Gayle Forman > Quotes

“Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“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.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“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.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“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.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“I'm not sure this is a world I belong in anymore. I'm not sure that I want to wake up.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“You don’t share me. You own me.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“Please Mia," he implores. "Don't make me write a song.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“It's okay,' he tells me. '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.' His voice cracks with emotion. He stops, clears his throat, takes a breath, and continues. '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.'

For the first time since I realized that Teddy was gone, too, I feel something unclench. I feel myself breathe. I know that Gramps can't be that late-inning pinch hitter I'd hoped for. He won't unplug my breathing tube or overdoes me with morphine or anything like that. But this is the first time today that anyone has acknowledged what I have lost. I know that the social worker warned Gran and Gramps not to upset me, but Gramps's recognition, and the permission he just offered me--it feels like a gift.

Gramps doesn't leave me. He slumps back into the chair. It's quiet now. So quiet you can almost hear other people's dreams. So quiet that you can almost hear me tell Gramps, 'Thank you.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“I'm not choosing, but I'm running out of fight.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“You were so busy trying to be my savior that you left me all alone.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“Fake it 'till you make it.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“I needed to hate someone and you’re the one I love the most, so it fell on you.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“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.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“Don't be scared...Women can handle the worst kind of pain. You'll find out one day.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“Love, it never dies. It never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it. Love can make you immortal”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“I look at her there in the shadows of the shut-down city, her hair falling onto her face, and I can see her trying to figure out if I’ve lost it. And I have to fight the urge to take her by the shoulders and slam her against a shuttered building until we feel the vibrations ringing through both of us. Because I suddenly want to hear her bones rattle. I want to feel the softness of her flesh give, to hear her gasp as my hip bone jams into her. I want to yank her head back until her neck is exposed. I want to rip my hands through her hair until her breath is labored. I want to make her cry and then lick up the tears. And then I want to take my mouth to hers, to devour her alive, to transmit all the things she can’t understand.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“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.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“You know, I thought about that a lot these last couple of years," She says in a choked voice. "About who was there for you. Who held your hand while you grieved for all that you'd lost?”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“All I can think about is how fucked up it would be for your life to end here, now. I mean I know that your life if fucked up no matter what now, forever. And I'm not dumb enough to think that I can undo that, that anyone can. But I can't wrap my mind around the notion of you not getting old, having kids, going to Juilliard, getting to play that cello in front of a huge audience, so that they can get the chills the way I do every time I see you pick up your bow, every time I see you smile at me.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“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.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“‎"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.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“But I'd understand if you chose love, Adam love, over music love. Either way you win. And either way you lose. What can I tell you? Love's a bitch.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“Hate me. Devastate me. Annihilate me. Re-create me. Re-create me. Won't you, won't you won't you re-create me.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“This is the you I like. You definitely dressed sexier and are, you know, blond, and that's different. But the you who are tonight is the same you I was in love with yesterday, the same you I'll be in love with tomorrow. I love that you're fragile and tough, quiet and kick-ass. ”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“I get it now.
I have to make good on my promise. To let her go. To really let her go.
To let us both go.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“You?' is all I can manage to choke out.

'Always me,' she replies softly, bashfully. 'Who else?”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“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.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“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”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“First you inspect me
Then you dissect me
Then you reject me
I wait for the day
That you'll resurrect me
"Animate”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“Her hands were freezing, just like they always were, so I warmed them, just like I always did.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“It's my turn to see you through,' she whispers, coming back to me and wrapping me in her blanket as I lose my shit all over again. She holds me until I recover my Y chromosome.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“You just work through it. You just hang in there.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“We are like Humpty Dumpty and all these king's horses and all these king's men cannot put us back together again”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“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.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“It's quiet now. So quiet that can almost hear other people's dreams.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“You talked to me, but you didn’t. I could see you having these two-sided conversations. The things you wanted to say to me. And the words that actually came out.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“You crossed the water,left me ashore
It killed me enough,but you wanted more
You blew up the bridge,a mad terrorist
Waved from your side,threw me a kiss
I started to follow but realized too late
There was nothing but air underneath my feet
"Bridge”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“She didn't care that people called her a bitch. 'It's just another word for feminist,' she told me with pride.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“Barrel of the gun, rounds one two three
She says I have to pick: choose you, or choose me
Metal to the temple, the explosion is deafening
Lick the blood that covers me
She’s the last one standing
“Roulette”
Collateral Damage, Track 11”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“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.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“And then Adam Wilde shows up at Carnegie Hall on the biggest night of my career, and it felt like more than a coincidence. It felt like a gift. From them. For my first recital ever, they gave me a cello. And for this one, they gave me you.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“Letting go. Everyone talks about it like it´s the easiest thing. Unfurl your fingers one by one until your hand is open.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“Standing here, in this quiet house where I can hear the birds chirping out back, I think I’m kind of getting the concept of closure. It’s no big dramatic before-after. It’s more like that melancholy feeling you get at the end of a really good vacation. Something special is ending, and you’re sad, but you can’t be that sad because, hey, it was good while it lasted, and there’ll be other vacations, other good times.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“I'll be your mess,you be mine
That was the deal that we had signed
I bought a hazmat suit to clean up your waste
Gas masks,gloves,to keep us safe
But now i'm alone in an empty room
Staring down immaculate doom
"Messy”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“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.”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“That’s the thing you never expect about grieving, what a competition
it is.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“I´ve become to realize there´s a world of difference between knowing something happened, even knowing why it happened, and believing it.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went

“Then I smell the sweat on him, a clean musky scent that I'd bottle and wear as perfume if I could. ”
― Gayle Forman, If I Stay

“A day might just be twenty-four hours but sometimes getting through one seems as impossible as scaling Everest.”
― Gayle Forman, Where She Went