Book of Quotes

If I Stay

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

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

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

- "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 earse 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 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 hand on to it.  Love can make you immortal."

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

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

- "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."

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

- "'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.'"

- "Fake it 'till you make it."

- "I'm not choosing, but I'm running out of fight."

- "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.'"

- "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."

- "People believe what they want to believe."

- "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."

- "She didn't care that people called her a bitch.  'It's just another word for feminist,' she told me with pride."

- "This is the you I like.  You definitely dressed sexier and are, you know, blond, and that's different.  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 love that you're fragile and tough, quiet and kiss-ass."

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

- "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 is 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."

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

- "Sleep would be so welcome.  A warm blanket of black to erase everything else.  Sleep without dreams.  I've heard people talk about sleep of the dead.  Isthat 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."

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

- "We are like Humpty Dumpty and all these king's horses and all these king's men cannot put us back together again."

- "You just work through it.  You just hand in there."

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

- "Bribes are the glue that's kept teenagers and parents connected for generations."

- "How am I supposed to decide this?  How can I possibly stay without mom and dad?  How can I leave without Teddy?  Or Adam?  This is too much.  I don't even understand how it all works, why I'm here in the state that I'm in or how to get out of it if I wanted to.  If I were to stay, I want to wake up, would I wake up right now?  I've already tried snapping my heels to find Teddy and tried to beam myself to Hawaii, and that didn't work.  This seems a whole lot more complicated.  

But in spite of that, I belive it's true.  I hear the nurse's words again.  I am running the show.  Everyone's waiting on me.

I decide.  I know this now. 

And this terrifies me more than anything else that has happened today."

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