Quotes & Sayings About Never Leaving

Maybe I could love you someday."
If you ever do," he said, "come and let me know. You know where to find me."
Her teeth were chattering harder. "I can't lose you, Simon. I can't."
You never will. I'm not leaving you. But I'd rather have what we have, which is real and true and important, than have you pretend anything else. When I'm with you, I want to know I'm with the real you, the real Clary."
She leaned her head against his, closing her eyes. He still felt like Simon, despite everything; still smelled like him, like his laundry soap. "Maybe I don't know who that is."
But I do. — Cassandra Clare

Love you always, miss you always ... running day and night, leaving the place of sun and moon, of ice and snow.
Never look back, never forget. — Jessica Day George

Never before had I imagined leaving home, but that wasn't because of lack of desire, only lack of possibility. — Melanie Benjamin

I think that love can indeed be many things. But the one thing it will never be is practical. Love is irrational by its very nature. It demands passion, fire, and no less than absolute surrender. It is a longing, a burning that consumes you, leaving you without reason, or defense. When love comes, nothing can stand in its way. — Sherry D. Ficklin

He looked at the mud. "If I pull you free, will you promise to bed me for my pains?"

"Here's what I'll promise, Logan MacKenzie. If you don't get me free, I will come back from the grave and haunt you. Relentlessly."

"For a timid English bluestocking, you can be quite fierce when you choose to be. I rather like it."

She hugged herself to keep her hands out of the creeping mud. "Logan, please. I be you, stop teasing and get me out of this. I'm cold. And I'm frightened."

"Look at me."
She looked at him.
His gaze held hers, blue and unwavering.

All teasing went out his voice. "I'm not leaving. Ten years in the British Army, and I've never left a man behind. I'm not leaving you. I'll have you out of this. Understand? — Tessa Dare

The message of love can never come into a human soul, and pass away from it unreceived, without leaving that spirit worse, with all its lowest characteristics strengthened, and all its best ones depressed, by the fact of rejection. — Alexander MacLaren

He shook his head in disbelief. He would cook and take her to his place. He was about to break two of his own rules. Number one was to never create the intimacy of cooking for a woman he was seeing, and the other one, to never take her to his place. They had the nasty habit of leaving personal things behind and making his house an extension of their own. He had no other alternative - she shared her place with her brother - but somehow he was enjoying doing it for Mary.
Perfect Match — Marcia Weber Martins

What?" he demanded.
"Did you just ... clean a dish?" Dee backed away slowly, blinking. She glanced at Daemon. "The world is going to end. And I'm still a vir - "
"No!" both the brothers yelled in unison.
Daemon looked like he was actually going to vomit. "Jesus, don't ever finish that statement. Actually, don't ever change that. Thank you."
Her mouth dropped open."You expect me to never have - "
"This isn't a conversation I want to start my morning with." Dawson grabbed his book bag off the kitchen table. "I'm so leaving for school before this gets more detailed."
"And why aren't you dressed yet?" Dee demanded, her full attention concentrated on Daemon. "You're going to be late."
"I'm always late."
"Punctuality makes perfect. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Consider when, on a voyage, your ship is anchored; if you go on shore to get water you may along the way amuse yourself with picking up a shellish, or an onion. However, your thoughts and continual attention ought to be bent towards the ship, waiting for the captain to call on board; you must then immediately leave all these things, otherwise you will be thrown into the ship, bound neck and feet like a sheep. So it is with life. If, instead of an onion or a shellfish, you are given a wife or child, that is fine. But if the captain calls, you must run to the ship, leaving them, and regarding none of them. But if you are old, never go far from the ship: lest, when you are called, you should be unable to come in time. — Epictetus

That's why, as I was leaving for work, I sent him a text that said something I had never said to a guy before.
I'm sorry x
You have no idea how fast my pulse was racing after I added the kiss. One little kiss and my hands were shaking. — Samantha Young

