Top 293 Quotes & Sayings by Gayle Forman - Page 4

What's that sound I hear? It's just my lifetime It's whistling past my ear

But my hand has been clenched into a fist for three years now; it's frozen shut.

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

A thousand suns rise from my chest.

There’s a piece of lead where my heart should beat Doctor said too dangerous to take out You’d better just leave it be Body grew back around it, a miracle, praise be Now, if only I could get through airport security “bullet

Then the musical instruments appeared. Dad’s snare drum from the house, Henry’s guitar from his car, Adam’s spare guitar from my room. Everyone was jamming together, singing songs: Dad’s songs, Adam’s songs, old Clash songs, old Wipers songs. Teddy was dancing around, the blond of his hair reflecting the golden flames. I remember watching it all and getting that tickling in my chest and thinking to myself: This is what happiness feels like.

She left for Juilliard the day after Labor Day. I drove her to the airport. She kissed me good-bye. She told me that she loved me more than life itself. Then she stepped through security. She never came back.

When I was little, I used to go to the local ice-skating rink. In my mind, I always felt like I could twirl and jump, but when I got out onto the ice, I could barely keep my blades straight. When I got older, that's how it was with people: In my mind, I am bold and forthright, but what comes out always seems to be so meek and polite. Even with Evan, my boyfriend for junior and most of senior year, I never quite managed to be that skating, twirling, leaping person I suspected I could be. But today, apparently, I can skate.

I know that all the magic kisses in the world probably couldn't have helped him today. But I would do anything to have been able to give him one.

I know what I did to you was so wrong, but at the time it also felt so necessary to my survival. I don't know if those two things can both be true, but that's how it was.

Adam lay perfectly still, little groans escaping from his lips. I looked at the bow, looked at my hands, looked at Adam's face and felt this surge of love, lust, and an unfamiliar feeling of power.

How is it possible that a boyfriend ceases to exist from one day to another?

And I kissed him back so hard, like I was trying to merge our bodies through our lips.

You're just trying on different identities, like everyone in those Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they're already in us. That's why we pretend them in the first place.

So, this is how it's become? This is how I've become? A walking contradiction? I'm surrounded by people and feel alone. I claim to crave a bit of normalcy but now that I have some, it's like I don't know what to do with it, I don't know how to be a normal person anymore.

The bow is so old, its horsehair is glue Sent to the factory, just like me and like you So how come they stayed your execution? The audience roars its standing ovation "Dust.

Love can make you immortal

If I stay. If I live. It's up to me.

In Rome, I really wanted an Audrey Hepburn Roman Holiday experience, but the Trevi Fountain was crowded, there was a McDonald's at the base of the Spanish Steps, and the ruins smelled like cat pee because of all the strays. The same thing happened in Prague, where I'd been yearning for some of the bohemianism of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But no, there were no fabulous artists, no guys who looked remotely like a young Daniel Day-Lewis. I saw this one mysterious-looking guy reading Sartre in a cafe, but then his cell phone rang and he started talking in aloud Texan twang.

You stood over me and you made a promise to me, as sacred as any vow. And I can understand why you're angry, but you can't blame me. You can't hate me for taking your word.

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

Or maybe it's not a miracle. Maybe this is just life. When you open yourself up to it. When you put yourself in the path of it. When you say yes.

If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?

But I'd do it again. I know that now. I'd make that promise a thousand times over and lose her a thousand times over to have heard her play last night or to see her in the morning sunlight. Or even without that. Just to know that she's somewhere out there. Alive.

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 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.

And yes, it was a high school romance, but it was still the kind of romance where I thought we were trying to find a way to make it forever.

Fake it till you make it actually worked.

I know. So, I was angry with you. I didn't know why. I was angry with the world. I did know why. I hated all my therapists for being useless. I was this little ball of self-destructive fury, and none of them could do anything but tell me that I was a little ball of self-destructive fury. [...] I knew I was angry. Tell me what to do with that anger, please.

Are you coming down with something?" Mom asks. And just for the tiniest of seconds, I wonder what would happen if I told them the truth. That school is nothing like I imagined it would be. That I'm not the girl in the catalog at all. I'm not a Happy College Student. 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.

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

That’s the thing you never expect about grieving, what a competition it is.

Sometimes you can't know until you know.

If I stay. If I live. It’s up to me. All this business about medically induced comas is just doctor talk. It’s not up to the doctors. It’s not up to the absentee angels. It’s not even up to God who, if He exists, is nowhere around right now. It’s up to me.

It's funny the things you think you're scared of until they're upon you, and then you're not.

Really? Was that how you quit me?

You just work through it. You just hang in there.

So let's hear another one of your irrational fears. Mia grasped me by the arms and pulled herself in to my chest, like she was burrowing her body into mine. "I'm scared of losing you," she said in the faintest of voices." I pushed her away so I could see her face and kissed the top of her forehead. "I said 'irrational' fears. Because that's not gonna happen.

Then I smell the sweat on him, a clean musky scent that I'd bottle and wear as perfume if I could.

In the middle of L.A.'s sunny non-winter, I need to sit in a dark closet to feel right.

We were both music-obsessed, each in our own way. If we didn't entirely understand the other person's obsession, it didn't matter, because we understood our own.

And our lips. There isn't enough skin, enough spit, enough time, for the lost years that our lips are trying to make up for as they find each other. We kiss. The electric current switches to high. The lights throughout all of Brooklyn must be surging.

It feels like the city is telling secrets down here, privy only to those who think to listen.

One day she told me that they'd decided that my gender was divvied into two neat piles-Men and Guys. Basically, all the saints of the world: Men. The jerks, the players, the wet T-shirt contest aficionados? They were Guys.

How can it be so unclear to her when it's like the fingers on my hand to me?

My first impulse is not to grab her or kiss her or yell at her. I simple want to touch her cheek, still flushed from the night's performance. I want to cut through the space that separates us, measured in feet-not miles, not continents, not years-and to take a callused finger to her face.

Mia and I had been together for more than two years, and yes, it was a high school romance, but it was still the kind of romance where I thought we were trying to find a way to make it forever, the kind that, had we met five years later and had she not been some cello prodigy and had I not been in a band on the rise - or had our lives not been ripped apart by all this -I was pretty sure it would've been.

Because that day with Willem, I may have pretended to be someone named Lulu, but I had never been more honest in my life. Maybe that's the thing with liberation. It comes at a price.

Okay, maybe this was the meant to be: the universe I knew, loved nothing more than balance.

Neither sleet nor rain nor a half inch of snow will compel me to dress like a lumberjack.

Pictures can be pretty deceptive.

You meet people, you part ways, sometimes you cross paths again. Mostly, you don't.

But I also know that sometimes Adam needs to do things the dramatic way. He is fond of the Grand Gesture

It's okay if you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay. I want you to stay more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. But that's what I want and I could see why it might not be what you want. So 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.

Anything can happen in one day.

Traveling is not something you are good at. It is something you do. Like breathing.

Obey the muse, Liz said. She's a fickle mistress.

Suddenly, it's all too much. Bryn and the bump watch. Vanessa with my high school yearbook. The idea that nothing's sacred. Everything's fodder. That my life belongs to anyone but me.

The whole night had been a mistake. It's not going to let me rewind. Or unmake the mistakes I've made.Or the promises I've mad. Or have her back. Or have me back.

Traveling isn't something you're good at. It's something you do. Like breathing.