Leaving And Returning Quotes & Sayings

I worked as hard to write the worst film of the year as I did to write the best film of the year. — Brian Helgeland

For me, leaving the Marine Corps was more disorienting than returning home. — Phil Klay

When I was trying to come up with a stage name, I thought 'Lord' was super rad, but really masculine - ever since I was a little kid, I have been really into royals and aristocracy. So to make Lord more feminine, I just put an 'e' on the end! Some people think it's religious, but it's not. — Lorde

If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering this house as I am in leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in this country. — James Buchanan

She had not thought it would be so easy to slip into the old roles. Cambridge had changed her fundamentally and she thought she was immune. No one in her family, however, noticed the transformation in her, and she was not able to resist the power of their habitual expectations. — Ian McEwan

You're really not that good a mechanic, Edward. Maybe you should have Rosalie take a look at it tonight, just so you look good if Mike decides to let you help, you know. Not that it wouldn't be fun to watch his face if Rosalie showed up to help. But since Rosalie is supposed to be across the country attending college, I guess that's not the best idea. Too bad. — Stephenie Meyer

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

When Charlie arrived home from his mother's funeral, he was met at the door by two very large very enthusiastic canines, who , undistracted by keeping watch over Sophie's love hostage, were now able to visit the full measure of their affection and joy upon their returning master. It is generally agreed, and in fact stated in the bylaws of the American Kennel Club, that you have not been truly dog-humped until you have been double-dog-humped by a pair of four-hundred-pouund hounds from hell (Section 5, paragraph 7: Standards of Humping and Ass-dragging). And despite having used an extra-strength antiperspirant that very morning before leaving Sedona, Charlie found that getting poked repeatedly in the armpits by two damp devil-dog dicks was leaving him feeling less than fresh.
Sophie, call them off. Call them off."
The puppies are dancing with Daddy," Sophie giggled. "Dance, Daddy! — Christopher Moore

True success and true happiness not only go together but each other enhances the other. — Maxwell Maltz

When Jack was returning to America from his years in Thailand, he sought out an elderly Western monk and asked him if he had any advice about being back in the West. "Only one thing," said the monk. "When you're running to catch the subway and you see it leaving without you, don't panic, just remember, 'There's always another train. — Mark Epstein

Grown-ups aren't supposed to talk about "best friends," but he was among my closest and certainly my most constant friend from then until we were well into our thirties, when he inexplicably disappeared on me. I don't mean he fled the country or changed his identity or got abducted; the last I heard he was still living in Baltimore. He just stopped returning my calls. It took me almost a year of leaving messages on his answering machine to get the hint. It took me much longer to understand that I was never going to know what had happened. — Tim Kreider

I'm pretty horrible at relationships and haven't been in many long-term ones. Leaving and moving on - returning to a familiar sense of self-reliance and autonomy - is what I know; that feeling is as comfortable and comforting as it might be for a different kind of person to stay. — Carrie Brownstein

I can count on one hand the directors who actually directed me. — Eric Stoltz

To be free means always leaving ... or returning to a place where leaves never fall. — Rich Shapero

I am sorry," I whispered. "I am sorry for all of the ways that I failed you. I am sorry that I was not there to save you, or to die alongside you. I am sorry that I have kept you with me for so long, trapped in my heart, bound in sorrow and remorse. I forgive you too. I forgive you for leaving me, and I forgive you for returning. I forgive you your anger, and your grief. Let this be an end to it. — John Connolly

Sometimes I feel like people don't even know how to react in some situations because of online culture. Since many things are online, you might not react to something that is happening live. — Rob Zombie

I had left small-town, rural life for good, and I had no intention of ever returning, not because I didn't like my home but because I had always known that I would leave. Leaving was part of my life romance, part of an idea I had about myself as a person destined for adventure; and as far as I could tell, adventure lay in the urban wilds of Manhattan, not in the farmland of Minnesota. — Siri Hustvedt

Like everyone in the history of the world who has had a crush on his or her best friend, I was too scared to tell her, because if I did I might lose her completely. And the sharp bite of losing her completely would be far worse than the one-sided romantic arrangement we had going. — Josh Sundquist

The view from my window was of a sloping green field, dotted with a few muddy sheep; the same lush, safe, soggy world that nearly fifteen years earlier was all Lulu, Damien, and I had ever known. Until Dad had said, "We're going to Botswana."

I felt profoundly homesick, for the first time in my life.

Knowing I'd be back, I'd never minded leaving before. There was the comforting thought of returning. — Robyn Scott

But beware, dear reader. For we go out into the wide, wild world, looking to change, looking to grow, looking for wisdom. But wisdom is hard to come by, and once achieved, it is very easily lost. Especially when one is leaving the wide, wild world - and returning to the place you once fled. — Adam Gidwitz

Then back to the stage, and the acting. The bright lights, the rehearsed lines. The applause, the falling curtain. Leaving who one was for a brief time, then returning. But the self that one returned to was never exactly the same as the self that one had left behind. — Haruki Murakami

For me, the present agony of departure, the silent terror of leaving a place known to me if hated, the well-nigh impossible task of conquering the fear that possessed me. Not the fear of that hasty look round, the sudden plunge headlong and the giddy shock of hard, cold water, the river itself entering my lungs, rising in my throat, tossing me upon my back with my arms outflung - I could hear the sob strangled in my chest and the blood leave me - but fear of the certain knowledge that there was no returning, no possible means of escape, and no other thing beyond. — Daphne Du Maurier

