Leaving And Not Coming Back Quotes & Sayings

There's no question that all the generations got excited about the first flights, with Kennedy's inspiration to go to the moon, leaving the planet for the first time, and fortunately coming back. — Alan Shepard

There is a way of leaving and yet of not leaving; of hinting that one loves and is willing to return, yet never coming back and so preserving a relationship in a lingering decay. — Cyril Connolly

I gave his a squeeze and relaxed beside him, wondering if this was how it felt.
If this was how it felt to get what you wanted for a lifetime.
Have it stretched out beside you.
The promise of it there all night so you'd wake up to it in the morning.
The promise of it going to work the next day with you knowing it was coming back.
A promise that would stay a promise-beautiful, forever there, beckoning, even as minute by minute it was being fulfilled, leaving you taking your last breath on earth knowing you lived a life filled with beauty.
If it was, it was weirdly serene.
You'd think something that magnificent would be about fireworks.
But if this was it, it wasn't.
It was quiet, tranquil, comfortable.
Beauty. — Kristen Ashley

To reach the summit, one must proceed from encampment to encampment. But before setting out for the next refuge, one must prepare those coming after to occupy the place one is leaving. Only after having prepared them can one go on up. That is why, before setting out for a new refuge, we had to go back down in order to pass on our knowledge to other seekers ... — Rene Daumal

The only thing harder than leaving show business is coming back. — Dave Chappelle

I can forgive you for leaving, but not for coming back. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Rob came to me and I stood, his body fitting against mine so easy, my shoulder tucked under his, his hip against the curve of my waist. I looked up at him, and he ducked his head to give me a soft, gentle, easy kiss.
It were a husband's kiss, I rather thought. It weren't the first kiss, a thing of hunger and new tastes. It weren't all our sad kisses of leaving and coming back, full of desperation and scared. It were just a kiss. A kiss that felt like he'd done it before, a kiss that knew he could do it again.
Then again, it also sent lightning crackling down my back, and I remembered there were ways we weren't husband and wife just yet. I felt a blush running up my face and he stroked my cheek, kissing me again. — A.C. Gaughen

He pushed me back up against the door, slamming me against the doorbell. I heard it ring out.
"Coming!" I heard Holly say as she clicked across the floor to the front door.
"Not quite, but she's close." He chuckled, removing his hand and leaving me breathless and rosy cheeked. — Alice Clayton

He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my head, and though he said he'd come back one day I know a broken promise from a right one for I have used them myself and there is no coming back. Minds like ours are can't be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay. — Charlotte Eriksson

This landscape is animate: it moves, transposes, builds, proceeds, shifts, always going on, never coming back, and one can only retain it in vignettes, impressions caught in a flash, flipped through in succession, leaving a richness of images imprinted on a sunburned retina. — Ann Zwinger

Even though I always came back, he said he was always watching me leave. — Kimberly Novosel

You were right, Hale. It was a bad job. It was a bad call. You were right to leave." "Kat ... " Hale tried to reach for her, but even in the sand, Kat was quick and sure on her feet, and she moved nimbly away, leaving Hale with nothing but a fistful of salty air. "Thanks for coming back and helping me find her and all, but ... " She looked at Gabrielle, who stood leaning against Simon, still bruised and almost broken. " I think I've got to take it from here." ... She was sure right up until the point when Hale said, "No. — Ally Carter

I don't know if I can tell you, honey. When you live in New York, you often have the feeling that New York's not the world. I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Maycomb it's like leaving the world. It's silly. I can't explain it, and what makes it sillier is that I'd go stark raving living in Maycomb. — Harper Lee

It was a sunrise, a kid's sight of snowfall on a school morning. Hope. That all this can turn out okay, that somehow a tide this big and black can be turned back. Hope like a wildfire, thoughts of presents under a Christmas tree and a smell of cookies coming from a kitchen and a certain look in a girl's eyes that lights you up inside. That beautiful border between nightmare and morning when you realize that all of the monsters menacing you have evaporated like smoke, leaving behind only the warm blanket and the pale sunlight of a Saturday dawn. — David Wong

