One Who Got Away Quotes & Sayings

Perhaps you know someone whose heart clutches onto the bittersweet memory of the one who got away. Someone who secretly bears the weight of this imperceptible burden wherever he or she goes, every day of his or her life. Someone who'd gladly travel back in a time machine to a day when paths diverged, to mend together that which has been torn apart, setting destiny back on its rightful track - if only he or she could. Perhaps you know this someone better than you think. And should this someone happen to be you, may you find strength and support in the millions of others who shoulder this burden with you, and may you be reintroduced one day to true love ... in this lifetime and whatever comes after. — Sebastian Cole

Basically, what we've done is, every year we take half the money and allow people who've helped us in the industry to give it away. One year, the ladies who put the pretzel bags in the boxes got to give it away. — Nell Newman

She would love to think he was reluctant to leave her, but she realized he was waiting to make sure she got safely into the house before he drove away. Zane might be the most frustrating man on earth, a paradox she couldn't figure out, but he was the type of guy to make sure a woman was safe before he left her in the dark. Just as he was the type of man who'd chosen the best knife for her to carry to Nigeria. He was also the type to kiss a woman breathless and leave her alone and confused. With a sigh, she turned and made her way to the front door, digging for her key as she went. One sleepless night pondering Zane and this odd day definitely wouldn't be enough to figure out the mystery of the man. But, it would be a start ... — Cat Johnson

Love potions? For Will 'erondale? 'Tain't my way to turn down payment, but any man who looks like you 'as got no need of love potions, and that's a fact."
"No," Will said, a little desperation in his voice. "I was looking for the opposite, really
something that might put an end to being in love."
"An 'atred potion?" Mol still sounded amused.
"I was hoping for something more akin to indifference? Tolerance?"
She made a snorting noise, astonishingly human for a ghost. "I 'ardly like to tell you this, Nephilim, but if you want a girl to 'ate you, there's easy enough ways of making it 'appen. You don't need my help with the poor thing."
And with that she vanished, spinning away into the mists among the graves. Will, looking after her, sighed. "Not for her," he said under his breath, though there was no one to hear him, "for me ... " And he leaned his head against the cold iron gate. — Cassandra Clare

I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got there. Perhaps in an ambulance, certainly a vehicle of some kind. I was helped. I'd never have got there alone. There's this man who comes every week. Perhaps I got there thanks to him. He says not. He gives me money and takes away the pages. So many pages,so much money. Yes, I work now, a little like I used to, except that I don't know how to work any more. That doesn't matter apparently. What I'd like now is to speak of the things that are left, say my good-byes, finish dying. They don't want that. Yes, there is more than one, apparently. But it's always the same one that comes. You'll do that later, he says. Good. The truth is I haven't much will left. When he comes for the fresh pages he brings back the previous week's. They are marked with signs I don't understand ... Here's my beginning. It must mean something, or they wouldn't keep it. Here it is. — Samuel Beckett

You're the one who got away. And I can't stand the thought of that happening again. I will do whatever it takes to keep you, he said, and the words torched her heart. — Lauren Blakely

I was astonished to see Adrian watching me, a look of contentment on his face. His eyes seemed to study my every feature. Seeing me notice him, he immediately looked away. His usual smirky expression replaced by a dreamy one.
"The mechanic will wait," he said.
"Yeah, but I'm supposed to meet Brayden soon, I'll be-" That's when I got a good look at Adrian. "What have you done? Look at you! You shouldn't be out here."
"It's not that bad."
He was lying, and we both knew it.
"Come on, we have to get you out of here before you get worse. What were you thinking?"
His expression was astonishingly nonchalant for someone who looked like he would pass out. "It was worth it. You looked ... happy — Richelle Mead

think you need a hug. A nice warm, dripping-wet one."

Keenan started clapping while Brecken gave me a warning look. "I've got your son on my shoulders. I can't run away from you."

I gave an overdone smile then lunged. "Exactly," I exclaimed, winding my arms around him and wiggling the rest of my wet self against him.

Brecken let out a drawn-out groan, but he stood there and took it, hanging on to Keenan while I hung on to him. "Mature. So mature." He sighed all dramatic-like. "Wonderful example you're setting for your son here."