I've never thought of leaving the South, never. — Ntozake Shange

The moral of the story, Son," Pun would say, "is Don't take more on your heart than you can shake off on your heels."
Of all lessons, that one I never learned and I hope I never do. My heart daily grows new foliage, always adding people, picking up new heartaches like a wool coat collects cockleburs and beggar's-lice seeds. It gets fuller and fuller as I walk slow as a sloth, carrying all the pain Pun and Frank and so many others tried to walk from. Especially the pain of the lost forest. Sometimes there is no leaving, no looking westward for another promised land. We have to nail our shoes to the kitchen floor and unload the burden of our heart. We have to set to the task of repairing the damage done by and to us. — Janisse Ray

I'm not like the rest of you; I never made any plans about what I'd do when I grew up; I never thought of being married, as you did. I couldn't seem to imagine myself anything but stupid little Beth, trotting about at home, of no use anywhere but there. I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is leaving you all. I'm not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven. — Louisa May Alcott

Some books are so beautiful and intriguing that you never want to put them down, forever leaving you in anticipation to read the next page.
Some people are the same way. — Katie Douglas

I had a chance to play for the Cuban national team during the 2009 World Baseball Classic, but at the time I never thought about leaving Cuba. — Yoenis Cespedes

If you kept moving, you never had to mourn what you were leaving behind. — Lisa Alther

I told him about how Cole wanted me to return with him.
I told him almost everything. I didn't talk about what had happened just before I left with Cole and I didn't tell him that the Tunnels of the Everneath were coming for me soon. Jack would freak out if he knew I was leaving again, and I didn't want to waste time trying to convince him it was hopeless.
I didn't tell him I'd thought of him every day. That even when every other memory had faded,he never left. — Brodi Ashton

When I die, never say that I am gone. The sun sets. The moon fades. My body perishes. But my leaving has nothing to do with being gone. I will stay forever with you. — David Paul Kirkpatrick

And as paralyzing and upsetting as all the never agains were, the final leaving felt perfect. Pure. The most distilled possible form of liberation. — John Green

I will not be spoken to in that tone," she said to her mother.
Enid's mouth gaped open. For only a moment, however, until she began to protest.
"You've gotten snippy since your marriage, haven't you? I'll not take that behavior from you, child. Your sister would never have disrespected me in such a fashion."
"Enough!" Ellice held up her hand, her gaze never once leaving her mother.
"When have you ever respected me, Mother? I'm only a poor substitute for Eudora." She took a deep breath. "I'm not Eudora," she said. "I'm not your beloved daughter who died. I'm the one who lived. I'm tired of hearing about what my sister did or would have done. I suspect that Eudora would have silenced you long before now."
She grabbed her skirts and walked around her mother, heading for the kitchen. At the door, she stopped and turned.
"Must I die before you begin to value me as well? — Karen Ranney

I had definitely never heard of anyone peeing in a cup and leaving it in their own office on a bookshelf to evaporate and be absorbed back into their body through the pores on their face. — Tina Fey

At the same time so distant that unutterable thoughts of space and eternity would baffle themselves in his sighing breast, and he would imagine to himself how he was falling upward higher and higher among them, never reaching, never ending, leaving and losing everything in the tranquil speed of space. — T.H. White

After leaving law school, I intentionally said that I never wanted to hold a job more than six years. — Alphonso Jackson

We must be able to let things happen in the psyche. For us, this becomes a real art ... Consciousness is forever interfering, helping, correcting, and negating, never leaving the single growth of the psychic processes in peace. — Carl Jung

On this thanksgiving, I would like to thank that one girl, who never lost hope despite all odds were against her, who always worked, and moved on, despite losing all friends just after leaving school, a time when you need friends the most! Who had immense strength and will-power and so much inspiration inside her that she ended up being happy, satisfied, and successful, all alone.
That one girl who always smiles in the mirror, and says, 'Bitch, you have a long way to go, and you gotta travel all alone, depending upon anyone will make you weak, so buck up, there's a lot you gotta do!' On this thanksgiving, I thank myself, my soul for being so majestically robust!
I would have thanked other people, but sadly, nobody ever helped me, more than I helped myself ... — Mehek Bassi

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

There. That is the answer to this riddle. The promises I can make, and the one I can't. Gwen. I will never leave you willingly. Life is a risk, and so love is, as well. But I swear to God, you will not regret the gamble. — Meredith Duran