Till they arrived no other lives had been lived here. It made the air that much thinner, harder to breathe. She had not understood, till she came to a place where it was lacking, the extent to which her sense of the world had to do with the presence of those who had been there before, leaving signs of their passing and spaces still warm with their breath - a threshold worn with the coming and going of feet, hedges between fields that went back a thousand years, and the names even further; most of all, the names on headstones, which were their names, under which lay the bones that had made their bones and given them breath. — David Malouf

Your leaving will not be solved by your coming back. But one does not preclude the other. And maybe that is always what there is to fear, in everything that happens-what we choosee to love to will choose to forsake us. — Helen Humphreys

I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Macomb it's like leaving the world. — Harper Lee

To our eyes, our crude eyes, nothing is changing, but if we could see it a billion times magnified, we would see that from its own point of view it is always changing: molecules are leaving the surface, molecules are coming back. — Richard Feynman

You better be able to turn yourself off if you think you're coming back into my house," she said. The bird gave her another dubious look before stamping one foot and the flames disappeared leaving long gold and red feathers.
"Oh," Anya said embarrassed. "I suppose you can. — Amy Kuivalainen

It's just that every time I've come home for the past five years - before that, even. From college - something's changed a little more . . ." " - and you're not sure you like it, eh?" Henry was grinning in the moonlight and she could see him. She sat up. "I don't know if I can tell you, honey. When you live in New York, you often have the feeling that New York's not the world. I mean this: every time I come home, I feel like I'm coming back to the world, and when I leave Maycomb it's like leaving the world. It's silly. I can't explain it, and what makes it sillier is that I'd go stark raving living in Maycomb." Henry said, "You wouldn't, you know. I don't mean to press you for an answer - don't move - but you've got to make up your mind to one thing, Jean Louise. You're gonna see change, you're gonna see Maycomb change its face completely in our lifetime. Your trouble, now, you want to have your cake and eat it: you want to stop the clock, but you can't. Sooner or later you'll — Harper Lee

Someone was always leaving
and never coming back.
The wooden houses wait like old wives
along this road; they are everywhere,
abandoned, leaning, turning gray. — Lisel Mueller

Think about taking a trip on an airplane. Before taking off, the pilot has a very clear destination in mind, which hopefully coincides with yours, and a flight plan to get there. The plane takes off at the appointed hour toward that predetermined destination. But in fact, the plane is off course at least 90 percent of the time. Weather conditions, turbulence, and other factors cause it to get off track. However, feedback is given to the pilot constantly, who then makes course corrections and keeps coming back to the exact flight plan, bringing the plane back on course. And often, the plane arrives at the destination on time. It's amazing. Think of it. Leaving on time, arriving on time, but off course 90 percent of the time. If you can create this image of an airplane, a destination, and a flight plan in your mind, then — Stephen R. Covey

you were not wrong for leaving
you were wrong for coming back
and thinking
you could have me
when it was convenient
and leave when it was not — Rupi Kaur

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. — Terry Pratchett

Leaving helps, sometimes. And it's not always a for ever goodbye. There's leaving and coming back. — Maggie Stiefvater

On the plane leaving Tokyo I'm sitting alone in back twisting the knobs on Etch-A-Sketch and Roger is next to me singing "Over the Rainbow" straight into my ear, things changing, falling apart, fading, another year, a few more moves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom so monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by people you don't even know that it requires you to lose any sense of reality you might have once acquired, expectations so unreasonable you become superstitious about ever matching them. Roger offers me a joint and I take a drag and stare out the window and I relax for a moment when the lights of Tokyo, which I never realized is an island, vanish from view but this feeling only lasts a moment because Roger is telling me that other lights in other cities, in other countries, on other planets, are coming into view soon. — Bret Easton Ellis

