The Notebook (The Notebook, #1)

by Nicholas Sparks

but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.

But he had been in love once, that he knew. Once and only once, and a long time ago. And it had changed him forever. Perfect love did that to a person, and this had been perfect.

something that would have been forgotten had it been anyone but her.

When she left three weeks later, she took a piece of him and the rest of summer with her.

“My daddy used to tell me that the first time you fall in love, it changes your life forever, and no matter how hard you try, the feelin’ never goes away.

His Allie.

“We’ll find a way to be together.” But in the end they couldn’t.

Allison Nelson, twenty-nine years old and engaged, a socialite, searching for answers she needed to know, and Noah Calhoun, the dreamer, thirty-one, visited by the ghost that had come to dominate his life.

“A living poem” had always been the words that came to mind when he tried to describe her to others.

“Why’d you work so hard?” Ghosts, he wanted to say, but didn’t.

Poetry, she thought, wasn’t written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.

God, what was it about her that made him feel this way? Even after all these years? What sort of power did she have over him?

“Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can’t control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That’s what it was like for me.

But in every boy I met in the next few years, I found myself looking for you,

Maybe we’ve lived a thousand lives before this one and in each of them we’ve found each other.

But if we never meet again and this is truly good-bye, I know we will see each other again in another life. We will find each other again, and maybe the stars will have changed, and we will not only love each other in that time, but for all the times we’ve had before.

“You are the answer to every prayer I’ve offered. You are a song, a dream, a whisper, and I don’t know how I could have lived without you for as long as I have. I love you, Allie, more than you can ever imagine. I always have, and I always will.”

I don’t know what to say anymore except that I couldn’t sleep last night because I knew that it is over between us.

Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,

It is a barren disease, as empty and lifeless as a desert. It is a thief of hearts and souls and memories.

In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you, and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry, I cry, and when you hurt, I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed streets of life.

I am not a poet, and yet a poem is needed to fully express the way I feel about you.

I love you, Allie. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I’ve ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, every day we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours. And, my darling, you will always be mine.

holding her in my arms was more natural to me than my own heartbeat.

Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful, I’m sure of it,” she says, and I agree with her. “I haven’t, either,” I say, but I am looking at her.

The sun has long since set and the thief is about to come, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

I tell her for the last time this evening that I love her. And the thief comes.

God is with you, He must be, for you are the closest thing to an angel that I’ve ever met.

So I love you so deeply, so incredibly much, that I will find a way to come back to you despite my disease, I promise you that.

When I am lost and lonely, read this story—just as you told it to the children—and know that in some way, I will realize it’s about us. And perhaps, just perhaps, we will find a way to be together again.

Noah, wherever you are and whenever this is, I love you. I love you now as I write this, and I love you now as you read this. And I am so sorry if I am not able to tell you. I love you deeply, my husband. You are, and always have been, my dream.

It’s love, it’s as simple as that. It’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”

Another miracle—the greatest of all!—and there’s no way I can stop the tears as we begin to slip toward heaven itself.