The Last to Drown Quotes

“I feel like there’s too many beautiful and terrible things in this world for it not to be a little bit magic.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“Maybe they don’t understand the danger. Maybe none of us really do until we fall.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“Each river can only be run once. Not because you can’t go back—but because you’re no longer the person who put in.” —Life on the Water: A Guide’s Memoir”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“That voice loves me. It wants to protect me. And it knows that deep down, I actually do want to keep breathing—despite the pain.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“There’s no way to skirt around trauma. It either shuts you down, or it breaks you open. Sometimes, both.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“All I really know is this: I’ve been hearing his voice so clearly not just because I want to survive, but because in a very real way, he still lives in the deepest parts of my mind and body that he shaped by loving me so long and so well.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“Third Man Syndrome—where an unseen person provides protection and guidance during extreme crisis—has been documented by mountaineers, shipwreck survivors, and polar explorers. The phenomenon remains unexplained.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“In the backcountry, help is not coming. This simple fact should inform every decision you make.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“They wink back at me like pinpricks through a cloth, hiding the heaven I wish I still believed in.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“There’s nothing like somebody else’s tragedy to take your mind off your own.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“Awful things happen to good people every day. People drown, get stabbed, fall down wells, get mesothelioma from asbestos, go through the windshields of cars, get shot in shopping malls, and gasp out their last breaths in new and horrifying ways every single day. Human beings die, and the world keeps spinning, the sun keeps shining, and eager middle-aged women keep splashing into rivers like this to “find themselves” in the wilderness, mostly heedless of the fact that fifteen people were murdered in this canyon seven years ago. Life just goes on.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“soulmates who still live in every heartbeat.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“I’ve been hearing his voice so clearly not just because I want to survive, but because in a very real way, he still lives in the deepest parts of my mind and body that he shaped by loving me so long and so well. Every conversation, every shared silence, every night I tucked myself against him before bed—all of it is recorded at the most intimate, cellular level. I haven’t been imagining him. I’ve been keeping him with me everywhere I go, so deeply that his voice can still speak to me, urging me to fight, begging me to keep going, even warning me to play dead, asking me to stay and survive in hopes that I’ll find the sun again somehow after the darkness.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“believe”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“of”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“People drown, get stabbed, fall down wells, get mesothelioma from asbestos, go through the windshields of cars, get shot in shopping malls, and gasp out their last breaths in new and horrifying ways every single day. Human beings die, and the world keeps spinning, the sun keeps shining, and eager middle-aged women keep splashing into rivers like this to “find themselves” in the wilderness, mostly heedless of the fact that fifteen people were murdered in this canyon seven years ago. Life just goes on.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“For a moment, I almost laugh. I can’t even die right.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“You’re my person, Kaia. And I want you to know that whatever happens when we die, I’m still going to love you. You’re my soulmate. And that’s true even if we all just turn into dirt and stardust when we die. But I don’t think we do. I feel like there’s too many beautiful and terrible things in this world for it not to be a little bit magic.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“In the months after Parker died”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“If someone fell into that whitewater”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“Be here. It’s the least I can do. Because he can’t.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“Awful things happen to good people every day. People drown”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“be getting any sleep until everybody turns in for the night”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“when you made us binge all five Twilight movies and I said I was team Volturi (I’ll never admit it again, but I’m team Jacob).”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“So many beautiful, terrible things. So much fear and kindness and grief and love. There’s no choosing among them. Only living through all of it. And choosing to stay.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“As I watch wave after wave cycle through troughs and crests, I realize that I haven’t really been scared of anything since Parker died. The worst has already happened. So what’s left to be afraid of?”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown

“Awful things happen to good people every day.”
― Noelle W. Ihli, The Last to Drown