Leave Something Behind Quotes & Sayings

What comes from sorrow, watered by tears, grows something of beauty. A salt garden. And so this I leave behind. A harvest for those who find their way into my life and I into theirs. — Cindy McCormick Martinusen

I find myself drawn to that period where children are about to leave childhood behind. When you're 12 years old, you still have one foot in childhood; the other is poised to enter a completely new stage of life. Your innocent understanding of the world moves towards something messier and more complicated, and once it does you can never go back. — Khaled Hosseini

This is what I get very upset at ... ' Temple, who was driving suddenly faltered and wept. 'I've read that libraries are where immortality lies ... I don't want my thoughts to die with me ... I want to have done something ... I'm not interested in power, or piles of money. I want to leave something behind. I want to make a positive contribution - know that my life has meaning, Right now, I'm talking about things at the very core of my experience.' I was stunned. As I stepped out of the car to say goodbye, I said, 'I'm going to hug you. I hope you don't mind.' I hugged her - and (I think) she hugged me back. — Oliver Sacks

I shot you, all right," he said, "and you lost something, but you gained something as well. You just don't know it yet. I gained something, too."
What?"
I got to keep my promise. I didn't leave you behind. — Mitch Albom

You don't have to have it all figured out now or ever. We're all just bumbling through, really. But you'll find something to be passionate about. You just need to leave high school and your town behind. — Matthew Quick

The tea-bag is a vile invention suggestive to my perhaps overly squeamish eye of something a careless person might leave behind unflushed in the lavatory. — John Banville

Like the bee its sting, the promiscuous leave behind them in each encounter something of themselves by which they are made to suffer. — Cyril Connolly

A writer doesn't dream of riches and fame, though those things are nice. A true writer longs to leave behind a piece of themselves, something that withstands the test of time and is passed down for generations. — C.K. Webb

Granted that I know little of my real self, still, I am the best evidence for myself. And though, when I have quitted this world, it will matter nothing to me what people say of me, up to the moment of death we should strive to leave behind us something which can either Comfort, Amuse, Instruct, or Benefit the living; and though I cannot do either, execpt in a small degree, even that little should be given. — Henry Morton Stanley

You should know that there is something worse than hate and that is unlove.
Because hate is anger over something lost, hate is passion, hate is misguided, it's caring for the wrong things but it is still caring.
But unlove, unlove is to unkiss, to unremember, to unhold, to undream, to undo everything that ever was and leave smooth stone behind in its wake.
No fire.
No fury.
Just, nothing.
And that is worse than hate. — Pleasefindthis

After all, a woman didn't leave much behind in the world to show she'd been there. Even the children she bore and raised got their father's name. But her quilts, now that was something she could pass on. — Sandra Dallas

We protect. That's what it means to be a Lucidite. If something happened to one of you, I'd willingly walk through fire and suffer torment to bring you back. We don't leave each other behind and we don't turn our backs when someone needs us most. — Sarah Noffke

I'm of the mind that life is a risk, every time you leave your house it's a risk, and I see no reason to go through life with my hands tied behind my back for any reason. I'd be foolish to let something stop me from doing what I love to do. — Thomas Jane

I could no longer picture Rosalind in my mind's eye; the tender vision of the girl in white had been blown to pieces as if by a nuclear bomb. This was something unimaginable, something hollow as the yellowed husks that insects leave behind in dry grass, blowing with cold alien winds and a fine corrosive dust that shredded everything it touched. — Tana French

But why would Catholics defend an anti-Catholic tradition? In part because they had ceased to identify with their faith; by the 1980s, to identify oneself as Catholic in Boston was to give an ethnic rather than a religious description. The voters who identified themselves as Catholics were telling pollsters something about their backgrounds but not necessarily their beliefs. The fashionable trend, for well over a generation, had been for Catholics to leave their religious backgrounds behind. By 1986 a majority had done so. — Philip F. Lawler

You can only make so much money in life and only enjoy so many creature comforts. The important thing is to do something meaningful-to leave something behind. — Roone Arledge