I tipped my head up, eyebrow raised. "This coming from the man who mixed Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Puffs this morning?"

His eyebrows lifted. "I'm setting the example of how to behave like a proper five-year-old. You're the parent. You get to set the parental example. — Nicole Williams

You asked the Holy Spirit for a miracle, and now that you've got one you're trying to argue it away. People who don't believe in miracles shouldn't pray for them. — David Wilkerson

He [Sir Alex Ferguson] used to play tapes of Bill Shankly talking. I remember that and a singer he liked. I don't know who it was but it was crap. He played it on the team bus too, and all the boys hated it. Until one night it got chucked away. If he's still wondering who threw that tape off the bus, it was me. So maybe he was right and I'm not to be trusted ... — Gordon Strachan

I love playing for my country. I see it as the biggest privilege of my career, so there's no way I'm going to volunteer to give that up. I want to go on for as long as I can. I've got 68 caps and I'd love to think I could get 100. I know there are some players who reach their 30s and announce their international retirement. I totally understand and respect their decisions. We are away a lot and for long spells. But although it's hard, we're doing one of the most privileged jobs in the world. — John Terry

And I remember when I met him.
It was so clear that he was the only one for me.
We both knew right away.
And as the years went on things got more difficult,
We were faced with more challenges.
I begged him to stay,
Tried to remember what we had in the beginning.
He was charismatic, magnetic, electric, and everybody knew him
When he walked in every woman's head turned.
Everyone stood up to talk to him.
He was like this hybrid, this mix of a man who couldn't contain himself.
I always got the sense that he became torn between being a good person and missing out on all of the opportunities that life could offer a man as magnificent as him.
And in that way, I understood him.
And I loved him, I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.
And I still love him, I love him. — Lana Del Rey

The whiskey was a good start. I got the idea from Dylan Thomas. He's this poet who drank twenty-one straight whiskeys at the White Horse Tavern in New York and then died on the spot from alcohol poisoning. I've always wanted to hear the bartender's side of the story. What was it like watching this guy drink himself out of here? How did it feel handing him number twenty-one and watching his face crumple up before the fall of the stool? And did he already have number twenty-two poured, waiting for this big fat tip, and then have to drink it himself after whoever came took the body away? — Michael Thomas Ford

It's only just beginning to occur to me that it's important to have something going on somewhere, at work or at home, otherwise you're just clinging on. [ ... ] You need as much ballast as possible to stop you floating away; you need people around you, things going on, otherwise life is like some film where the money ran out, and there are no sets, or locations, or supporting actors, and it's just one guy on his own staring into the camera with nothing to do and nobody to speak to, and who'd believe in this character then? I've got to get more stuff, more clutter, more detail in here, because at the moment I'm in danger of falling off the edge. — Nick Hornby

You want to give it a look, Xeno is printing all the stuff the Prophet's ignoring, not a single mention of Crumple-Horned Snorkacks in the last issue. How long they'll let him get away with it, mind, I don't know. But Xeno says, front page of every issue, that any wizard who's against You-Know-Who ought to make helping Harry Potter their number-one priority."
"Hard to help a boy who's vanished off the face of the earth," said Dirk.
"Listen, the fact that they haven't caught him yet's one hell of an achievement," said Ted. "I'd take tips from him gladly; it's what we're trying to do, stay free, isn't it?"
"Yeah, well, you've got a point there," said Dirk heavily. "With the whole of the Ministry and all their informers looking for him I'd have expected him to be caught by now. Mind, who's to say they haven't already caught and killed him without publicizing it?"
"Ah, don't say that, Dirk," murmured Ted. — J.K. Rowling

Another bug hunt, boys. This one is a little different, as you know. Since they still hold prisoners of ours, we can't use a nova bomb on Klendathu --- so this time we go down, stand on it, hold it, take it away from them. The boat won't be down to retrieve us, instead it'll fetch more ammo and rations. If you're taken prisoner, keep your chin up and follow the rules --- because you've got the whole outfit behind you, you've got the whole Federation behind you; we'll come and get you. That's what the boys from the Swamp Fox and the Montgomery have been depending on. Those who are still alive are waiting, knowing that we will show up. And here we are. Now we go get 'em. — Robert A. Heinlein

