Gayle forman quotes

...being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I've been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I'd never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can't seem to find that door.

Dear Willem: I’ve been trying to forget about you and our day in Paris for nine months now, but as you can see, it’s not going all that well. I guess more than anything, I want to know, did you just leave? If you did, it’s okay. I mean it’s not, but if I can know the truth, I can get over it. And if you didn’t leave, I don’t know what to say. Except I’m sorry that I did. I don’t know what your response will be at getting this letter, like a ghost from your past. But no matter what happened, I hope you’re okay.

Loving someone is such an inherently dangerous act. And yet, love, that’s where safety lives.

Sleep would be so welcome. A warm blanket of black to erase everything else. Sleep without dreams. I've heard people talk about the sleep of the dead. Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that's what it's like, I wouldn't mind. If that's what dying is like, I wouldn't mind that at all.

Are you happy in your misery? Resting peaceful in desolation? It’s the final tie that binds us The sole source of my consolation" “blue

Her eyes flutter up to meet mine. “Are you hungry?”she asks. Am I ever.

We'll tell our secrets to the dark"-Adam "Okay"-Mia "So let's hear another of your irrational fears"-Adam "I'm scared of losing you"-Mia "I said 'irrational' fears. Because that's not gonna happen"-Adam "It still scares me"- Mia

...the world feels so big when you're out in the wide open. It's like you don't have a place in it when you don't have a home." "Your place is right here," I whispered, laying down and hugging her close.

He gives me a little shrug, like, of course, why else? And at this point, I really have no right to be surprised by people's capacity for kindness and generosity, but still, I am. I'm floored every time.

I think everything is happening all the time, but if you don't put yourself in the path of it, you miss it. When you travel, you put yourself out there. It's not always great. Sometimes it's terrible. But other times ... [...] It's not so bad.

I miss my father. I miss my grandfather. I miss my home. And I miss my mother. But the thing is, for almost three years, I managed not to miss any of them. And then I spent that one day with that one girl. One day ... It was like she gave me her whole self, and somehow as a result, I gave her more of myself than I even realized there was to give. But then she was gone. And only after I'd been filled up by her, by that day, did I understand how empty I really was.

Doubt is part of searching. Same as faith.

I know that unlike that night, tonight I won't kiss her. Or touch her. Or even see her up close. Tonight, I'll listen. And that'll be enough.

I've become to realize there's a world of difference between knowing something happened, even knowing why it happened, and believing it.

Sometimes the wind blows you places you weren't expecting: sometimes it blows you away from those places, too.

I'm not sure this is a world I belong in anymore. I'm not sure that I want to wake up.

I don't know who I am. Or maybe I do know who I am and I just don't want to be her anymore.

I have a feeling that once you live through something like this, you become a little bit invincible.

It's a good thing Kerry's dead, because that funeral would've sent him over the edge," Henry said.

My stomach lurched, an appetizer before the full portion of heartache I had a feeling was going to be served at some point soon.

I don't really care. I shouldn't have to care. I shouldn't have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.

..all I left with was the magnitude of my mistake, of my missing you. And I have to watch you from this distance, watch you achieve your dreams, live what seemed like this perfect life.

Once the options increase, settling on one becomes harder.

Really? Was that how you quit me?

Sometimes fate or life or whatever you want to call it, leaves a door a little open and you walk through it. But sometimes it locks the door and you have to find the key, or pick the lock, or knock the damn thing down. And sometimes, it doesn’t even show you the door, and you have to build it yourself.

All night long if you want. We'll tell our secrets to the dark.

We kiss again. This next kiss is the kind that breaks open the sky. It steals my breath and gives it back. It shows me that every other kiss I've had in my life has been wrong.

Who says I breathe music? Who says I even breathe?

I like French fries," I say. I like French fries? I sound like a slow child in a made-for-TV movie.

All relationships are tough. Just like with music, sometimes you have harmony and other times you have cacophony.

No one is who they pretend to be

There’s a difference between losing something you knew you had and losing something you discovered you had. One is a disappointment. The other feels like losing a piece of yourself.

Something given, something taken away. Does it always have to work like that?

I think you're the sort of person who finds money on the ground and waves it in the air and asks if anyone has lost it. I think you cry in movies that aren't even sad because you have a soft heart, though you don't let it show. I think you do things that scare you, and that makes you braver than those adrenaline junkies who bungee-jump off bridges.

C'est courageux d'aller dans l'inconnu': It is courageous to go into territory unknown.

