were the best and most interesting parts of the work in my portfolio. Perhaps it’s the same with people and their cracks and breaks.” (p365)
“People dies, I think, but your relationship with them doesn’t. It continues and is ever changing.” (p367)
“Remake the World.” (p371)