Reardan is the rich white farm town that sits in the wheat fields exactly 22 miles away from the Rez. And it's a hick town I suppose filled with farmers and rednecks and racists cops who stop every Indian that drives through. During one week when I was little dad got stopped three times for DWI- Driving While Indian. — Sherman Alexie

Which is nonsense, for whatever you live is Life. That is something to remember when you meet the old classmate who says, "Well now, on our last expedition up the Congo-" or the one who says, "Gee, I got the sweetest little wife and three of the swellest kids ever-" You must remember it when you sit in hotel lobbies or lean over bars to talk to the bartender or walk down a dark street at night, in early March, and stare into a lighted window. And remember little Susie has adenoids and the bread is probably burned, and turn up the street, for the time has come to hand me down that walking cane, for I got to catch that midnight train, for all my sin is taken away. For whatever you live is life — Robert Penn Warren

not that I'd even been thinking about Cinzia until the moment before, but it had all seemed so solid, so immutable, the whole social system of the building, a nexus where I could always stop in and see people, say hello, find out what was going on. People who had known my mother. People who had known my dad. And the farther I walked away, the more upset I got, at the loss of one of the few stable and unchanging docking-points in the world that I'd taken for granted: familiar faces, glad greetings: hey manito! For — Donna Tartt

After a time Ara had to do her chores, leaving me on the porch with a fresh infusion of tea to drink, her garden to look at, and her words to consider.
Not that I got very far. There were too many questions. Like: Where did those guards go? Azmus had overcome one, but I didn't remember having seen any more. Then there were the unlocked doors. The one to my cell could be explained away, but not the outside one. If there was a conspiracy, was Azmus behind it? Or someone else--and if so, who; and more importantly, to what end?
It was just possible that those dashing aristos had contrived my escape for a game, just as a cruel cat will play with a mouse before the kill. Their well-publicized bet could certainly account for that. The wager would also serve very nicely as a warning to ordinary people not to interfere with their prey, I thought narrowly.
Which meant that if I'd left any clue to my trail, I had better move on. Soon. — Sherwood Smith

Before Santa and presents and shopping and all the attendant Christmas (stuff) got involved, this holiday was enshrined to commemorate a guy who got nailed to a tree for daring to tell people to be kind to one another. If you have two cloaks, He said, give one away. Remember those who have less than you, be charitable, be good, be merciful. — William Rivers Pitt

One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart - how I wish he was still around - almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away (on the guitar) is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats. — Keith Richards

Midland City had a goddess of discord all its own. This was a goddess who could not dance, would not dance, and hated everybody at the high school. She would like to claw away her face, she told us, so that people would stop seeing things in it that had nothing to do with what she was like inside. She was ready to die at any time, she said, because what men and boys thought about her and tried to do to her made her so ashamed. One of the first things she was going to do when she got to heaven, she said, was to ask somebody what was written on her face and why had it been put there. — Kurt Vonnegut

The only good thing to come out of it was a kind of wisdom in Hirsch. He'd grown to understand that police officers can drift over time, and it isn't always or entirely conscious but a loss of perspective. Real and imagined grievances develop, a feeling that the job deserved greater and better public recognition. Rewards, for example, in the form of more money, more or better sex, a promotion, a junket to an interstate conference, greater respect in general. Some of these rewards were graspable, others the thwarted dreams that drove their grievances. Cynism set it. The bad guys always got away with it, and the media seized on the police officer who took a bribe rather than the one who helped orphans. So why not take shortcuts and bend the rules?? — Garry Disher

While I did that, my own eyes got wet, not fakely, and I blinked the wetness away because it was not my privilege to be sad. Leonard Brodsky was the one who was hurt, and I was the one who'd hurt him, and it didn't matter that I hadn't wanted to hurt him or that I didn't know how I'd hurt him. It didn't matter that I knew not what I did to him. It didn't need a name to be wrong. It didn't need reasons I could understand. Verbosity is like the iniquity of idolatry. — Adam Levin

One day [the prince] lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes. — George MacDonald