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

Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still. — C.S. Lewis

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

Jehanne said that it would always be like this. That I would always be young and beautiful in her memory, and she in mine. That I would never grow resentful, never be tempted to betray her. That she would never grow restless and fickle, and see to replace me. So you see, not exactly the sentiments of a great and terrible love affair. — Jacqueline Carey

Misfortune is never invited. And it comes and sits at the table without permission and it eats, leaving nothing but bones. — Jacques Roumain

Never confuse being righteous vs. being arrogant. An arrogant person will see a person lashing out because they were hurt by them and they will not try to mend the situation or even understand their point of view. They take the superior viewpoint that others are not worthy of their time because they believe they are right and those angry with them are wrong. A righteous person doesn't care who is right or wrong. God asked them to love everyone. They make their life about leaving people in peace, not pain. — Shannon L. Alder

Time is never time at all. You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth. And our lives are forever changed. We will never be the same. The more you change, the less you feel. — Billy Corgan

I suppose the first big shift in my life was when, at the age of 8, my father left my mother, leaving her alone with two daughters to bring up. That taught me the importance of women being financially independent. You never know what might happen. — Cherie Blair

Once or twice a week I would set my alarm for six A.M. so I could get up and plug in Hot Stix ... I would study the curls in the mirror, impressed with both the appliance and my newfound ability to use it.
Then, without fail, at the last second before leaving for school, I would ask myself, "Am I supposed to brush it out or leave it?" Why could I never remember" That feeling of "I'm pretty sure this next step is wrong, but I'm just gonna do it anyway" is part of the same set of instincts that makes me such a great cook. — Tina Fey

I began to mourn the simplicity of my childhood, the warmth of my family that now seemed lost, years had passed by and we had all been weathered by the world. At times all I could see in their eyes was the reflection of loneliness in the longing we had for each other but there was always that glint of bitterness because they never really forgive you for leaving them do they? — Donal O'Callaghan

That's exactly why I never liked King Arthur's Guinevere. She screws up (pardon the pun), sleeps with her husband's best friend, causes the fall of a kingdom, then she doesn't have the guts to make at least one man happy, so she joins a friggin nunnery and esacpes from all of her problems, leaving everyone around her in a slavering mess. How incredibly spineless. — P.C. Cast

Do you get it now asshole? I will go down fighting for you, for me, for us. I'm not giving you an option to push me away. I don't care that you're afraid of corrupting me. I love you Tristan. All of you- the dark, the light, the love, the hate. I see it all and I love it all, because who you are is exactly who I am. We're two halves of the same soul and nothing will tear us apart, not even you. So you can either accept it or not, but I'm never leaving you, not in this lifetime, or the next. — Ashley Jade

The moment that's where I,
Kill the conversation wrap this up a lie that I'm enjoying every minute with myself,
And she could make hell feel just like home,
So I'm never leaving her alone,
But if your lightning lips aren't mine,
Then I don't know the awkward stranger to my right,
( but she's crying ) — Pierce The Veil

She could, at this stage of things, recognize signals like that, as the epileptic is said to - an odor, color, pure piercing grace note announcing his seizure. Afterward it is only this signal, really dross, this secular announcement, and never what is revealed during the attack, that he remembers. Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back. — Thomas Pynchon

I never felt comfortable leaving my kids until they were older. When they were babies, I remember thinking that I could never go on a Jerry Bruckheimer set and feel comfortable. — Leslie Mann

Go home, talk about it together. Bake Christmas cookies and crap. Then tell me what you want to happen. Know that I'm yours. My loyalty, my soul is yours no matter what you decide. Crap, you can shoot me in the back, and I'll never want anything but to be around you hookers."
Blake stood and shook his head. "Nah, I don't need time. I appreciate the place in Hawaii, and it would be great to go to - maybe for a vacation sometime? But I'm here. I'm not leaving you. You're my family. — Debra Anastasia

All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time. — Paul Fussell

A terrible day," Frank echoes.
"Yes," Edie says, her gaze never leaving Ava's face. "But look. You grew up anyway. — Nina LaCour

