Book of Quotes

Where She Went

If I Stay: Where She Went by Gayle Forman

- "You don't share me.  You own me."

- "I needed to hate someone and you're the only one I love the most, so it fell on you."

- "You were so busy trying to be my savior that you left me all alone."

- "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."

- "But still, I find the need to remind of the temporariness of a day, to reassure myself that I got through yesterday, I'll get through today." 

- "Letting go.  Everyone talks about it like it's the easiest thing.  Unfurl your fingers one by one until your hand is open."

- "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."

- "'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?'"

- "Hate me.  Devastate me.  Annihilate me.  Re-create me.  Re-create me.  Won't you, won't you, won't  you re-create me."

- "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 satisfactions 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 scared as any vow."

- "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."

- "First you inspect me

Then you dissect me

Then you reject me

I wait for the day

That you'll resurrect me

Animate"

- "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 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."

- "'We'll tell our secrets to the dark.'

'Okay.'

'So let's hear another of your irrational fears.'

'I'm scared of losing you.'

'I said 'irrational' fears.  Because that's not gonna happen.'

'It still scares me.'"

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

'Always me,' she replies softly, bashfully. 'Who else?'"

- "A day might be just twenty-four hours but sometimes getting through just one seems as impossible as scaling Everest."

- "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."

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

- "Her hands were freezing, just like they always were, so I warmed them, just like I always did."

- "You crossed the water, left me ashore

It killed me enough, but you wanted more

You blew up the bridge, a mad terroist

Waved from your side, thorugh me a kiss

I started to follow but realized too late

There was nothing but air underneath my feet"

- "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."

- "In the calculus of feelings, you never really know how one person's absence will affect you more than another's."

- "'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."

- "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"

- "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"

- "You're a total freak.  But you're my freak."

- "'You dumbass,' I crooned, kissing her on the forehead. 'You don't share me.  You own me.'"

- "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."

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

- "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."

- "Quitting's not hard.  Deciding to quit is hard.  Once you make that mental leap, the rest is easy."

"Really?  Was that how you quit me?"

- "Letting go.  Everyone talks about it like it's the easiest thing.  Unfurl your fingers one by one until your hand is open.  But my hand has been clenched into a fist for three years now; it's frozen shut."

- "The audience keeps singing, keeps making my case, and I just keep strumming until I get close enough to see her eyes.  And then I start singing the chorus.  Right to her.  And she msiles at me, and it's like we're the only two people out here, the only ones who know what's happening.  Which is that this song we're all singing together is being rewritten.  It's no longer an angry plea shouted to the void.  Right here, on this stage, in front of eighty thousand people, it's becoming something else.  This is our new vow."

- "Are you happy in your misery?

Resting peaceful in desolation?

It's the final tie that binds us

The sole source of my consolation"

- "I don't want to be that person, who just takes things."