And then Holt, the Queen's Guard, placed his maps on the desk, neatly so they would not fall, tipped Thiel over one shoulder, tipped Death over the other, and stood under his load. In the astonished silence that followed, Holt lumbered toward Runnemood, who, understanding, let out a snort and stalked from the room of his own accord. Then Holt carried his outraged burdens away on either shoulder, just as they got their voices back. Bitterblue could hear them screaming their indignation all the way down the stairs. — Kristin Cashore

I was the youngest. The yule lamb. The one who always got away without doing the washing up. My sister was four years older, and my brother six years. — Jeremy Irons

That was ... " I trailed off trying to find the proper adjective.
"Long overdue?"
"Long overdue? You're the one who got skittish when I mentioned how I felt and backed away when we almost kissed."
"You call me on all my crap, don't you?" He laughed throwing his head back. "That's one of the things I love about you," he said. His fingers
skimmed up my shoulders until they cradled my neck and my whole body tingling. — Lani Woodland

I was one of those people raised by a woman who was what I call a prisoner of war. She was captured, she didn't want to be there, she was unhappy, she was banging away in the kitchen, the way that a prisoner would bang on her jail cell, you know, really unhappy. She had to cook for nine people with really little money, so she really just got burned out. So I didn't know that you could actually cook and it would be calming, pleasurable. — Sandra Cisneros

One little temper tantrum isn't going to scare me away."
"I can't guarantee it won't happen again."
"I work every day with cantankerous beasts who growl and bite, when I'm only trying to help. I think I can handle you."
"I'd like to see you handle me," he said, eyeing her up and down.
She ignored the double entendre, but she was pretty sure he wasn't sizing her up as an adversary on the tae kwan do mat. She put a hand to her stomach, which was doing a strange flip-flop. "Don't think I couldn't take you down," she said seriously. "I've trained in the martial arts."
He smirked. "That I've got to see. — Joan Johnston

When the hunt for new sources of energy had at one point got particularly frantic, one bright young chap suddenly spotted that one place which had never used up all its available energy was - the past. And with the sudden rush of blood to the head that such insights tend to induce, he invented a way of mining it that very same night, and within a year huge tracts of the past were being drained of all their energy and simply wasting away. Those who claimed that the past should be left unspoilt were accused of indulgingin an extremely expensive form of sentimentality. — Douglas Adams

As Jana watched Angel go to the shower, the urge to follow was right in her panties. She held herself from following and just waited until Angel got out as she finished rubbing herself off more. She could hear Angel finishing herself off in the shower, which excited her even more. She came in her panties the same time she heard Angel came in the shower, which was a sigh reliever for them both.

Jana moved away from the bathroom door and went into the kitchen to wash her hands. She saw Angel smiling.

"I am not the only one who needed pleasure by the voice of another."
Jana blushed.

"I guess not. I'm going to hop in the shower really quick, I'll be right out. — Amber M. Kestner

There were twelve in all in the party, five adults and six children - and Ona, who was a little of both. They had a hard time on the passage; there was an agent who helped them, but he proved a scoundrel, and got them into a trap with some officials, and cost them a good deal of their precious money, which they clung to with such horrible fear. This happened to them again in New York - for, of course, they knew nothing about the country, and had no one to tell them, and it was easy for a man in a blue uniform to lead them away, and to take them to a hotel and keep them there, and make them pay enormous charges to get away. The law says that the rate card shall be on the door of a hotel, but it does not say that it shall be in Lithuanian. — Upton Sinclair

Meir, let me ask you something," I said after a while.
"Sure."
"Do you think I'm a bad person?"
"Only God knows that for sure, Willy."
"So you don't have an opinion at all?"
"Not one that really matters."
"Okay, let me ask you something else. If the Polish peasant who hid Jews from the Nazis is a hero, what is the Polish peasant who turned the Jews away? Is he a coward?"
Meir smiled, "Of course."
"Really? A coward? A bad man?"
"A coward isn't a bad man, necessarily. You can't know if you're a bad man until you die."
"You've got to wait until you hear god's decision?"
"Well, yes, that's true. But I meant something else. Only when you die do you run out of chances to be good. Until then, there is always the possibility of turning yourself around. — Zoe Heller