One did not depend on marines for good table manners. One depended on them to have the right instincts when it came to matters of life and death. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

The dreams of "leaving it up to the market" or of returning to a politically neutral gold standard cannot succeed because the nature of the monetary system has a profound impact on the interests of powerful groups and states. Affected groups and states will always try to intervene in the operation of the system to make it serve their interests. — Robert Gilpin

Leaving your country is like dying, and when you come back you are like a ghost returning to earth, roaming around with missing gaze in your eyes — NoViolet Bulawayo

I have always believed that poems beg to be read aloud, even if the reader is in a world all her own. — J. Patrick Lewis

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

Every winter, When the great sun has turned his face away, The earth goes down into a vale of grief, And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables, Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay- Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses. — Charles Kingsley

Wise men have regarded the earth as a tragedy, a farce, even an illusionist's trick; but all, if they are truly wise, and not merely intellectual rapists, recognize that it is certainly some kind of stage in which we all play roles, most of us being very poorly coached and totally unrehearsed before the curtain rises. Is it too much if I ask, tentatively, that we agree to look upon it as a circus, a touring carnival wandering about the sun for a record season of four billion years and producing new monsters and miracles, hoaxes and bloody mishaps, wonders and blunders, but never quite entertaining the customers well enough to prevent them from leaving, one by one, and returning to their homes for a long and bored winter's sleep under the dust? — Robert Anton Wilson

An emigres artistic problem: the numerically equal blocks of a lifetime are unequal in weight, depending on whether they comprise young or adult years. The adult years may be richer and more important for life and for creative activity both, but the subconscious, memory, language, all the understructure of creativity, are formed very early; for a doctor, that won't make problems, but for a novelist or a composer, leaving the place to which his imagination, his obsessions, and thus his fundamental themes are bound could make for a kind of ripping apart. He must mobilize all his powers, all his artists wiles, to turn the disadvantages of that situation to benefits.
[ ... ] Only returning to the native land after a long absence can reveal the substantial strangeness of the world and of existence. — Milan Kundera

The job has its grandeurs, yes. There is the exultation of arriving safely after a storm, the joy of gliding down out of the darkness of night or tempest toward a sun-drenched Alicante or Santiago; there is the swelling sense of returning to repossess one's place in life, in the miraculous garden of earth, where are trees and women and, down by the harbor, friendly little bars. When he has throttled his engine and is banking into the airport, leaving the somber cloud masses behind, what pilot does not break into song? — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy. — Mary Catherine Bateson

Our advanced art approaches a fragile but marvelous life, one that maintains itself by a mere thread, melting into an elusive, changeable configuration, the surroundings, the artist, his work and everyone who comes to it. — Allan Kaprow

Baltimore always seems like the kind of city you either leaving or just returning to. Ain't no kinda place to hang your hat. Even as a kid I dreamed of getting out. — Esi Edugyan

May one ask at least to what darkness you are returning? ... For what hell are you leaving, mysterious lady ... or for what paradise? — Gaston Leroux

I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance. — Jeanette Winterson

One night they walked while the moon rose and poured a great burden of glory over the garden until it seemed fairyland with Amory and Eleanor, dim phantasmal shapes, expressing eternal beauty and curious elfin love moods. Then they turned out of the moonlight into the trellised darkness of a vine-hung pagoda, where there were scents so plaintive as to be nearly musical. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Men think more about returning home than about leaving. — Paulo Coelho

I thought of the places I would be leaving, of what they were and what they could become. I pictured trees returning to the bare slopes, fish and whales returning to the bay. I thought of what my children and grandchildren might find here, and of how those who worked the land and sea might prosper if this wild vision were to be realized. — George Monbiot

Every traveler knows too well the endless quest for the perfect travel bag: the one that's stylish enough to carry through Paris, sturdy enough to tote around Peru, and - most important - doesn't make your shoulder sag even before you've loaded it up with everything you need for a day of sightseeing. — Hanya Yanagihara

And Olvos said:
"Nothing is ever truly lost
The world is like the tide
Returning, for an instant, to the place it occupied before
Or leaving that same place once more
Celebrate, then, for what you lose shall be returned
Smile, then, for all good deeds you do shall be visited upon you
Weep, then, for all ills you do shall return to you
Or your children, or your children's children
What is reaped is what is sown.
What is sown is what is reaped."
Book of the Red Lotus,
Part IV, 13.51-13.61 — Robert Jackson Bennett

Perceval spends twenty years wandering in the woods, looking for the thing he had found, that was given to him, that seemed so easy, that was not. Later, when things were difficult for me with my work and I felt that I had lost or turned away from something I couldn't even identify, it was the Perceval story that gave me hope. There might be a second chance ... in fact, there were more than two chances-many more. I know, after fifty years that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning never stops. — Jeanette Winterson

Health is a return to our memory of wholeness. — David Simon

When I give the go ahead, go ahead, Alyss said, the jungle gym having come to a stop less than a gwormmy-length from her face.
What? the four General Doppels cried at once.
Run when I say so. — Frank Beddor