Why do we see no change? Because just as many molecules are leaving as are coming back! In the long run "nothing happens." If we then take the top of the vessel off and blow the moist air away, replacing it with dry air, then the number of molecules leaving is just the same as it was before, because this depends on the jiggling of the water, but the number coming back is greatly reduced because there are so many fewer water molecules above the water. Therefore — Richard Feynman

The pleasure of leaving home, care-free, with no concern but to enjoy, has also as a pendant the pleasure of coming back to the old hearthstone, the home to which, however traveled, the heart still fondly turns, ignoring the burden of its anxieties and cares. — Herman Melville

Hands full of sand,
I say: take this,
this is what I have saved;
I earned this with my genius,
and because I love you...

Take this, hurry.
I am dropping everything
and then I listened:
I was not saying anything;
out of all that had gone into
the composition of the language
and what I knew of it
I had chiselled these words
- take this, hurry-
and you could not hear me.
I had said nothing.
And then I am leaving,

making ready to go to another street,
when you, mingled between sleep
and delirium, turned

and handed me an empty sack:
Take this, my friend;
I am not coming back.
The ghost of a flower poised on your lip — James Tate

At the same time, we may not as a culture be fond of old-fashioned supernaturalism, but we certainly like spirituality in whatever form we can get it. I suspect that if anyone other than Jesus (Krishna, say, or Buddha) were suddenly put forward as being due for a second coming, millions in our postsecular society would embrace such a thing uncritically, leaving Enlightenment rationalism huffing and puffing in the rear. We are a puzzled and confused generation, embracing any and every kind of nonrationalism that may offer us a spiritual shot in the arm while lapsing back into rationalism (in particular, the old modernist critiques) whenever we want to keep traditional or orthodox Christianity at bay. — N. T. Wright

My mother has stories of leaving me in the bath as small kid, like a 3-year-old, and there being mirrors on the side, and her going to get a towel and coming back in, and me making faces at myself, like, 'Now I'm happy. Now I'm sad.' — Allison Tolman

You don't have to go back to the way things were. Just go back to the point where you left off. Don't start over ... just keep going, but there's a right way of keeping going. And no one here is going to be angry at you for leaving. We all have to leave sometimes. And some of us never come back. But there's always a choice, even if you've already decided never to return. You can still come back from this. That is the only kind of faith that matters. Not in the world, not in ... God ... , not in our friendship ... just in yourself. — Dave Matthes

Bradford paused and his expression shadowed. He pulled her back and held her tight. Whispered, "Don't say it, okay? I know what's coming and I don't want to hear it. Not tonight. Tomorrow maybe, but not tonight."
He wasn't talking about Kate Breeden. They both knew that Munroe could only bear so much pain and loss before coming completely undone. She needed time away, time to heal, and she could only do that by returning to who she was: the lone operative, shut down and shut off.
Munroe set the glass on an end table, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. She truly loved him; always would. She smiled and fought back the sadness, glad in a way that she was spared from having to say good-bye, from uttering the words she never wanted to speak - although, in truth, there would never really be a good-bye, because if this was where home was, then like a homing pigeon she'd return, and Bradford had to know it, just as he also knew her reasons for leaving. — Taylor Stevens

Listen, he said vehemently. Somebody's going to have to say what they really mean and then do what they say they will. All this lying. All this bullshit and pretending. It's just wasting lives, wasting time, everything's just a waste.
She was looking at him curiously. That's just the way people are. The way the world is. What are you trying to do, fix the world?
I don't want to fix the world. Fuck the world. Just the little part of it that I have to live on. You and that old man. Folks starting babies andd walking off like that's got nothing to do with them. People walking off while you're asleep and never coming back. Leaving a note. A Goddamned note. Old people living a half mile apart and wanting to see each other and dying without doing it. Now that's crazy for you. That's what's crazy. — William Gay