I'll never leave you. I'll never mistreat you. I think you know that by now. Try with me. Let us find what we
may find."
"What do you expect to find, Robert?"
"How should I know? I've never experienced anything like this before in my life."
Tears shone briefly under her graceful long lashes before she blinked them away and glanced at him
again with a reluctant twist of a smile. Sitting up, she wrapped her arms around her bent knees and
sighed. "You are asking us both to set ourselves up for great hurt when it comes time for me to leave."
"Leave? Don't speak of leaving, angel. You must stay forever."
"As your mistress."
"As my love," he countered insistently. — Gaelen Foley

You see how I live: shadows and silence, leaving things as I find them because I have no reason to disturb them. But there are things that I have known, even though I never wished to know them and cannot give them a name. — Thomas Ligotti

It's sadly predictable that the only way you can come up with a way to celebrate the liberation you feel at leaving the old system behind is by coming up with a "system of liberation", as if such a thing could exist - but that's what we can expect from those who have never known anything other than systems and systematizing, I guess. — Mao Zedong

Him aloof or cold, only shy and on occasion melancholy. Some felt that perhaps in his past lay a tragedy with which he had never been able to make his peace, that the only companion with which he felt comfortable was sorrow. Amalia was somewhat distressed. "Somebody should have cleaned up these dishes and emptied the refrigerator before things in it spoiled. Leaving it like this ... it's just wrong." I shrugged. "Maybe no one cared about him." My sister seemed to care about everyone, even making excuses for our parents at their — Dean Koontz

Form the habit early in life of leaving your business at the store or wherever you may be employed. Never carry it home to mar the peace of your family; if you do, you will soon drive out the sunshine. — Orison Swett Marden

People lie. They use you and they lie, all the while feeding you bullshit about being loyal and never leaving you. No one can make that promise, because life is all about seasons, and seasons change. — Tarryn Fisher

Your guidance surrounds you all day long, every day, all the time, never leaving you, not even for one moment. — Catherine Carrigan

My fingers draw up her back and tangle into her hair. "They'll never separate us."
"Never," she repeats.
Our lips crush together, our bodies pressed tight. An inferno of lips and hands and movements that continues to grow in heat. The blanket falls away as Rachel slides her legs so that she straddles me. On the verge of burning up completely, I groan and cling to her small frame. Her hands drift under my shirt, leaving a singeing trail.
We've become a wildfire. Almost unstoppable. I kiss her neck and the beautiful sounds escaping her mouth encourage me further. My hands skim under her shirt, up her back, linger for seconds near her bra, and I gently nip her ear when I feel lace.
Images pour into my mind of what she'd look like with her shirt off, then her jeans. My fist traps strands of her hair. "I want you, Rachel."
And because I do, I kiss her fully on the mouth - nothing left to the imagination. Every fantasy becomes a reality with that one embrace. — Katie McGarry

The fear of an unknown never resolves, because the unknown expands infinitely outward, leaving you to cling pitifully to any small shelter of the known: a cracker has twelve calories; the skin, when cut, bleeds. — Caroline Kettlewell

Mammy was soon asleep, leaving Laila with dueling emotions: reassured that Mammy meant to live on, stung that she was not the reason. She would never leave her mark on Mammy's heart the way her brothers had, because Mammy's heart was like a pallid beach where Laila's footprints would forever wash away beneath the waves of sorrow that swelled and crashed, swelled and crashed. — Khaled Hosseini

And there's no way I'm leaving you alone with Prince Perfect."
"So you don't trust me to resist his charms?"
"I don't even trust myself. I've never seen anyone work a crowd the way he does. I'm pretty sure the rocks and trees are getting ready to swear fealty to him. — Leigh Bardugo

People who worked with me or knew me still called me the 'world's fastest human' because I almost never stopped. I'd found that I could get more done with no regular job or regular hours at all, but by being on my own, flying to speak here, help with a public relations campaign for some client there, tape my regular jazz radio show one morning at 5:00 a.m. before leaving on a plane for another city or another continent three hours later to preside over a major sporting event. — Jesse Owens

Love can give you such happiness, then can break the very heart it filled, leaving a hole that can never be fixed or protected by any armour. — Kevin McLeod

Bound for your distant home"

Bound for your distant home
you were leaving alien lands.
In an hour as sad as I've known
I wept over your hands.
My hands were numb and cold,
still trying to restrain
you, whom my hurt told
never to end this pain.