How can dreams be secondhand?" Lissie asked, sounding both skeptical and intrigued.
Addie flipped on the headlights, watched the snowflakes dancing in the beams. "Sometimes people give up on them, because they don't fit anymore. Or they just leave them behind, for one reason or another. Then someone else comes along, finds them, and believes they might be worth something after all. — Linda Lael Miller

but there will be other things, new things. That's how it is with change. You leave one thing behind, and there's something else to take it's place. — Deborah Ellis

Love is something that you can leave behind you when you die. It's that powerful. — John Fire Lame Deer

Graves aren't for the dead. They're for the loved ones the dead leave behind them. Once those loved ones have gone, once all the lives that have touched the occupant of any given grave had ended, then the grave's purpose was fulfilled and ended. I suppose if you looked at it that way, one might as well decorate one's grave with an enormous statue or a giant temple. It gave people something to talk about, at least. Although, following that logic, I would need to have a roller coaster, or maybe a Tilt-A-Whirl constructed over my own grave when I died. Then even after my loved ones had moved on, people could keep having fun for years and years. Of course, I'd need a slightly larger plot. — Jim Butcher

Millions of people walked through their lives numb, dying to feel something, to feel alive. To be chosen by Cordova for a film was an opportunity for just that, not simply for fame and fortune, but to leave their old selves behind like discarded clothes. — Marisha Pessl

Bridget blinked once. "Books do not have souls, sir." "Those who write them do," Ferus said. "They leave bits and pieces behind them when they lay down the words, some scraps and smears of their essential nature." He sniffed. "Most untidy, really - but assemble enough scraps and one might have something approaching a whole." "You believe that the library has a soul," Bridget said carefully. "I do not believe it, young lady," Ferus said rather stiffly. "I know it. — Jim Butcher

People change us. It is a rare, if not an impossible occurrence, that we come out of relationships unscathed. In our dealings with people we take something with us and we leave something behind. Some people are haunted more than others, either by the sweet perfume of another or the stink of regret. — Donna Lynn Hope

I really want to leave something behind that means something when I'm no longer here. — Tyra Banks

If we lived for ever, what you say would be true. But we have to die, we have to leave life presently. Injustice and greed would be the real thing if we lived for ever. As it is, we must hold to other things, because Death is coming. I love death - not morbidly, but because He explains. He shows me the emptiness of Money. Death and Money are the eternal foes. Not Death and Life. . . . Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him. Behind the coffins and the skeletons that stay the vulgar mind lies something so immense that all that is great in us responds to it. Men of the world may recoil from the charnel-house that they will one day enter, but Love knows better. Death is his foe, but his peer, and in their age-long struggle the thews of Love have been strengthened, and his vision cleared, until there is no one who can stand against him. — E. M. Forster

I Was Always Leaving"

I was always leaving, I was
about to get up and go, I was
on my way, not sure where.
Somewhere else. Not here.
Nothing here was good enough.

It would be better there, where I
was going. Not sure how or why.
The dome I cowered under
would be raised, and I would be released
into my true life. I would meet there

the ones I was destined to meet.
They would make an opening for me
among the flutes and boulders,
and I would be taken up. That this
might be a form of death

did not occur to me. I only know
that something held me back,
a doubt, a debt, a face I could not
leave behind. When the door
fell open, I did not go through. — Jean Nordhaus

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. — Ray Bradbury

We all leave something behind us. A bird in flight will lose a snow-white feather, and flowers in the hedgerows will drop their petals. And people? We leave memories. Footprints in the dust and fingerprints on everything we've touched, warmth in every hand we've held. We become stories that are spoken of, for always. And in this way, we carry on. — Susan E. Fletcher

His words held depth, but not enough to make her forget the desire to do something more than just leave the hospital alive. All she could think of now was the pain of running away. She'd left her family, left Prague behind out of fear. And still war had chased her to an ARP shelter in the heart of London. How could she run again? Something mattered in standing up to fight. — Kristy Cambron

I was just saying goodnight." Logan quipped and pecked Sienna on the cheek before slipping something in to her hand. She looked down to see it was a sleek new cellphone. He turned to leave but Mrs. Rivers interrupted him.
"Your fly is undone." She told him grimly giving him her the full extent of her medusa glare. If looks could kill, Mrs. Rivers had homicide down to a science. When had that happened? Sienna thought. Probably sometime when they were too busy pressing themselves against each other. Sienna was mortified. Logan however looked mildly amused. He zipped up his trousers and quietly thanked her.

