Once She Is Gone Quotes & Sayings

Mother! what a world of affection is comprised in that single word; how little do we in the giddy round of youthful pleasure and folly heed her wise counsels. How lightly do we look upon that zealous care with which she guides our otherwise erring feet, watches with feelings which none but a mother can know the gradual expansion of our youth to the riper yours of discretion. We may not think of it then, but it will be recalled to our minds in after years, when the gloomy grave or a fearful living separation has placed her far beyond our reach, and her sweet voice of sympathy and consolation for the various ills attendant upon us sounds in our ears no more. How deeply then we regret a thousand deeds that we have done contrary to her gentle admonitions! How we sign for those days once more, that we may retrieve what we have done amiss and make her kind heart glad with happiness! Alas! once gone they can never be recalled, and we grow mournfully sad with the bitter reflection. — Fanny Kelly

No writing is effortless. I'm not saying you can't have a good day where the words just kind of flow, but even those words have to be edited. Probably more than once. And I'm not saying a character hasn't somehow gone in a different direction that I wanted her to go, but that was me, not her. I let her get away from me. I let her roam free and nine times out of ten, the result is not good. I have to go back and start over because she veered off the path of my book. She changed the vision. And I did that. Not her. — Darynda Jones

Tick's strategy for dealing with lying adults is to say nothing and watch thee lies swell and constrict in their throats. when this happens, the lie takes on a physical life of its own and must be either expelled or swallowed. Most adults prefer to expel untruths with little burplike coughs behind their hands, while others chuckle or snort or make barking sounds. When Mr. Meyer's Adam's apple bobs once, Tick sees that he's a swallower, and that this particular lie has gone south down his esophagus and into his stomach. According to her father, the man suffers from bleeding ulcers. Tick can see why. She imagines all the lies a man in his position would have to tell, how they must just churn away down there in his intestines like chunks of indigestible food awaiting elimination. By the Tick suspects, lies seek open air. they don't like being confined in dark, cramped places. — Richard Russo

The septons preach about the seven hells. What do they know? Only a man who's been burned knows what hell is truly like"
... She was sad for him, she realized. Somehow, the fear had gone away.
The silence went on and on, so long that she began to grow afraid once more, but she was afraid for him now, not for herself. She found his massive shoulder with her hand. "He was no true knight," she whispered to him. — George R R Martin

Hello, old friend. And here we are. You and me, on the last page. By the time you read these words, Rory and I will be long gone. So know that we lived well and were very happy. And above all else, know that we will love you always. Sometimes I do worry about you though. I think once we're gone you won't be coming back here for awhile. And you might be alone. Which you should never be. Don't be alone, Doctor. And do one more thing for me. There's a little girl waiting in a garden. She's going to wait a long while, so she's going to need a lot of hope. Go to her. Tell her a story. Tell her that if she's patient, the days are coming that she'll never forget. Tell her she'll go to see and fight pirates. She'll fall in love with a man who'll wait two thousand years to keep her safe. Tell her she'll give hope to the greatest painter who ever lived. And save a whale in outer space. Tell her, this is the story of Amelia Pond. And this is how it ends. — Steven Moffat

I once loved a girl, her skin it was bronze With the innocence of a lamb, she was gentle like a fawn I courted her proudly but now she is gone Gone as the season she's taken — Bob Dylan

My 13-year-old daughter leaves the house at 7:15 every morning and takes a smelly city bus to school way uptown. It's like 8 degrees out, and it's dark and she's got this morning face and I send her out there to take a bus. Meanwhile, my driver is sitting in a toasty Mercedes that's going to take me to work once both kids are gone. I could send her in the Mercedes and then have it come back to get me, but I can't have my kid doing that. I can't do that to her. Me? I earned that f - ing Mercedes. You better f - ing believe it. — Louis C.K.