But you snatched your lips away
from our bitterest kiss.
You invoked another place
than the dismal exile of this.
You said, 'When we meet again,
in the shadow of olive-trees,
we shall kiss, in a love without pain,
under cloudless infinities.'

But there, alas, where the sky
shines with blue radiance,
where olive-tree shadows lie
on the waters glittering dance,
your beauty, your suffering,
are lost in eternity.
But the sweet kiss of our meeting ......
I wait for it: you owe it me ....... — Alexander Pushkin

Aunt Grace was leaving ... Looking after her a moment, Laura had another feeling of tenderness toward her. How we live our lives side by side with those whom we never know or understand. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

My friends say I'm a fool to think that you're the one for me, I guess I'm just a sucker for love. (love love) 'Cause honsetly the truth is that you know I'm never leaving, 'cause your my angel sent from above. (bove bove) Me and you can do no wrong. My money is yours give you a lil more 'cause I love ya, love ya. With me girl is where you belong ...
-Love Me — Justin Bieber

John Gielgud thought 'he was never the same after leaving England, though he wouldn't have admitted it. I think that tax business, and the way people reacted to it, shocked him . . . He wasn't much good as a tax exile. He didn't do a lot with his money. His houses were commonplace, the food dreadful, the decoration pretty amateurish. — Philip Hoare

I will make arrangements for you and Portia to return to London the following day. I will be closing up the house. I am leaving England for a while." "For how long?" I asked him, determined to keep my composure. "Until I am quite recovered from you," he said evenly. "When will you return?" "Never. — Deanna Raybourn

steps, deep in thought. A breeze was slightly disturbing his hair. Then, as we watched, he walked very slowly up the steps. At the top, he turned and came back down, a little faster. Turning once more, my father became still again for several seconds, contemplating the steps before him. Eventually, he climbed them a second time, very deliberately. This time he continued on across the grass until he had almost reached the summerhouse, then turned and came walking slowly back, his eyes never leaving the ground. In fact, I can describe his manner at that moment no better than the way Miss Kenton puts it in her letter; it was indeed 'as though he hoped to find some precious jewel he had dropped there'. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It's funny, leaving a place, ain't it?" he said. "You never do know when you'll get back. — Larry McMurtry

Mr. Van Buren, your friends may be leaving you but my friends never leave me. — Andrew Jackson

The absence of life is not the same as material privation: we will never again see the same soul occupying the same space. The world refers to them as pets, but that is what we do, not really what they are. Affection pays for itself in proportion to the love we offer, and if the love we lavished on him was any indication, we are inconsolable. The suffering is more on our side now, for he led an enormously happy and productive life, and we are left to remember and agonize. It is all wretchedness now. Grief is the currency for death, leaving us in emotional debt perhaps forever, but love is the tax we happily pay toward the investment of another's company, and we would all rather pay it and be happy and poor than be rich in a friendless life. He is gone, and we are now beholden to him, but we are so much happier for his having been here than we deserve to be.
On the death of Ted, beloved cat — Michelle Franklin

And sometimes, when the stars are kind, we read with an intake of breath, with a shudder, as if someone or something had 'walked over our grave,' as if a memory had suddenly been rescued from a place deep within us - the recognition of something we never knew was there, or of something we vaguely felt as a flicker or a shadow, whose ghostly form rises and passes back into us before we can see what it is, leaving us older and wiser. — Alberto Manguel

One can always sell something by offering the lowest price. But this does not create loyalty to your brand. Never did and never will. It only creates "loyalty" to that price point. As soon as your guest or visitor is offered a better price, he or she will jump ship, leaving you like a scorned lover in the middle of the night. — David Brier

I was more anxious about leaving you than last time. Supposing you did not come back, and I would never be in your room again? Separation was an agony for me which, as soon as one holiday ended, started again in anticipation of the next. (45) — Sarah Ferguson

I never thought I would be left behind."
He chuckled. "Eloise Bridgerton, I don't think anyone wouldever make the mistake of leaving you
behind. — Julia Quinn