"Oh and Logan, you left your souvenir behind." She added now giving Sienna the full extent of the medusa glare. Logan and Sienna both frowned momentarily before realizing what she meant. He snatched the condom and put it back in his pocket and quickly left the house leaving Sienna to battle with the Gorgon. — Ali Harper

Most people who are on the road are pretty damaged. It's an escapist's life. It's not a life that forces you to look in the mirror at where you're at and what you're doing. It's one where you leave the mirror behind. I think that appeals to something in all of us. On the open road, all of your regrets are out the window. — Gavin Rossdale

You always leave something behind when you start something new. — Paul Acampora

You think the worst is behind you, but it's never behind you. In fact, saying something is the worst does not leave room for all the bad stuff that can follow it. You say the pain is nine, but you mean ten. You leave room. — Jennifer Gilmore

I wanted to leave the whole war behind me, and yet I was seeing something on that battlefield that demanded commemoration. It was unholy ground, but I wanted to thank God for showing it to me. I would never again look at a man without wondering what crimes he was capable of committing. That seemed important to know. — Robert Hicks

Nothing is ever the same. Nothing is permanent. Nothing can be trusted to be there. Nothing is safe, including home. Why lie to yourself? Every day we leave something, someone, some observation behind. — Diane Keaton

I'm not sure I would put it that way. When we get over something, we move on, we put it behind us. Do we leave the dead behind or do we take them with us? I think we take them with us. They accompany us. They remain with us, if in another form. We have to learn to live with them and their deaths ...
I think of them every day, I wonder what they would say at a given moment. I ask them for advice, even today, at my age, when it will soon be time to be thinking of my own death ... — Jan-Philipp Sendker

You Tavi," he answered her, putting her mind to rest. "You're his legacy, everything he was, he taught you, passed himself on through you in a father daughter bond. He was very proud of the young woman you've become, and he loved you greatly, he will always live on in your heart. And one day you'll pass on some of what he taught you to others, then he'll continue to live on through them too, that way he'll never be forgotten or truly gone. Every day something you do will remind you of him and you'll remember him with love and affection, that's a great legacy to leave behind Tavi. — Sallyann Phillips

Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years. — Paddy Ashdown

life is made up of many comings and goings and for everything that we take with us,we must leave something behind — Herman Raucher

You don't understand," Bakira called after the councilwoman. "There are no options for me. None. You have taken all of them. I know what we are here. You say Nasheen is ruled by God and Queen, but it is not. It is ruled by rich, blind, First Family women like you who wish to divide and conquer us. I see what you made us, and I reject it. We are not just the bloody afterbirth, the mess you leave behind as you claw your way to prominence. We are hum beings, as good as you. Better. I know we can build something better. — Kameron Hurley

You turn to shit, alright. But maybe you can leave something good behind you.' She barked empty laughter at him. 'What do we leave behind but things not done, not said, not finished? Empty clothes, empty rooms, empty spaces in the ones who knew us? Mistakes never made right and hopes rotted down to nothing? — Joe Abercrombie

Something was wrong. She'd failed, Phoebe thought, but at what? Imagining herself in Europe, she'd always pictured someone else, physically even, a tall blonde with an answer for everything - as if, in the course of this journey, she would not only shed her former life but cease to exist as herself. Yes, she thought, to leave Phoebe O'Connor behind and be reborn as someone beautiful, mysterious. But the opposite had happened; her own narrow boundaries had hemmed her in, keeping everything real at a distance. — Jennifer Egan

Behind Tana there was the sounds of splintering wood, as though something very large had hot the door. "No," she said softly, "Oh no. No."
"Leave me," said Gavriel.
... "Shut up or I might," she told him. — Holly Black

It's just really tragic after all the horrors of the last 1,000 years we can't leave behind something as primitive as government-sponsored execution. — Russ Feingold

