Gayle Forman Quotes

Forward momentum. That's my new motto. No regrets. And no going back.
Gayle Forman
I wasn't in danger today," I tell him in a choked voice. "I escaped danger today." And I did... I feel like the whole day has been an electrical shock, paddles straight to my heart, bringing me out of a lifelong torpor I hadn't even known I was in. "I escaped," I repeat.
Gayle Forman
...I understand all the ways of trying to escape, how sometimes you escape one prison only to find you've built yourself a different one.
Gayle Forman
Meg invited me to come again, but I always had reasons why I couldn't: my schedule was busy, bus fare wasn't cheap. Both of which were true, even if they weren't the truth.
Gayle Forman
In a funny way, Dad was always a bow-tie wearer, always a little more traditional than you might imagine. Because even though he had blue hair and tattoos and wore leather jackets and worked in a record store, he wanted to marry Mom back at a time when the rest of their friends were still having drunken one-night stands. "Girlfriend is such a stupid word," he said. "I couldn't stand calling her that. So, we had to get married, so I could call her "wife"'.
Gayle Forman
There are monsters all around usThey can be so hard to seehey don't have fangs, no blood-soaked clawsThey look like you and me. But we're not defenselessWe're no damsels in distressTogether we can fend off the attackAll we gotta do is watch our backs.Your body is beautiful how it isWho you love is nobody's business We all contemplate life and deathIt's the poet who gives these thoughtsbreath.The monster is strong, don't be mistakenIt thrives on fear-keeps us isolatedBut together we can fend off its attackAll we gotta do is watch our backs.In your darkest hourWhen the fight's made you wearyWhen you think you've lost your powerWhen you can't see clearlyWhen you're ready to surrenderGive in to the blacklook over your shoulderI've got your back.
Gayle Forman
But seventeen is an inconvenient time to be in love.
Gayle Forman
...no way through it but through it," I tell myself.
Gayle Forman
I'll be your mess, you be mineThat was the deal that we had signed
Gayle Forman
Sometimes I did feel like I came from a different tribe. I was not like my outgoing, ironic dad or my tough-chick mom. And as if to seal the deal, instead of learning to play electric guitar, I'd gone and chosen the cello.
Gayle Forman
even though I think that Mia and I have enough secrets between the two of us at this point
Gayle Forman
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?” And just like that, without thinking, without saying it in my head first, without arguing with myself for days, it’s out there.“So,” she says, as if speaking to an audience under the bridge. “He finally says it.
Gayle Forman
I'd wish you luck, Willem, but I think you need to stop relying on that
Gayle Forman
That they will find each other during the play, once more, in the words of Shakespeare.
Gayle Forman
To be, or not to be: that is the question. That’s from Hamlet’s - maybe Shakespeare’s - most famous soliloquy. […] But what if Shakespeare - and Hamlet - were asking the wrong question? What if the real question is not whether to be, but how to be?
Gayle Forman
Pictures can be pretty deceptive.
Gayle Forman
I've hardly taken any pictures on this trip. Melanie teased me about it, to which I always said I preferred to experience something rather than obsessively record it. Though, really, the truth of it was, unlike Melanie (who wanted to remember the shoe salesman and the mime and the cute waiter and all the other people on the tour), none of that really mattered to me. At the start of the trip, I took shots of the sights. The Colosseum. Belvedere Palace. Mozart Square. But I stopped. They never came out very well, and you could get postcards of these things.But there are no postcards of this. Of life.
Gayle Forman
He looks at me and then, reverting to the voice he'd used with Kendra, says, 'If homegirls wanna see me as ghetto trash'--he stops and switches to his lispy, sassy voice--'or big-ass queer'--now he switches to his deepest Shakespeare voice--'I shall not take it upon myself to disabuse them.
Gayle Forman
Everyone has hardship in their life. Everyone has pain.
Gayle Forman
Cinders, I would've thought you of all people would know better. There are no wicked stepmothers and there are no fairy godmothers, and there are no Prince Charmings. There in no preordained destiny. You get to decide that. You decide your destiny. - V
Gayle Forman
You must not waste your one day here. When the sun shines, you let it shine on you. Snow is always waiting.
Gayle Forman
Look I accept Adam because you love him. And I assume he accepts me because you love me...your love binds us.'...The funny thing was, I never really bought into Kim's notion that they were somehow bound together through me- until just now when I saw her half carrying him down the hospital corridor.
Gayle Forman
Why wasn't I nicer to Alice? When she has been nothing but sweet to me? When I actually like her? I know I should say something to her, but before I can find the words, she's tooting her horn and disappearing down the street.I wave until she turns the corner. And as I watch another person drive out of here to some better place, I understand exactly why I wasn't nicer.
Gayle Forman
The sound is clear and strong as a bell, and it fills me with joy, and it's like, for the first time in my life, I understand that this is the point of laughter, to spread happiness.
Gayle Forman
Willem laughs again. The sound is clear and strong as a bell, and it fills me with joy, and it's like, for the first time in my life, I understand that this is the point of laughter, to spread happiness.