It's well known that he who returns never left — Pablo Neruda

I've had sex before with the belt on. That was back in the Ricco Rodriguez days. The night I won the belt I had a sexual experience with the belt on. But hey, I was 25 years old and it was the biggest thing that ever had happened to me in my life. The girl was like hey, are you going to take that thing off. And I said no, I'm not ... I'm wearing it and if you have a problem with it, then I'm leaving. And I hate to say it, but if I do win the belt again, then this time it's never coming off. I'm going to wear it a lot more. — Tim Sylvia

She felt a little better about Leonard out here in the country. It was just being close to nature, she supposed. In the country you felt as you never could in town the return of spring after winter. You felt a sort of pulse in the earth which proved that nothing dies, that everything comes back in beauty. Leonard was coming back ... in some place beautiful enough to pay him for leaving the world. God knew all about his music, too. He would use that music someplace. — Maud Hart Lovelace

Greek has a formula for every event - weddings, christenings, buying a new dress, having a haircut, talking about children, going away, coming back, leaving a house, leaving a home. Kalo risiko is for a new house. Kalo means good. Risiko means fate, but sounds ominously like danger. — John Mole

Leeda knew friends never turned out to be what you expected. They came and went in waves, pulling away and coming back, leaving you feeling safe one minute and lost the next. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

The Time Line is great for getting things into perspective when you feel a bit lost and lacking direction or if you have a big change coming up such as moving to secondary school, your parents splitting up or having a new family arrangement. When you experience grief or loss, whether that is for a person or a part of your life such as leaving your Primary School, you can travel back along the time line, identify which skills you need from your old life, anchor them and bring them into the present as you move forward to Secondary School. Once you've done the Time Line a few times it will be in your head and you can conjure up the image and the steps without moving. This can be useful in situations when you can't actually move physically, in class for instance. — Judy Bartkowiak

I hope they don't think we're leaving. I want to tell them we're coming back. And that we're not going to hell. I mean, who are they to say? It's one thing to warn someone out of concern. It's another to take it upon yourself to make the damnation. The last time I checked, it was the Lord's call whether or not we go to hell. I hope whenever a person tells another person he or she is going to hell that the Lord notices and decides to hold it against the hell-caller when his or her day of judgement comes. I hope heor she gets up to the gates and the Lord says, 'It was so easy for you to send people to hell in My name that I'm afraid it's going to be easy for Me to do the same. — David Levithan

It has been said that the only reason for leaving England is to give yourself the pleasure of coming back to it. — Patience Strong

We live in an interconnected world, and you cannot prevent people from leaving. What you need to do is to create opportunities. At the same time, people are also coming back. — Ashraf Ghani

Now, alone on the roof, Valentine looked at her shoes and wished people would either stay or go away, but not constantly coming back and leaving again. — Maile Meloy

Goddamn you. How can you still make me feel this way after all these years? Damn you for leaving me! And damn you for coming back like this, just when I thought you were gone forever and I might finally be able to forget you. — Lara Adrian

It sustained me ... I can't tell you how much their support meant to me when I was leaving and coming back and even while I was gone, there was a part of me that knew people were pulling for me. — Alice Barrett

The more we become sensitive to our own journey the more we realize that we are leaving and coming back every day, every hour. Our minds wander away but eventually return; our hearts leave in search of affection and return sometimes broken; our bodies get carried away in their desires then sooner or later return. It's never one dramatic life moment but a constant series of departures and returns. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

We've all changed," he said. "By coming here. By going through the trials that we're all going through, we've all been changed. When we go back, none of us will be the people we were before. The tragedy and the loss and the sense of wonder changes what it means to be human. Do you know what I mean?" Oddly, Anna thought she did. Being a minister meant being in the middle of people's lives. Anna had counseled dating congregation members, presided over their weddings, baptized their babies, and in one heartbreaking case presided over the infant's funeral a year later. Members of the congregation included her in most of the important events of their lives. She was used to it, and mostly enjoyed the deep connection to people it brought. Charting the course of a life was making a map of the ways each event changed the person, leaving someone different on the other side. Passing through the Ring and the tragedies it had brought wouldn't leave any of them the same. — James S.A. Corey