She felt some strange yearning, but she couldn't decide what it was for. Not for the city: it seemed like another country to her now, remembered, not felt. She knew if she were there, walking past the market with its glistening stacks of fruit that sometimes rolled onto the pavement, stepping into the pharmacy for overpriced shampoo and body cream, passing the windows full of nice clothes like the clothes she already has (once she got a linen blouse home only to discover that she owned one almost exactly like it), she would be convinced that she could no longer stand to be be away, that she missed it all terribly. But from here that life seemed unreal, like something she saw in a movie. She wondered if that's how her grandparents had managed to leave the old country behind, whether it had ceased to exist as a discernible thing once it was gone along the watery horizon, whether they had told themselves that some day they would come back to reclaim it. — Anna Quindlen

Travel isn't always pretty. It isn't always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that's okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind. — Anthony Bourdain

It's strange, talking about love. I used to hate the word.
Hate is too strong. I was sick of reading about it in books, hearing it in songs, watching it in films. It seemed such a huge burden to place on another person - to love them; to give them something so unbelievably fragile and expect them not to break it or lose it or leave it behind on the No.96 bus. — Michael Robotham

I want to leave something behind when I go; some small legacy of truth, some word that will shine in a dark place. — Nellie L. McClung

In the first few pages, Kundera discusses several abstract historical figures: Robespierre, Nietzsche, Hitler. For Eunice's sake, I wanted him to get to the plot, to introduce actual "living" characters - I recalled this was a love story - and to leave the world of ideas behind. Here we were, two people lying in bed, Eunice's worried head propped on my collarbone, and I wanted us to feel something in common. I wanted this complex language, this surge of intellect, to be processed into love. Isn't that how they used to do it a century ago, people reading poetry to one another? — Gary Shteyngart

He saw the reflection of her face in a compact mirror as she painted on her re lips. She did it with such care, he had felt she was trapping something behind the colour.
She had touched life, played with it a little, bit it was a slippery bugger,and finally we must close the door, and leave it behind. — Rachel Joyce

We came from a mystery and it's to a mystery we go Maybe there's something there, but I'm betting it's not God as any church understands Him. Look at the babble of conflicting beliefs and you'll know that. They cancel each other out and leave nothing. If you want truth, a power greater than yourselves, look to the lightning - a billion volts in each strike, and a hundred thousand amperes of current, and temperatures of fifty thousand degrees Fahrenheit. There's a higher power in that, I grant you. But here in this building? No. Believe what you want, but I tell you this: behind Saint Paul's darkened glass, there is nothing but a lie. — Stephen King

A spacecraft is a metaphor of national inspiration: majestic, technologically advanced, produced at dear cost and entrusted with precious cargo, rising above the constraints of the earth. The spacecraft carries our secret hope that there is something better out there-a world where we may someday go and leave the sorrows of the past behind. The spacecraft rises toward the heavens exactly as, in our finest moments as a nation, our hearts have risen toward justice and principle. — Gregg Easterbrook

It must be great to spend time in a spot and if you walk away, it's so much better than before because of something you did. — Dan Groat

Since you made it clear you didn't want to hear anything about [your son], I was obliged to act behind your back.'
'I understand. You had no choice.'
'And I should not distress you now, if I were not obliged to do something that you might never forgive.'
He swallowed nausea and pride in one gulp. 'Jess, the only unforgivable thing you can do is leave me,' he said. 'Se mi lasci mi uccido. If you leave me, I'll kill myself.'
'Don't be ridiculous,' she said. 'I should never leave you. Really, Dain, I cannot think where you get such addled ideas.'
Then, as though this explained and settled everything, she promptly returned to the main subject, and told him what had happened that day — Loretta Chase

You ready to leave now? I don't find the idea of fucking you against that wall behind you even slightly unpleasant. Exhibitionism has never been a problem for me. Is that something you'd like to try? — R.K. Lilley

It's part of growing up, I suppose ... you always have to leave something behind you. — Neil Gaiman

However politically desirable a republic might be, it remains unable to compete imaginatively with monarchy because monarchy in principle more completely mirrors the nature of divine authority. One of the great imaginative advantages of the genre of fairy-tale or romance is to allow for the presentation of such a principle. In fairy-tale the author can leave behind the shallows of the 'realistic' novel, and is free to show the reader something better than mundane norms. What might it be like if human kings really did exhibit perfect kingship? The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe attempts an answer. — Michael Ward

