Gayle Forman

“On était dans son bureau obscur, décoré avec des affiches à visée éducative. L'une d'elles représentait des oies sauvages volant en formation, avec une légende qui disait : << Si tu sais où tu vas, tu iras loin. >>Pour ma part, je ne risquais pas d'aller bien loin, car on m'avait pris mes vêtements et mes chaussures.”

“Le plus curieux, c'est que, peu à peu, un autre sentiment a fait surface. Quelque chose comme de la déception. Et je me suis aperçue que, en dépit de tout, j'aurais vraiment aimé aller voir le grand canyon.”

“Or maybe it's not a miracle. Maybe this is just life. When you open yourself up to it. When you put yourself in the path of it. When you say yes.”

“I wait for the fist of devestation, the collapse of a year's worth of hopes, the roar of sadness. And I do feel it. The pain of losing him. Or the idea of him. But along with that pain is something else, something quiet at first, so I have to strain for it. but when I do, I hear the sound of a door quietly clicking shut. And then the most amazing thing happens: The night is calm, but I feel a rush of wind, as if a thousand other doors have just simultaneously flung open. I give one last glance towards Willem. Then I turn to Wolfgang. "Finished," I say. But I suspect the opposite is true. That really, I'm just beginning.”

“L'chaim!': To life!”

“C'est courageux d'aller dans l'inconnu': It is courageous to go into territory unknown.”

“You're just trying on different identities, like everyone in those Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they're already in us. That's why we pretend them in the first place.”

“Are you coming down with something?" Mom asks.And just for the tiniest of seconds, I wonder what would happen if I told them the truth. That school is nothing like I imagined it would be. That I'm not the girl in the catalog at all. I'm not a Happy College Student. I don't know who I am. Or maybe I do know who I am and I just don't want to be her anymore.”

“It's funny the things you think you're scared of until they're upon you, and then you're not.”

“I think everything is happening all the time, but if you don't put yourself in the path of it, you miss it.”

“I`m surrounded by people and feel alone.”

“In Rome, I really wanted an Audrey Hepburn Roman Holiday experience, but the Trevi Fountain was crowded, there was a McDonald's at the base of the Spanish Steps, and the ruins smelled like cat pee because of all the strays. The same thing happened in Prague, where I'd been yearning for some of the bohemianism of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But no, there were no fabulous artists, no guys who looked remotely like a young Daniel Day-Lewis. I saw this one mysterious-looking guy reading Sartre in a cafe, but then his cell phone rang and he started talking in aloud Texan twang.”

“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.”

“Now and Laters. Starbust, Pixie Stix. If she gets too bitchy, just feed her this crap. As long as the sugar high is in effect, you and the wildlife should be safe”

“..all I left with was the magnitude of my mistake, of my missing you. And I have to watch you from this distance, watch you achieve your dreams, live what seemed like this perfect life.”

“But my hand has been clenched into a fist for three years now; it's frozen shut.”

“...and yes, it was a high school romance, but it was still the kind of romance where I thought we were trying to find a way to make it forever...”

“I guess high school really is ancient history,” she concludes.Ancient history? Have you really relegated us to the trash heap of the Dumb High-School Romance? And if that’s the case, why the hell can’t I do the same?”

“How is it possible that a boyfriend ceases to exist from one day to another?”

“If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?”

“So this would like your farewell tour?" Of New York? Of Me? ”

“There’s a piece of lead where my heart should beatDoctor said too dangerous to take outYou’d better just leave it beBody grew back around it, a miracle, praise beNow, if only I could get through airport security“bullet”

“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?”

“I actually feel something in my chest open, a feeling so intense, it’s like my heart’s about to burst. And I just let it. I just let it out.”

“Life might take you down different roads. But each of you gets to decide which one to take.”

“You dumb-ass," I crooned, kissing her on the forehead. "You don't share me. You own me.”

“How can it be so unclear to her when it's like the fingers on my hand to me?”

“And our lips. There isn't enough skin, enough spit, enough time, for the lost years that our lips are trying to make up for as they find each other. We kiss. The electric current switches to high. The lights throughout all of Brooklyn must be surging.”

“Go back to your ghost, I hear Bryn telling me. But she has it wrong. Bryn is the one who's been living with the ghost-the specter of a man who never stopped loving someone else.”

“We were both music-obsessed, each in our own way. If we didn't entirely understand the other person's obsession, it didn't matter, because we understood our own.”

“All I wanted was for you to be okay. All I wanted was to help you. I would've done anything."She drops her chin to her chest. "Yes, I know. You wanted to rescue me.""Damn, Mia. You say that like it's a bad thing.”

“So let's hear another one of your irrational fears. Mia grasped me by the arms and pulled herself in to my chest, like she was burrowing her body into mine. "I'm scared of losing you," she said in the faintest of voices." I pushed her away so I could see her face and kissed the top of her forehead. "I said 'irrational' fears. Because that's not gonna happen.”

“You're a total freak. But you're my freak.”

“But after shows, I craved connection. I craved skin-the taste of another woman's sweat. If it couldn't be hers, well, then anyone's would do...for a few hours.”

“The whole night had been a mistake. It's not going to let me rewind. Or unmake the mistakes I've made.Or the promises I've mad. Or have her back. Or have me back.”

“One day she told me that they'd decided that my gender was divvied into two neat piles-Men and Guys. Basically, all the saints of the world: Men. The jerks, the players, the wet T-shirt contest aficionados? They were Guys.”

“Obey the muse, Liz said. She's a fickle mistress.”

“The music is the void. And you're the reason why.”

“Mia and I had been together for more than two years, and yes, it was a high school romance, but it was still the kind of romance where I thought we were trying to find a way to make it forever, the kind that, had we met five years later and had she not been some cello prodigy and had I not been in a band on the rise - or had our lives not been ripped apart by all this -I was pretty sure it would've been.”

“Rock star. The words are so full of smoke and mirrors that it's impossible to find a real person behind them. But I am a rock star. I have the bank account of a rock star and the platinum records of a rock star and the girlfriend of a rock star. But I fucking hate that term, and hearing Mia pin it on me ups the level of my loathing to a new stratosphere.”

“In the middle of L.A.'s sunny non-winter, I need to sit in a dark closet to feel right.”

“In that twisted incestuous way of fate, Mia's a part of our history, and we're among the shards of her legacy.”

“Little pinpricks fire-cracker up and down my body. Just calm down, I tell myself. You just make her nervous showing up all out of the blue like that. Still, I'm flattered that I matter-- even if it's just enough to scare her.”

“Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out.”

“Neither sleet nor rain nor a half inch of snow will compel me to dress like a lumberjack.”

“She looks at me, square in the eye. Taking aim. And then she pulls the trigger. “Because I hated you.”The wind, the noise, it all just goes quiet for a second, and I’m left with a dull ringing in my ear, like after a show, like after a heart monitor goes to flatline.“Hated me? Why?”“You made me stay.” She says it quietly, and it almost gets lost in the wind and the traffic and I’m not sure I heard her. But then she repeats it louder this time. “You made me stay!”And there it is. A hollow blown through my heart, confirming what some part of me has always known.She knows.”

“She's still beautiful. Not in an obvious Vanessa LeGrande or Byrn Shraeder kind of way. In a quiet way that's always been devastating to me.”

“My first impulse is not to grab her or kiss her or yell at her. I simple want to touch her cheek, still flushed from the night's performance. I want to cut through the space that separates us, measured in feet-not miles, not continents, not years-and to take a callused finger to her face.”

“(P)eople’s good intentions can wind up putting us in boxes as confining as coffins.”

“Love can make you immortal”