Gayle Forman
If I stay. If I live. It’s up to me.All this business about medically induced comas is just doctor talk. It’s not up to the doctors. It’s not up to the absentee angels. It’s not even up to God who, if He exists, is nowhere around right now. It’s up to me.
Gayle Forman
The talks were like blood transfusions, moments of realness and hope that were pinpricks of light in the dark fabric of small-town life.
Gayle Forman
Don't worry, I plan on living a long time.""Why are you making a bucket list, then?""Because if you wait until you're really dying, it's too late.
Gayle Forman
I don't really care. I shouldn't have to care. I shouldn't have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.
Gayle Forman
It wasn't even a fight, really. We didn't shout. We barely even argued, but a snake of tension quietly slithered into our lives.
Gayle Forman
Doubt is part of searching. Same as faith.
Gayle Forman
Almost don't matter. You got to deal with the situation at hand.
Gayle Forman
We tell our secrets to the dark.
Gayle Forman
I didn't give it much thought back then. I just wanted to get all the words straight and collect my A.
Gayle Forman
I think of me and Melanie when we were younger, on the high dive at the pool in Mexico. We would always hold hands as we jumped, but by the time we swam back up to the surface, we'd have let go. No matter how we tried, once we started swimming, we always let go. But after we bobbed to the surface, we'd climb out of the pool, clamber up the high-dive ladder, clasp hands, and do it again. We're swimming separately now. I get that. Maybe it's just what you have to do to keep above water. But who knows? Maybe one day, we'll climb out, grab hands, and jumo again.
Gayle Forman
Remember, the opposite of bravery is not cowardice, but conformity.
Gayle Forman
I'm surrounded by people and feel alone
Gayle Forman
I don't hate you. I don't think I ever really did. It was just anger. And once I faced it head-on, once understood it, it dissipated. -Mia
Gayle Forman
Allyson meanwhile is remembering. Why this person? All the things she has told herself, or other people have told her - infatuation or Paris or good acting or lust - no longer hold water, because she remembers so viscerally and feels it anew. It's not any of that. It's not even him. Or all him. It's her. The way she can be with him.
Gayle Forman
Pete and Repeat went out in a boat. Pete fell out. Who was saved?
Gayle Forman
Next time I get sick, you can tell that to me. You can be my girl in the mountains.""Okay", I say."I'll be your mountain girl and take care of you.
Gayle Forman
For my first recital ever, they gave me a cello. And for this one, they gave me you.
Gayle Forman
But Dad looked delighted. "My Mia's singing 'Waiting for Vengeance' to my Teddy. What do you think about that?
Gayle Forman
When we got back home, Gramps dropped me off and enveloped me in a hug. Normally, he was a handshaker, maybe a back-patter on really special occasions. His hug was strong and tight, and I knew it was his way of telling me that he'd had a wonderful time.“Me, too, Gramps,” I whispered.
Gayle Forman
Sometimes you make choices in life, and sometimes choices make you.
Gayle Forman
A journey of a thousand miles starts with just ten digits.
Gayle Forman
A journey of 1,000 miles starts with just 10 digits.
Gayle Forman
But then Mason touches my neck, to the spot on it where the cut from that night has since healed, and I pull away.He was right, after all; it didn't leave a scar, though part of me wishes it had. At least I'd have some evidence, some justification of this permanence. Stains are even worse when you're the only one who can see them.
Gayle Forman
And just in general, I'm better. Better than I've been since Bram died, and in some ways better than I was even before that. No, Lulu didn't break my hear. But I'm beginning to wonder if in some roundabout way, she fixed it.
Gayle Forman
If you could know going in that twenty-five years of love would break you in the end, would you risk it? Because isn’t it inevitable? When you make such a large withdrawal of happiness, somewhere you’ll have to make an equally large deposit. It all goes back to the universal law of equilibrium.
Gayle Forman
I'll keep you here.' He taps his temple. 'Where you can't get lost.
Gayle Forman
I realize then that it's not enough to know what someone is called. You have to know who they are.
Gayle Forman
Is this how it is with lies? The first one comes hard, the second one easier, until they slip off your tongue easier than truths - maybe because they are easier than truths.
Gayle Forman
Oh honey, have you learned nothing from these plays? Ain't such a line between faking and being.
Gayle Forman
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? W
Gayle Forman
Firefly, it is an act of bravery to feel your feelings. Oh, Meg would've loved that. It's an act of bravery to feel your feelings, even if your feelings are telling you to die.
Gayle Forman
Letting go. Everyone talks about it like it's the easiest thing.
Gayle Forman
Sometimes fate or life or whatever you want to call it, leaves a door a little open and you walk through it. But sometimes it locks the door and you have to find the key, or pick the lock, or knock the damn thing down. And sometimes, it doesn’t even show you the door, and you have to build it yourself.
Gayle Forman
Maybe he was overwhelmed, like I am overwhelmed, by that mysterious intersection where love meets luck, where fate meets will. Because he'd been waiting for her. And there she was.
Gayle Forman
I don't want to lose you because of the f**ked-up way I found you.
Gayle Forman