Individual initiative alone and the mere free play of competition could never assure successful development. One must avoid the risk of increasing still more the wealth of the rich and the dominion of the strong, whilst leaving the poor in their misery and adding to the servitude of the oppressed. — Pope Paul VI

Life changes, people come and go and seasons never last.
Karen kingsbury # Leaving — Karen Kingsbury

Steven, I look like a raccoon.
You do NOT look like a raccoon.
Actually, he looked like some deranged anteater, but I didn't figure that would be the thing to tell him.
Yes, I do. Oh, no. What if I stay this way forever?
You're not going to stay that way forever, Jeffy. People get black eyes all the time. If they never got better, the streets would be crowded with raccoon people. Soon the raccoon people would find each other and breed.
I was on a roll here.
The preschools would fill up with strange ring-eyed children. Soon the raccoons would be taking over our streets, stealing from our garbage cans, leaving eerie tails of Dinty Moore beef stew cams in their wakes. Gangs of them would haunt the malls, buying up all the black-and-gray-striped sportswear. THE RIVERS WOULD RISE! THE VALLEYS WOULD RUN WITH ...
Steven you're joking, right? — Jordan Sonnenblick

It is a dull sensation, your heart breaking, like the sound of a pebble dropping on the sand. Not a shattering, not a tearing apart, there is nothing shrill or grandiose about the sensation. It is merely an internal realization that something treasured you never knew you had is leaving forever. — Samantha Bruce-Benjamin

I don't think it will ever be too late for her, that she still holds out hope that one day he'll see what he left for never replaced what he gave up. — Courtney Giardina

I never thought about leaving a tennis legacy. I always thought about leaving a legacy of fulfillment, living out your dreams, and giving back. — Serena Williams

I'm not moping," I whisper back. "Of course you're not. A girl like you, spending time with a warrior demigod like me. What's to mope about? Leaving a wheelchair behind couldn't possibly show up on the radar compared to that."
"You've got to be kidding me."
"I never kid about my warrior demigod status. — Susan Ee

Look at the children of the land leaving in droves, leaving their own land with bleeding wounds on their bodies and shock on their faces and blood in their hearts and hunger in their stomachs and grief in their footsteps. Leaving their mothers and fathers and children behind, leaving their umbilical cords underneath the soil, leaving the bones of their ancestors in the earth, leaving everything that makes them who and what they are, leaving because it is no longer possible to stay. They will never be the same again because you cannot be the same once you leave behind who and what you are, you just cannot be the same. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Some words hit you like a tree branch slapping you in the face. And some words rip into your flesh, leaving scars so deep, they never completely fade. — Corrine Jackson

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

A woman I have never seen before
Steps from the darkness of her town-house door
At just that crux of time when she is made
So beautiful that she or time must fade.
What use to claim that as she tugs her gloves
A phantom heraldry of all the loves
Blares from the lintel? That the staggered sun
Forgets, in his confusion, how to run?
Still, nothing changes as her perfect feet
Click down the walk that issues in the street,
Leaving the stations of her body there
Like whips that map the countries of the air. — Richard Wilbur

That last night," she said quietly. "Why did you say you hoped you'd never see me again?"
He hadn't said it; it had been his last thought when he'd turned to leave. But he didn't seem to notice the discrepancy as he looked at her now.
"Because," he began before faltering, his voice leaving on a sigh. His left hand reached to rake a path through his hair, scattering the inky thickness in all directions. "The more I learn of you, the more difficult it is to stay away. — Angela B. Wade

You ain't old yet but when you get old, all the women in the village start to look down on you when they find out you want to do something other than sweep the kitchen or cut up vegetables. Had this big starch mango tree when I was small. Anytime I set myself to climb it, there was always a woman passing by to yell at me and tell me to get down. Asked me why I leaving my poor mother to do all the housework. I never got to the top. It was like God was always watching, ready to send another hag to tell me down. Then, one day, they cut down the tree. — Kevin Jared Hosein

How could you lose me? I'm not going anywhere."
"I worry that you will get tired of putting up with my undependableness and you will leave me."
Clare puts her sketchbook aside. I sit up. "I won't ever leave you," she says. "Even though you're always leaving me."
"But I never want to leave you. — Audrey Niffenegger