Some amazing records have this power to leave you with inspiration; you're left with the urge to write something. And some records are totally overwhelming, because they are so good, they burn the bridges behind them. — Thomas Mars

Don't leave your life a blank page. Make each word count and leave behind something worth reading. — Mae East

We'd been drinking for something like fourteen hours straight when the moment had come, the bell, so to speak, was tolling, and it was time for me to leave Oslo behind. — Loren Niva

This is why she wanted to make pictures, to have something to leave behind even after she was gone, something that showed what she had observed in a way that no one else had and no one else would after her. — Edwidge Danticat

We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there. — Pascal Mercier

All migrants leave their pasts behind, although some try to pack it into bundles and boxes-but on the journey something seeps out of the treasured mementoes and old photographs, until even their owners fail to recognize them, because it is the fate of migrants to be stripped of history, to stand naked amidst the scorn of strangers upon whom they see rich clothing, the brocades of continuity and the eyebrows of belonging.. — Salman Rushdie

I turn to Jasper. "What do you think? Do we hurry up so we can leave with them?"

"The oxen go faster, more consistently, when they see other wagons in front of them. And I know we've had our disagreements with those men, but all in all, I want to believe they're decent specimens of humanity. If something were to happen to one of our wagons, they'd no sooner leave us behind to die than we would them."

I hope he's right.
I turn to Jasper. "What do you think? Do we hurry up so we can leave with them?"

"The oxen go faster, more consistently, when they see other wagons in front of them. And I know we've had our disagreements with those men, but all in all, I want to believe they're decent specimens of humanity. If something were to happen to one of our wagons, they'd no sooner leave us behind to die than we would them."

I hope he's right. — Rae Carson

Just as we can't fully explain what is beautiful, so we can't fully explain why we are friends with someone in a way that will make the grounds of our attraction obvious to another - and even to ourselves. Our efforts always leave something out. And it is what is always left out that we try to gesture toward when we say that it is not something ABOUT our friends that we love but our friends THEMSELVES. But the self that we love is always just one one step behind whatever we can actually articulate. And so we are faced with a choice between saying something that seems informative but is never enough of an explanation ('loyal, practical, unworldly and so on') and saying something else that seems like an explanation but is completely uninformative ('the individual, in the uniqueness and integrity of his or her individuality'). — Alexander Nehamas

If you simply kept your eyes open, it seemed, you just might find something valuable in the most unlikely of places. The trick was to recognize a good thing when you saw it, no matter how odd or worthless it might at first appear, no matter who else might just walk away and leave it behind. — Daniel James Brown

I'll never let it happen. I'll do everything in my power to keep my sister at home.
"I don't want to have a civilized discussion. My parents want to send my sister to a facility behind my back and my head feels like it's about to split open. Leave me alone, okay?"
Something is sticking out of my pocket. It's Alex's bandanna. Isabel isn't a friend, yet she helped me. And Alex, a boy who cared about me last night more than my own boyfriend did, acted as my hero and is urging me to be real. Do I even know how to be real?
I clutch the bandanna to my chest.
And I allow myself to cry. — Simone Elkeles

There is an opportunity for us to renew ourselves. There's an opportunity for us to leave the past behind and present something different for the future. — Jay Weatherill

Remember that when God calls us to leave behind something, it means He has something better in store for us. Allow Him to replace the old with the new today! — Paige Omartian

Daily life took as much as she had. The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. And if it didn't stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out. — Toni Morrison

I will have that, Colin thought. I will have it. I will. With Katherine. But I won't be only that, he resolved. I will leave behind something more that one photo album where I always look old. — John Green

Your life isn't something you can leave behind or run away from, because you are it. People, on the other hand, are another matter altogether. — Santa Montefiore

It is to be hoped the time will come, thank God, in some circles it already has, when language is best used where it is most efficiently abused. Since we cannot dismiss it all at once, at least we do not want to leave anything undone that may contribute to its disrepute. To drill one hole after another into it until that which lurks behind, be it something or nothing, starts seeping through - I cannot imagine a higher goal for today's writer. — Samuel Beckett

The lightning there is peculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn't leave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether-Well, you'd think it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there. — Mark Twain

When we get over something, we move on, we put it behind us. Do we leave the dead behind or do we take them with us? I think we take them with us. They accompany us. They remain with us, if in another form. We have to learn to live with them and their deaths. — Jan-Philipp Sendker

The first thing in all progress is to leave something behind. — George MacDonald

So, it was that bad? That you couldn't just leave Layton behind but had to flee the entire continent?"