After she's gone, another brief lull sets in. This one is probably the last. But what good is a lull? It's only a breathing spell in which to get more frightened. Because anticipatory fear is always twice as strong as present fear. Anticipatory fear has both fears in it at once - the anticipatory one and the one that comes simultaneously with the dread happening itself. Present fear only has the one, because by that time anticipation is over.
("New York Blues") — Cornell Woolrich

You know," Marion said, "I met a woman once when I was a teenager. I knew she had gone through a lot but she was so strong, so compassionate. I asked her how she could be the way she was, and you know what she told me?"
Hadley shook her head.
"She said, 'You can be broken, or broken open. That choice is yours. — Erica Bauermeister

There's an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I've been thinking about a lot while writing this essay. In it, Buffy sacrifices her own life to save her sister, and right before she does, she tells her sister that the hardest thing to do in the world is to live - ironic words coming from someone about to kill herself for the greater good. As I'm writing this, I just keep thinking that Katniss never gets to sacrifice herself. She doesn't get the heroic death. She survives - and that leaves her doing the hardest thing in the world: living in it once so many of the ones she loves are gone. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I've thought that perhaps that's why women are so often sad, once the child's born," she said meditatively, as though thinking aloud. "Ye think of them while ye talk, and you have a knowledge of them as they are inside ye, the way you think they are. And then they're born, and they're different - not the way ye thought of them inside, at all. And ye love them, o' course, and get to know them they way they are ... but still, there's the thought of the child ye once talked to in your heart, and that child is gone. So I think it's the grievin' for the child unborn that ye feel, even as ye hold the born one in your arms. — Diana Gabaldon

She sees only what's gone, I see only what's stayed the same. Her hair is no longer halfway down her back or pulled up in a French pleat; nowadays it is cut close to her skull and the grey is allowed to show.
Those peasanty frocks she used to wear have given way to cardigans and well-cut trousers. Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it's still the eyes we look at, isn't it? That's where we found the other person, and find them still. The same eyes that were in the same head when we first met, slept together, married, honeymooned, joint-mortgaged, shopped, cooked and holidayed, loved one another and had a child together. And were the same when we separated.
But it's not just the eyes. The bone structure stays the same, as do the instinctive gestures, the many ways of being herself. And her way, even after all this time and distance, of being with me. — Julian Barnes

Why do you care what happens to her? I thought we humans were vapors to you, here today and gone tomorrow."
"Caspida is . . . different. She reminds me of someone, someone I'd give my life for if I could."
"The queen?" he asks. "The one who died?"
"Roshana. My dear Ro." My voice is soft as a ripple on the water. "She once ruled the Amulens, and Caspida is her descendant. She has Roshana's strength of spirit, and I cannot look at her without thinking of my old friend. If she were to come to harm on my account . . . I could not bear that through the centuries." I already carry a mountain of shame, a constant reminder of that day on Mount Tissia.
Aladdin lifts a hand and brushes the hair back from my face. "You truly are remarkable, Zahra of the Lamp. — Jessica Khoury

I once had a love who folded secrets between her thighs like napkins
and concealed memories in the valley of her breasts.
There was no match for the freckles on her chest,
and no one could mistake them for a field of honeysuckles.
Upon her lips, a thousand lies were spread in sweet gloss.
Her kiss was like a storybook from ancient history.
She was at home with the body of a man inside her, beside her.
At night, when she lay in bed crying,
no one could mistake the tears she wept for a summer shower
She is gone, my love. She was a wanderess, a wildflower. — Roman Payne

Is that it?" he demanded, in sudden rage. "Is that all that matters? Not that I am in love and tumbled like a fool into sin. Not that I can never be happy, married to a snake and in love with a heartbreaker, but only, only, that Mistress Anne Boleyn's reputation must be without blemish." At once she flew at him, her hands spread like claws, and he caught her wrists before she could rake his face. "Look at me!" she hissed. "Didn't I give up my only love, didn't I break my heart? Didn't you tell me then that it was worth the price?" He held her away but she was unstoppable. "Look at Mary! Didn't we take her from her husband and me from mine? And now you have to give up someone too. You have to lose the great love of your life, as I have lost mine, as Mary lost hers. Don't whimper to me about heartbreak, you murdered my love and we buried it together and now it is gone." George — Philippa Gregory