The bones said death was comin', and the bones never lied.
Eva Savoie leaned back in the rocking chair and pushed it into motion on the uneven wide-plank floor of the one-room cabin. Her grand pere Julien had built the place more than a century ago, pulling heavy cypress logs from the bayou and sawing them, one by one, into the thick planks she still walked across ever day.
She had never known Julien Savoie, but she knew of him. The curse that had stalked her family for three generations had started with her grandfather and what he'd done all those years ago.
What he'd brought with him to Whiskey Bayou with blood on his hands.
What had driven her daddy to shoot her mama, and then himself, before either turned forty-five.
What had led Eva's brother, Antoine, to drown in the bayou only a half mile from this cabin, leaving a wife and infant son behind.
What stalked Eva now. — Susannah Sandlin

You don't need a reason to leave. Wanting to leave is enough. Leaving doesn't mean you're incapable of real love or that you'll never love anyone else again. It doesn't mean you're morally bankrupt or psychologically demented or a nymphomaniac. It means you wish to change the terms of one particular relationship. That's all. Be brave enough to break your own heart. — Cheryl Strayed

The first New Year after they died felt like another betrayal--we were leaving behind the last year in which they had lived, a year they had known, and starting on a year that they would never experience. — Lydia Davis

Because I never have any definite destination. This ship is not for going to places, but for getting away from them. When I stop at a port, it's only for the sheer pleasure of leaving it. I always think: here's one more place that can't hold me. — Ayn Rand

Listen to me," he said. "I will never hurt you or touch you. I won't put my hands on you unless you ask me. Beg me." I gasped and fell back against the door, strength leaving my legs. "And I want you to beg me," he said, still closer. "And I think someday you will. — Molly O'Keefe

In the darkest hour of winter, when the starlings had all flown away, Gretel Samuelson fell in love. It happened the way things are never supposed to happen in real life, like a sledgehammer, like a bolt from out of the blue. One minute she was a seventeen year-old senior in high school waiting for a Sicilian pizza to go; the next one she was someone whose whole world had exploded, leaving her adrift in the Milky Way, so far from earth she was walking on stars. — Alice Hoffman

Is almost pleasant, at first, to be Falling. The harsh, unwavering light of the City recedes, leaving you in shadow, leaving only memories of relief, of a blessed coolness seizing your limbs. Nothing has turned yet into longing, into bitterness, into the cold that will never cease, not even in the heat of summer. — Aliette De Bodard

I'll never forget you. Your husband will beat you with an extension cord and the bus will pull away leaving you standing there in tears, but you were my mother. — Denis Johnson

Heartbreak was never cured; it just went into remission. And here it came roaring back, leaving her feverish and weak and unable to move in the bright afternoon sun. It — Lauren Gilley

There. You see? You're just figuring it out now, but I discovered a long time ago that the smarter you are, the more tempting it is to just let people imagine you. We move through each other's lives like ghosts, leaving behind haunting memories of people who never existed. The popular jock. The mysterious new girl. But we're the ones who choose, in the end, how people see us. And I'd rather be misremembered. Please, Ezra, misremember me. — Robyn Schneider

Never make an excuse for going to the pub, save it for leaving. — Benny Bellamacina

I risk a grin at the thought. Because there's a part of me that likes that idea. Get out of town and never look back. — Daisy Whitney

There are times when we can feel destiny close around us like a fist around a doorknob. Sure, we can resist. But a knob that won't turn, a door that sticks and never budges, is a nuisance to the gods. The gods may kick in the jamb. Worse, they may walk away in disgust, leaving us to hang dumbly from our tight hinges, deprived of any other chance in life to swing open into unnecessary risk and thus into enchantment. — Tom Robbins

leaving Will to stand by and watch, wearing that stupid grin he never seemed to shake anymore. I missed his ironic scowl. I missed his insistence that we were a bunch of pussies. God, he was the biggest fucking pussy now. — Christina Lauren

Darling,
i wish someone would realize im not happy. im alone and in pain because of you leaving me and never coming home. im nothng compared to you but i feel like im everything better than you. im sick of you and your judgement and you knowing exactly nothing about me at all. so tell me why should i i get know who you really are when your the person who need to get to know me? — Jessica Holt