In the lead-up to the launch of my new book I Was Here, I’ve seen a lot of discussion about depression and suicide and mental health and YA dealing with such intense matters. What I haven’t seen discussed is kittens.

And that's just it, isn't it? That's how we manage to survive the loss. Because love, it never dies, it never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it.

It's not that people like sad movies that make us feel like, "Oh, my god, what a bummer." We like emotionally moving experiences, where you feel like a slightly different person and you see the world a little different, after you finish. It lets you see your own life, in a different way, and it actually makes you feel really good. And even though there might be sad content making this happen, the feeling that you're left with is one that is quite good, quite hopeful, clarifying and uplifting.

And if I'm not forgiven, then at least I'm understood.

I'll be your mess, you be mine That was the deal that we had signed

If these walls could talk, I wonder what secrets they'd tell.

I actually feel something in my chest open, a feeling so intense, it’s like my heart’s about to burst. And I just let it. I just let it out.

I force my eyes upward and look at Mia for the first time. She's still beautiful. Not in an obvious Vanessa LeGrande or Bryn Shraeder kind of way. In a quiet way that's always been devastating to me. Her hair, long and dark, is down now, swimming damply against her bare shoulders, which are still milky white and covered with the constellation of freckles that I used to kiss. The scar on her left shoulder, the one that used to be an angry red weld is silvery pink now. Almost like the latest rage in tattoo accessories. Almost pretty.

...no way through it but through it," I tell myself.

And the voice grows stronger and stronger, and it’s my voice this time and it’s asking a question: How does she know?

Sometimes the best way to find out what you’re supposed to do is by doing the thing you’re not supposed to do.

But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today.

Life is a big fat gigantic stinking mess, that's the beauty of it, too.

The clothes are packed off to Goodwill I said my good-byes up on the hill The house is empty, the furniture sold Soon your smell will decay to mold Don't know why I bother calling, ain't nobody answering Don't know why I bother singing, ain't nobody listening "Disconnect" Collateral Damage, Track 10

Forgivenesss: It's a miracle drug. It's God's miracle drug.

Forward momentum. That's my new motto. No regrets. And no going back.

What would you do if you had to choose?

A long flight. Jetlag. Immigration. Customs. And then finally, that first step into a new place, that moment of exhilaration and disorientation, each feeding the other. That moment when anything can happen

Her hands were freezing, just like they always were, so I warmed them, just like I always did.

Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that’s what it’s like, I wouldn’t mind.

Can you move on from something when you're not sure what it is you're moving on from?

I think everything is happening all the time, but if you don't put yourself in the path of it, you miss it.

In the calculus of feelings, you never really know how one person's absence will affect you more than another's.

Because I understand all the ways of trying to escape, how sometimes you escape one prison only to find you've built yourself a different one.

Quitting’s not hard. Deciding to quit is hard. Once you make that mental leap, the rest is easy.” “Really? Was that how you quit me?

A day might just be twenty-four hours but sometimes getting through one seems as impossible as scaling Everest.

There were signs. Probably more of them than I ever caught, even after the fact. But I missed them all. Maybe because I wasn’t looking for them. I was too busy checking over my shoulder at the fire I’d just come through to pay much attention to the thousand-foot cliff looming in front of me.

When the sun shines, you let it shine on you

The little things that happen. Sometimes they're insignificant; other times, they change everything.

But seventeen is an inconvenient time to fall in love.

By that point, it’ll have been more than year since I met Lulu. Any sane person would say it’s too late. It already felt too late that first day, when I woke up in the hospital. But even so, I’ve kept looking. I’m still looking.

Sometimes you can only feel something by its absence. By the empty spaces it leaves behind.

It's quiet now. So quiet that can almost hear other people's dreams.

The line between true self and feigned self is blurred on all sides. Which I think is a rather handy metaphor for falling in love.

She said if she couldn't play, she had nothing left. What about me?

The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin.

You were so busy trying to be my savior that you left me all alone.

Please Mia," he implores. "Don't make me write a song.

(P)eople’s good intentions can wind up putting us in boxes as confining as coffins.

Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I'm feeling things at last. I'm feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill.

Concert' doesn’t mean standing up like a target in front of thousands of strangers. It means coming together. It means harmony.

Accidents. It's all about the accidents.

It was selfish what I asked her to do, even if it wound up being the most unselfish thing I've ever done.