"Mm," Felix said noncommittally. His voice went raw. "I am sorry I left like that."

"It's okay. You don't belong here. You were a wild toad caught in a mason jar."

"With a stick and a leaf."

"Hold on . . . am I the stick in this metaphor? Because I have lost some weight . . ."

"I didn't know what I was doing. There was something uncomfortable about it."

"I can't imagine what."

"Certainly not The Little Mermaidcomforter. That felt oh-so-right. — Shannon Hale

Bree stared down at Bernardo's still form. The monitor was the only sound in the room apart from his deep breathing. Alessandro had gone down to the cafeteria with Will and Gianni to grab something to eat before they left for home. Bree lied and told him that she wanted to check in with Tina and her mother Roxanna for a few minutes before they left. Even unconscious, the son of a bitch was formidable and Bree felt nervous around him. "Why don't you do everyone a favour and just die already?" Bree said. No response. Bree sneered and shook her head, turning to leave. "You could always smother me with a pillow," a groggy voice said behind her, making her heart nearly stop. Bree whirled around wide-eyed and met Bernardo's dark gaze. She forced herself to shrug and crossed her arms. "Do you think Alessandro would forgive you for murdering his father?" Bernardo asked. They both knew the answer to that. — E. Jamie

What did the others give to each other?
Nothingness.
Granger stood looking back with Montag. Everyone must leave something behind
when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a
wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand
touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when
people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The
difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the
touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the
gardener will be there a lifetime. — Ray Bradbury

I was looking for some way to put my music to some service on a nightly basis. You go into a town, you play a little music, you leave something behind. That idea connected us to the local community. It was a very simple idea, but it really resonated with me. — Bruce Springsteen

Music's been around a long time, and there's going to be music long after Ray Charles is dead. I just want to make my mark, leave something musically good behind. If it's a big record, that's the frosting on the cake, but music's the main meal. — Ray Charles

I have indeed lived and worked to my taste either in art or science. What more could a man desire? Knowledge has always been my goal. There is much that I shall leave behind undone ... but something at least I was privileged to leave for the world to use, if it so intends ... As the Latin poet said I will leave the table of the living like a guest who has eaten his fill. Yes, if I had another life to spend, I certainly would not waste it. But that cannot be, so why complain? — Leon Camille Marius Croizat

The whole journey of life has been broken down into bits: days! Day by day we live life! Day by day we live and leave something behind; something good or something bad! Something mediocre or something noble! Until you know how to use your day, you may end your days and ponder over your days; how you used them and how you wasted them! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

A path. A career. Maybe even ... a purpose," Ariadne said. "Something you can do that you can believe in, that will challenge you, that won't leave you hating your life and questioning why you're even doing what you're doing." She laughed, a low, quiet laugh that had no real mirth behind it. "Unless you'd like to get to age forty and wake up to wonder where your life went. — Robert J. Crane

To Eden with me you will not leave
To live in a cottage of crazy, crooked eaves.
In your own happy home you take care these nights;
When you let your little cat in, please turn on the lights!
Something scurries behind and finds a cozy place to stare,
Something sent to you from paradise, with serpents to spare:
Tongues flowering; they leap out laughing, lapping. Dissapear — Thomas Ligotti

If we leave our smells behind us when we leave a room, surely something of our souls must remain when we leave this life? - Qyburn — George R R Martin

It's my practice to welcome new people to the church by making sure they know that House for All Sinners and Saints will, at some point, let them down. That I will say or do something stupid and disappoint them. And then I encourage them to decide before that happens if they will stick around after it happens. If they leave, I tell them, they will miss the way that God's grace comes in and fills in the cracks left behind by our brokenness. And that's too beautiful to miss. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

She was ready to be a fugitive with him for the rest of her life - 'Whither thou goest, I will go; thy people shall be my people' - and when a Parisienne is ready to leave Paris behind forever, that's something. ("I'm Dangerous Tonight") — Cornell Woolrich