I mean, why would someone do this?! Why do people fall in love if it means there is a chance of feeling this way? What the fuck is wrong with humans?! HUMANS ARE FUCKING SICK AND TWISTED! I mean, I get it - it feels good, you know? Being in love, being happy." Her body trembled as the tears fell faster than she could take breaths. "But when that magical rug is ripped out from under you, it takes all the happy and good feelings with it. And your heart? It just breaks. It breaks and it's unapologetic. It shatters into a million pieces, leaving you numb, blankly staring at the pieces because all your free will, all the common sense you once had in your life is gone. You gave up everything for this bullshit thing called love, and now you're just destroyed. — Brittainy C. Cherry

The land that the Unsea covers was once green and good, fertile and rich. Now it is dead and barren, crawling with abominations. The Darkling will push its boundaries north into Fjerda, south to the Shu Han. Those who do not bow to him will see their kingdoms turned to desolate wasteland and their people devoured by ravening volcra." I gaped at her in horror, shocked by the images she had conjured. The old woman had clearly lost her mind. "Baghra," I said gently, "I think you have some kind of fever." Or you've gone completely senile. "Finding the stag is a good thing. It means I can help the Darkling destroy the Fold." "No!" she cried, and it was almost a howl. "He never intended to destroy it. The Fold is his creation." I — Leigh Bardugo

Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don't want to die. — Sylvia Plath

A woman should keep her separateness, should save all her feminine qualities and purify them. In this way she is going, according to her nature, towards enlightenment. Of course once you are enlightened, you have gone beyond the discrimination of sexes. Beyond enlightenment, you are simply human beings. But before that ... Be proud of your qualities. Increase them, refine them because they are the path towards godliness. Man is not in a better position than woman as far as religious experience is concerned. — Rajneesh

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother
her incomparable mother!
five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! ... Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night
and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here
writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today? — Mark Twain

Now say, have women worth, or have they none?
Or had they some, but with our Queen is't gone?
Nay Masculines, you have thus tax'd us long,
But she, though dead, will vindicate our wrong.
Let such as say our sex is void of reason
Know 'tis a slander now, but once was treason."
(In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess, Queen Elizabeth) — Anne Bradstreet

LET something be done for them; but THAT something need not be three thousand pounds. Consider," she added, "that when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could be restored to our poor little boy
— Anonymous

She could now be sad without losing a jot of hope. Nay, rather, the least approach of sadness would begin at once to wake her hope. She regretted nothing that had come, nothing that had gone. She believed more and more that not anything worth having is ever lost; that even the most evanescent shades of feeling are safe for those who grow after their true nature, toward that for which they were made - in other and higher words, after the will of God. — George MacDonald

with more malice than that of Judas Iscariot. Once a proud name, now it is spit upon, said with hatred and venom. Judas is gone, but Lilith roams the earth, and she builds her army of vampires. She intends to rule the world; her strength is always our weakness. It is our task, our legacy, to keep Lilith and her minions at bay. — Colleen Gleason

The Rosary mystically transports us to Mary's side as she is busy watching over the human growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth. This enables her to train us and to mold us with the same care, until Christ is 'fully formed' in us ... Why should we not once more have recourse to the Rosary, with the same faith as those who have gone before us? — Pope John Paul II

A piece of me is gone," she told me once while we were bra shopping. "I think we're made up of all these different pieces and every time someone goes, you're left with less of yourself. — Melina Marchetta

Of the seminal moments in my life, Careers Day in the autumn of Year 5 is my favorite. Everyone had to dress as whatever they wanted to be once they grew up. I had gone in a tweed jacket and a bow tie, and when Miss Weston asked me what I wanted to be, I told her that I wanted to be the Doctor.

'Shouldn't you be wearing a lab coat and stethoscope like Paul?' She pointed to Paul Black, who was trying to strangle everyone with the stethoscope in question.