It would’ve been easier to die. It’s not that I want to be dead now. I don’t. I have a lot in my life that I get satisfaction from, that I love. But some days, especially in the beginning, it was so hard. And I couldn’t help but think that it would’ve been so much simpler to go with the rest of them. But you—you asked me to stay. You begged me to stay. You stood over me and you made a promise to me, as sacred as any vow.

Girlfriend is such a stupid word. I couldn't stand calling her that. So, we had to get married, so I could call her 'wife.

Losing me will hurt; it will be the kind of pain that won't feel real at first, and when it does, it will take her breath away.

Part of me knows one more day won't do anything except postpone the heartbreak. But another part of me believes differently. We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day.

Don't be scared...Women can handle the worst kind of pain. You'll find out one day.

I'm so tired of missing things I don't have.

Willem holds my wrist for a long moment, looking at that birthmark. Then he lifts it to his mouth. And though his lips are soft and his kiss is gentle, it feels like a knife jamming into the electrical socket. It feels like the moment when I go live

It's just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through. - Adam

Leaving people to jumped conclusions is sometimes simpler than explaining a complicated truth

Needle and thread flesh and bone Spit and sinew, heartbreak is home. Your suture lines, they sparkle like diamonds Bright stars to light my confinement "Stitch.

But the you who you are tonight is the same you I was in love with yesterday, the same you I’ll be in love with tomorrow.

I'll let you go. If you stay.

I think of me and Melanie when we were younger, on the high dive at the pool in Mexico. We would always hold hands as we jumped, but by the time we swam back up to the surface, we'd have let go. No matter how we tried, once we started swimming, we always let go. But after we bobbed to the surface, we'd climb out of the pool, clamber up the high-dive ladder, clasp hands, and do it again. We're swimming separately now. I get that. Maybe it's just what you have to do to keep above water. But who knows? Maybe one day, we'll climb out, grab hands, and jumo again.

Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out.

Closure. I loathe that word.

You can have your wishes, your plans, but at the end of the day, it's out of your control -Mia

I want to make her cry and then lick up the tears.

I realize it’s not just Willem I’m looking for; it’s Lulu too.

I’ve been feeling something else. Like I’m about to be sucked into something powerful and painful.

Love is not something you protect. It’s something you risk.

If you stay, I'll do whatever you want. I'll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I'll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would be too painful, that maybe it'd be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I'd do it. I can lose you like that if I don't lose you today. I'll let you go. If you stay.

And something tells me if it matters, maybe it shouldn't be easy.

You have to fall in love to be in love, but falling in love isn't the same as being in love

What is the real question is not whether to be, but how to be?

I`m surrounded by people and feel alone.

I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It’s okay if you have to leave us. It’s okay if you want to stop fighting.

Even going to jail would be easy compared to losing you.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to have had her company in my head—the comfort that would’ve brought.

I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.

I recognized that the kiss was a door I had walked through.

It's like the piano and the cello are being poured into my body, the same way the IV and blood transfusions are. And the memories of my life as it was, and the flashes of it as it might be, are coming so fast and furious. I feel like I can no longer keep up with them but they keep coming and everything is colliding, until I cannot take anymore. Until I cannot be like this a second longer.

Letting go. Everyone talks about it like it's the easiest thing. Unfurl your fingers one by one until your hand is open.

The music is the void. And you're the reason why.

There are so many things that demand to be said. Where did you go? Do you ever think about me? You've ruined me. Are you okay? But of course, I can't say any of that.

Sacrifice, that's what we do for the people we love.

But what if Shakespeare― and Hamlet― were asking the wrong question? What if the real question is not whether to be, but how to be?

Every morning I wake up and I tell myself this: It's just one day, one twenty-four-hour period to get yourself through. I don't know when exactly I started giving myself this daily pep talk--or why. It sounds like a twelve-step mantra and I'm not in Anything Anonymous, though to read some of the crap they write about me, you'd think I should be. I have the kind of life a lot of people would probably sell a kidney to just experience a bit of. But still, I find the need to remind myself of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today.

Anything that kills hope is a sin

Life might take you down different roads. But each of you gets to decide which one to take.

We can change in one day. We can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in one day.

About being grateful for what you have instead of yearning for what you think you want.

Hate me. Devastate me. Annihilate me. Re-create me. Re-create me. Won't you, won't you won't you re-create me.

Sometimes we meet people and are so symbiotic with them, it's as if we are one person, with one mind, one destiny

I understood all that in my head, but I still didn‟t believe it in my heart.

Every fiction has its base in fact.

I needed to hate someone and you’re the one I love the most, so it fell on you.

Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.