El Bulli was created by 2,000 people that passed through it. And we didn't know that something big was happening. It was like a game in a way. You didn't really know how it was going to end up, and people who would leave, they would take a piece of it with them, but they would leave another piece behind. — Ferran Adria

It's called "being an artist" for a reason; it's something YOU ARE. It's how you live. It's WHO you are. How you spend your life and what you leave behind. — Charlotte Eriksson

He saw the towel in her hands. "I've got this."
"Let me help."
"I think you've helped enough." She thought he was going to leave it at that, but Will told her, "It's been worse today than usual."
"Stress is a contributing factor-when you get tired or if something emotional happens."
He scrubbed hard at the plate in his hands. Sara saw that he hadn't bothered to roll up his sleeves. The cuffs of his sweater were soaked. He said, "I've been trying to dig a new sewer line to my house. That's why my laundry is behind."
Sara had been expecting a non sequitur, but she'd hoped he could hold off for a few moments longer. "My father built this house with money from people who try to do their own plumbing. — Karin Slaughter

To go forward you have to leave something behind — Steve Jobs

We're only passers-by, and all you can do is love what you have in your life. A person has to fight the meanness that sometimes comes with you when you're born, sometimes grows if you aren't in lucky surroundings. It's our challenge to fend it off, leave it behind us choking and gasping for breath in the mud. It's our task to seek out something with truth for us, no matter if there is a hundred-mile obstacle course in the way, or a ramshackle old farmhouse that binds and binds. — Jane Hamilton

She spent the foggy day in endless, aimless walking, for it seemed to her that if she moved quickly enough she would escape the fear that hunted her. It was a vague and shadowy fear of something cruel and stupid that had caught her and would never let her go. She had always known that it was there - hidden under the more of less pleasant surface of things. Always. Ever since she was a child.
You could argue about hunger or cold or loneliness, but with that fear you couldn't argue. It went too deep. You were too mysteriously sure of its terror. You could only walk very fast and try to leave it behind you. — Jean Rhys

It is in the nature of any effort to leave something serviceable behind it. — Mary Butts

Something started thumping rhythmically against the door. Julianne hiccoughed and stared in horror, fearing whoever was in there would fling it open.
A man grunted again and again.
Georgette frowned. "Is he ill?"
The door thumped harder. A woman started making repetitive high-pitched noises, sounding like a squealing pig.
Julianne frowned. "What are they - hic - doing?"
"We must leave," Anne whispered.
The thumping turned into banging, and the man's grunting grew louder. "Feel my mighty sword."
"He has a sword?" Georgette asked.
The woman behind the door screamed.
Georgette gasped. "He killed her."
"I'm coming," the man said.
"Not inside me," the woman said in a curt voice. "I don't want a brat."
Julianne dropped the candle and clapped her hand over her mouth. She'd thought a bed was required. As she stared at the door, she tried to figure out how the amorous couple had managed, but she failed. — Vicky Dreiling

Whenever you leave cleared land, when you step from some place carved out, plowed, or traced by a human and pass into the woods, you must leave something of yourself behind. It is that sudden loss, I think, even more than the difficulty of walking through undergrowth, that keeps people firmly fixed to paths. In the woods, there is no right way to go, of course, no trail to follow but the law of growth. You must leave behind the notion that things are right. Just look around you. Here is the way things are. Twisted, fallen, split at the root. What grows best does so at the expense of what's beneath. A white birch feeds on the pulp of an old hemlock and supports the grapevine that will slowly throttle it. In the dead wood of another tree grow fungi black as devil's hooves. Overhead the canopy, tall pines that whistle and shudder and choke off light from their own lower branches. (from "Revival Road") — Louise Erdrich

So did Caspian leave this behind when he went off to college or something?'
'No.'
Don't say it. Please don't say it.
'He died a little more than two years ago in a car accident. Right after Halloween — Jessica Verday

I did leave something behind with you: my heart. Of course, you didn't know it at the time. Maybe I didn't either. What have you done with my heart, Leo? Have you taken good care of it? Have you misplaced it? — Jerry Spinelli

I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you. — Marilynne Robinson