Before I could answer, a boy I didn't know from the other class spoke up.

'Paul's *a* doctor,' he explained, giving me a look of approval. 'He wants to be *the* Doctor.'

'Who?'

'Exactly,' we said at the same time, relieved that she understood.

She didn't. We were sent to the quiet table to reflect on why cheeking teachers was wrong. — Non Pratt

There are so many things to grieve ... All the dogs & cats & birds & snakes we have loved & lost, & old lovers, but what else? ... it took me forever to see that one of them was my own daughter, my baby, a young woman I thought of only as a girl, a child, & there she was, suddenly a woman, & I felt this ache gnaw at me as if I hadn't eaten in a year ... I stood there watching my daughter gesture & move & laugh with the grace of a grown-up, & I just started crying like a baby. It wasn't unlike the same type of sorrow we all feel when we realize something we once had that was very precious is not longer there. That it is forever lost, changed, deceased. Like a baby, gone, except in your memory ... My own daughter is now a woman. I get it. Another passage, another form of loss, another reason to grieve, another part of this life process. — Kris Radish

Is there a reason you are here?" he finally demanded.
With complete nonchalance she replied, "Well,I've brought my trunks. I do believe I'm moving in."
"The hell you are!"
"Nice of you to welcome me in your usual boorish manner" was all she said to that.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. It made not a jot of difference that he'd just gone to Norford and back this morning to bring her here himself. That had been his idea.Her coming here on her own was her idea,and it make him suspicious.
"Don't start your manipulations already," he warned her. "Answer my question."
"Why am I still here? Shall we start with the obvious reason? Because I really am pregnant and once my pregnancy starts to show,I do not want to be in a position to have people ask me who my husband is and not believe me when I tell them that it's you."
"And the not-so-obvious answer?"
"Because you make me so furious that I spite myself to spite you! — Johanna Lindsey

My friend Emma, who likes things to add up neatly, claims that this is because my parents died when I was too young to take it in: they were there one day and gone the next, crashing through that fence so hard and fast they left it splintered for good. When I was Lexie Madison for eight months she turned into a real person to me, a sister I lost or left behind on the way; a shadow somewhere inside me, like the shadows of vanishing twins that show up on people's X-rays once in a blue moon. Even before she came back to find me I knew I owed her something, for being the one who lived. — Tana French

To my ninth decade I have totter'd on, And no soft arm bends now my steps to steady; She, who once led me where she would, is gone, So when he calls me, Death shall find me ready. — Walter Savage Landor

Stop and think as you pass by, she hissed. As you are now, so once was I. — Kat Rosenfield

There is something poignantly pathetic in the picture of this valiant fighter - this arrogant ja-sager - this foe of men, gods and devils - being nursed and coddled like a little child. His old fierce pride and courage disappeared and he became docile and gentle. "You and I, my sister - we are happy!" he would say, and then his hand would slip out from his coverings and clasp that of the tender and faithful Lisbeth. Once she mentioned Wagner to him. "Den habe ich sehr geliebt!" he said. All his old fighting spirit was gone. He remembered only the glad days and the dreams of his youth. — H.L. Mencken

But until this night, she had never once actually wet the bed. And now that she has, we just lie there in the accident, and the minutes of the clock keep changing, and the love I have for her keeps growing, and we both keep drawing breath.
What was so horrible about it? Why had I always been so angry? What was my need to always be right? To win every argument with her? To out-stubborn a dog?
And just like that, all the anger is gone. Released like the emptying of a bladder into soft cotton sheets as we lie in the wetness. — Steven Rowley

I want to be like the air. The good-hearted person whose kindness overflows and people realize how important she was to them, once she is gone. I want to be that kind of person. — Aya Kito

She is leaving him, not all at once, which would be painful enough, but in a wrenching succession of separations. One moment she is here, and then she is gone again, and each journey takes her a little farther from his reach. He cannot follow her, and he wonders where she goes when she leaves. — Debra Dean

