If You Come Softly

“For a moment we stared at each other, neither of us saying anything. There was something familiar about him, something I hadn’t seen before.”

Throughout the book, Ellie and Jeremiah reference the feeling that there is something inexplicable about their connection. Despite their differences, Ellie and Jeremiah find shared experiences and feelings with each other. In this quote, Ellie acknowledges that from the very start, though Jeremiah was different than everyone else around her, she still felt something that told her they were the same.

“He wondered where that stuff went to, where love went to, how a person could just love somebody one day and boom—the next day love somebody else.”

Jeremiah often finds himself missing people and things throughout the book. From his late grandma to the time in his life when his parents were together, Jeremiah yearns for what has already gone. In this quote, Jeremiah ponders what it means for love to no longer exist. He questions how it is possible for a powerful feeling like love to just simply disappear.

“I just never thought about it… for myself, Or for anybody else in our family, really. That’s all. I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I just think having a boyfriend or girlfriend from a different race is really hard. [...] I don’t want you to hurt, Ellie. That’s all.”

When Anne discovers that Jeremiah is Black, she is shocked by the thought of Ellie being in a relationship with someone outside of her race. Anne’s desire to protect Ellie from a challenging relationship is both surprising and understandable considering Anne’s difficult history of coming out to her mother. Here, Anne’s fearful reaction reflects the ways the world views interracial love.

“Change is a good thing, his grandma used to say. Think of it like seasons. You don’t want to stay one way all your life and have moss grow under your toes.”

Jeremiah is often thinking about his late grandmother. Here, he holds her direct words in his mind. As someone who helped raise him, Jeremiah’s grandma has been a source of wisdom and comfort for him. This advice encourages Jeremiah to embrace the changes that are happening in his life, including his relationship with Ellie.

“I felt the room change. Felt the air around me grow warm suddenly—and still.”

In this quote, Ellie describes how she felt Jeremiah reappear in her life before she even saw him. This quote reaffirms the idea that there is something deeper and inexplicable connecting Jeremiah and Ellie, and it brings to life the impact each of them has on each other.

“I used to think that all those babies needed was some kind of chance—and a mother’s dream for them. I was so… so silly back then. Naive. I believed stuff like that. Just because no one in this family had ever said a hateful thing about black people.”

When Jeremiah comes into Ellie’s life, Ellie begins to question all of her beliefs about race and racism. Here, she reckons with the notion that just because someone doesn’t say hateful things doesn’t mean that they don’t tolerate or perpetuate racism in the world.

“Carlton raised an eyebrow. ‘Hello, Miah. Look who you talking to, man. It happens. And you know what? It ain’t the worst thing in the world.’”

Jeremiah sees in his friend Carlton the possibilities of an interracial relationship. While Jeremiah is questioning what it means for him to like someone white and what it would be like to date someone outside of his race, he realizes that he can turn to Carlton to try to gain a better understanding. After Carlton provides some truths about the complications of growing up in a mixed-race household, Carlton here gives Jeremiah a sense of hope.

“It reminds us that one day this house will be empty—no children, just two ancient people padding through it looking at pictures.”

Throughout the book, it is Ellie and Jeremiah that provide their own perspectives of how time works and what missing people over time might look like. Here, Ellie’s father provides an older person’s perspective of what it feels like for time to pass and change daily life. Ellie’s father creates a parental image of missing people over time that contrasts with Ellie and Jeremiah’s more youthful thoughts.

“Jeremiah stared back without smiling. He couldn’t smile, There was something scary about the way he felt—light-headed and out of control. The whole classroom seemed to drop away for a minute, it seemed like it was only the two of them in the world.”

This quote demonstrates Ellie’s impact on Jeremiah. Though Jeremiah is excited and overjoyed by Ellie’s entrance into his life, he also recognizes something overwhelming and scary underlying this coming relationship. This quote also seems to foreshadow the tragedy that is awaiting Jeremiah later in the book.

“If you come as softly / as the wind within the tree. / You may hear what I hear. / See what sorrow sees. / If you come as lightly / as threading dew, / I will take you gladly, / nor ask more of you.”

This quote is taken directly from Audre Lorde’s poem, “If You Come Softly,” which also provides the book’s title. When Jeremiah recites this part of the poem to Ellie in Central Park, he suggests the ways in which people come and go in your life. Lorde’s words used here emphasize the notion that people can bridge divides if they come to each other with gentleness and understanding.

“I closed my eyes. Maybe people were always coming towards each other—from the beginning of their lives.”

Reflecting on Audre Lorde’s words, Ellie draws a parallel from the poem to her own life. Here, Ellie begins to consider the ways that people might be fated to encounter each other in life. This is an idea she continues to think about when she tries to understand her relationship with Jeremiah and the connection she feels to him.

“And he remembered being older, running along the sidewalk, feeling like he was flying, and the ball, a vinyl one again, right there beside him, flying beside him like they were connected by some invisible string.”

In this quote, Jeremiah reminisces about the early feelings of joy and transcendence he felt when playing basketball. Jeremiah references the feeling of finally being able to handle the ball and make it sink into the net, and he relates it to the idea of being truly connected with someone. In many ways, the connection Jeremiah feels when he plays basketball is mirrored by the connection he finally feels with another person in his relationship with Ellie.

“The morning moved on as if this moment, the moment of him and Ellie, had always been here. And always would be.”

Here, Jeremiah describes the way the world around him reacts to his relationship with Ellie. He observes that the world seems to not notice them and that everyone turns away or passes by them. This moment takes place directly after another student at Percy took a photograph of Ellie and Jeremiah on the school steps. Immediately following the picture, Jeremiah sees time react to his relationship much like the world does: it moves on as if he and Ellie together were a constant.

“‘And sometimes,’ Anne said softly, ‘there’s just plain love, Ellie. No reason for it, no need to explain.’”

Though Anne reacted poorly to the idea of Jeremiah and Ellie, in this quote, Ellie remembers Anne’s explanation of love from an earlier time. Ellie reflects on the notion of an inexplicable and irrational love and compares it to her feelings for Jeremiah. This quote shows Ellie’s delighted confusion about her relationship with Jeremiah.

“I would have still come—still tried to find you that day in the hallway. Isn’t that crazy? Because that stuff, that junk—the looks and words—I would… if someone told me that’s what I had to go through [...]. To get to you. I would’ve still kept on coming.”

When Ellie explains that this relationship is both a lot better and harder than she imagined it would be, Jeremiah wonders if she would have still wanted the relationship if she had known what it’d be like. Ellie’s reassurance here highlights how Ellie has learned to take the rewards of this relationship with its challenges. This quote demonstrates the way Ellie has come into her own, as well as the ways she accepts this relationship as not just something she was destined for, but something she would choose.

“Maybe you think you have all the answers right now because of that boy, but you don’t. You’ll see how your life turns around on you and sets you down in some strange other place.”

This quote, spoken by Marion, characterizes Ellie’s mother. It demonstrates her bitterness and her simultaneous desire to protect Ellie. Additionally, this quote foreshadows how Ellie’s life will eventually be turned around with the loss of Jeremiah.

“What do you think happens to people when they die? You think they just go back to the dust or you think it’s something bigger?”

After sharing that he misses his late grandma, Jeremiah asks his father about what might exist after death. This quote continues Jeremiah’s wonderings about why people and things are missed, as well as his interrogations of how important things and people can just disappear. These questions also build upon the foreshadowing of Jeremiah’s own death.

“‘What if I had told you the truth from the beginning?’ he said. ‘You would have thought I was something—somebody, I wasn’t. That day, in the hallway, I wanted you to see… to see me, Ellie. Miah.’”

When Ellie finally discovers the truth about Jeremiah’s parents, she is taken aback. Though Ellie is upset by Jeremiah’s omission of this information, Jeremiah’s explanation reveals that what he desires most is to have his authentic identity seen and validated by those who love him. Jeremiah’s quest to be really seen by Ellie parallels his struggle to discover his own identity throughout the book.

“If they have it in them, to not like somebody because of their color—then I might have it in me.”

In this quote, Ellie shares one of the reasons why she is nervous about finally telling her family about Jeremiah. Although she has spent much of the book reassessing her family’s views of race and understanding their perpetuation of racism from her new perspective, she still hasn’t revealed her relationship with Jeremiah. Ellie’s fear that their reaction might say something about her own capacity to hate highlights the novel’s idea that prejudice and racism can be something that is learned from the world around you.

“And in the yellow-gold light of the fading afternoon, Jeremiah remembered Ellie smiling up at him, and he remembered his father’s grin and his mother’s laughter. Already he was missing them.”

This quote depicts Jeremiah’s final moments before his tragic, untimely death. From the fading light to the feeling of missing loved ones, this quote brings to life some of the book’s major ideas, like the passing of time and the power of memory. Jeremiah spent much of the book anticipating these feelings of fading and missing, and finally the book brings these foreshadowed feelings to fruition.

“Now Nelia is singing, soft and beautifully about a sparrow somewhere watching over Miah. And, for the quickest moment, I see it—that bird. Coming softly toward me.”

At Jeremiah’s funeral, Ellie encounters the larger community that is mourning Jeremiah and finds connection with those that also loved him. In this quote, Ellie believes that even after death, she can sense an inevitable connection with Jeremiah. Much like the sparrow Nelia sings about, Ellie is still heading toward Jeremiah, even though he is physically gone.

“We shall sit here, softly / Beneath two different years / And the rich earth between us / Shall drink our tears.”

This quote from Chapter 25 is pulled directly from Audre Lorde’s poem “If You Come Softly.” This new section of the poem again depicts a connection that bridges a divide, but this time it illustrates the divide as something deeper and more sorrowful: death. The use of this part of the poem now, after Jeremiah’s death and funeral, serves as further context for how Ellie and Jeremiah’s connection will continue to bridge the distance between them, even now.

“Two and a half years have passed, and still, this is how I remember us. And I know when I look at that picture, when I think back to those few months with Miah, that I did not miss the moment.”

Here, Ellie speaks about the way she thinks about Jeremiah after his death. Bringing up the themes of time passing and memories fading, Ellie demonstrates that she can still capture his memory and that memory of Jeremiah prevails over the power of passing time.