I have never known Frances to complain once of my Church responsibilities. I have been gone many days and many nights, and I have rarely been able to sit with her in the congregation. But there is no one like her - absolutely no one. She is in every way supportive and is a woman of quiet and profoundly powerful faith. — Thomas S. Monson

Why do you want to do this?" he asked curiously. "Why is this woman so important to you?"
Saint-Germain blinked in surprise. "Have you ever loved anyone?" he asked.
"Yes," Tamnuz said cautiously, "I had a consort once, Inanna ... "
"But did you love her? Truly love her?"
The Green Man remained silent.
"Did she mean more to you than life itself?" Saint-Germain persisted.
"They do not love that do not show their love," Shakespeare murmured very softly.
The French immortal stepped closer to the Elder. "I love my Jeanne," he said simply. "I must go to her."
"Even though it will cost you everything?" Tamnuz persisted, as if the idea was incomprehensible.
"Yes. Without Joan, everything I have is worthless."
"Even your immortality?"
"Especially my immortality." Gone were the banter and the jokes. This was a Saint-Germain whom neither Shakespeare nor Palamedes had ever seen before. "I love her," he said, — Michael Scott

You are so young, Lyra, too young to understand this, but I shall tell you anyway and you'll understand it later: men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, clever; and they die almost at once. They die so soon that our hearts are continually racked with pain. We bear their children, who are witches if they are female, human if not; and then in the blink of an eye they are gone, felled, slain, lost. Our sons, too. When a little boy is growing, he thinks he is immortal. His mother knows he isn't. Each time becomes more painful, until finally your heart is broken. Perhaps that is when Yambe-Akka comes for you. She is older than the tundra. Perhaps, for her, witches' lives are as brief as men's are to us. — Philip Pullman

There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays. — Jodi Picoult

Around a child, people come and go, objects appear and are taken away, surroundings take shape and disintegrate. And no explanation is given, because how can you explain the world to a child?
So she had used the words. Words call forth and secure that which has gone away. With her lists she had ensured that whatever she had once known would come back — Peter Hoeg

Why do people fall in love if it means there is a chance of feeling this way? What the fuck is wrong with humans?! HUMANS ARE FUCKING SICK AND TWISTED! I mean, I get it - it feels good, you know? Being in love, being happy." Her body trembled as the tears fell faster than she could take breaths. "But when that magical rug is ripped out from under you, it takes all the happy and good feelings with it. And your heart? It just breaks. It breaks and it's unapologetic. It shatters into a million pieces, leaving you numb, blankly staring at the pieces because all your free will, all the common sense you once had in your life is gone. You gave up everything for this bullshit thing called love, and now you're just destroyed." I — Brittainy C. Cherry

The witch's hair was too short and too dark for blond. She wasn't sure if that relieved her or disturbed her.
Riley had immediately begun his interrogation, and it had gone something like this:
Riley: Where is the meeting between your kind and Aden Stone supposed to take place?
Witch: Go suck yourself.
Riley: Maybe later. Meeting?
Witch: Enjoy death.
Riley: I have once already. Now, decide to talk or lose a body part.
Witch: May I recommend a finger?
Riley: Sure. After I take one of your very necessary hands. — Gena Showalter

The mother is the most essential piece on the board, the one you must protect. Only she has the range. Only she can move in multiple directions. Once she's gone, it's a whole different game. — Kelly Corrigan

I remember just how bizarre my friendship with Tiffani has been - but then I remember that no one else but Tiffani could really even come close to understanding how I feel after losing Nikki forever. I remember that apart time is finally over, and while Nikki is gone for good, I still have a woman in my arms who has suffered greatly and desperately needs to believe once again that she is beautiful. In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher's Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I'm on and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. There's something honest about all of this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer filed with me-in the middle of a snowstorm even - impossibly hoping to see a single cloud break free of a nimbostratus. Nikki would not have done this for me, not even on her best day. — Matthew Quick