He had cheated on a college exam, ripped a picture of a woman out of a magazine. He had returned a sweater and got drunk in the middle of the day instead. These were the things he had told her. He had held his son, who had known life only within her, against his chest in a darkened room in an unknown wing of the hospital. He had held him until a nurse knocked and took him away, and he promised himself that day that he would never tell Shoba, because he still loved her then, and it was the one thing in her life that she had wanted to be a surprise. — Anonymous

For those who seem to have difficulty moving forward:
"Sometimes Destiny is calling but you refuse to give in to the signs because of past hurts and baggages. Sometimes the love you are searching for all this time is just right in front of you but you remain to be blind because of fear. Because of always thinking that things may not work out right instead of telling yourself that you should move forward and get happy again.Why not think instead of how beautiful something could turn out to be if you take that chance and go for it than merely let the chance pass you by again and live a life of "what ifs" along the way?You cannot label each special person you meet in this life as "the One Who Got Away". Move forward, dear one, you just don't know how special you are in someone's eyes." -Elizabeth's Quotes — Elizabeth E. Castillo

You've got a lot to say for the one who walked away. — Stacy Morris

The Solitary

As one who has sailed across an unknown sea,
among this rooted folk I am alone;
the full days on their tables are their own,
to me the distant is reality.

A new world reaches to my very eyes,
a place perhaps unpeopled as the moon;
their slightest feelings they must analyze,
and all their words have got the common tune.

The things I brought with me from far away,
compared with theirs, look strangely not the same:
in their great country they were living things,
but here they hold their breath, as if for shame. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I coudn't make any sense of this logic, that the better off got more and those who had little got less. The world ran on this law, and only on this. Some magnetic field began to develop around those who had a little something - power or money or influence or friends, you name it - and the more these things accrued, the more that magnetism increased (it was as if the things that flowed to them had attracting properties themselves), drawing more inside its orbit and away from those whose funds were already depleted, making them even more impoverished, depriving them of even more. It was like gravity: everything flowed, and could only flow, in one direction. Or a type of circularity: the more you had, the more will come to you, the more you will have. — Neel Mukherjee

My father, Li Tong, used to say, 'Church leader who does not believe in God is like barefoot shoe salesman.' We call our bureau leader the Caiaphas of China." "What does that mean?" "You remember Caiaphas from the Bible?" "No." "Did someone take your Bible from you?" "No. It's on my shelf. Remember? I've got three of them." "Perhaps Ben Fielding should give two away and then start reading the other one. — Randy Alcorn

My grandest boyhood ambition was to be a professor of history at Notre Dame. Although what I do now is just a different way of working with history, I suppose.") He told me about his blind-in-one-eye canary rescued from a Woolworth's who woke him singing every morning of his boyhood; the bout of rheumatic fever that kept him in bed for six months; and the queer little antique neighborhood library with frescoed ceilings ("torn down now, alas") where he'd gone to get away from his house. About Mrs. De Peyster, the lonely old heiress he'd visited after school, a former Belle of Albany and local historian who clucked over Hobie and fed him Dundee cake ordered from England in tins, who was happy to stand for hours explaining to Hobie every single item in her china cabinet and who had owned, among other things, the mahogany sofa - rumored to have belonged to General Herkimer - that got him interested in furniture in the first place. — Donna Tartt

[There's] one ... thing I can tell you about human nature: beautiful people are the last ones you want to befriend. Beautiful people float through life thinking that it's perfectly normal for others to gaze at them adoringly, and open doors for them, and defer to their opinion ... Doesn't anyone understand that beautiful people are stupid? That's why nature made them beautiful, so they'd have a chance at surviving in the wild. And how do they survive? They use people and then they drop people, and they float away on the currents of their own gorgeousness to the next poor girl who thinks that being friends with a beutiful person will somehow make her beautiful, too. I've got news for you: Hanging around beautiful people just makes you uglier by comparison. — Amy Kathleen Ryan

I'm pretty strong," he says. "I could cart you around on my back all day long. Hey, I could even teach you to swim."
'Tisn't true," she replies haughtily. "How could you do that?"
I know how--with floats, to keep your feet up."
She shakes her head. He puffs out his cheeks and whistles soundlessly. "I go fishing with my father on Sundays. I can bring you back a hake big as this!" He spreads his arms to show a fish about the size of a whale. "You like hake?"
She shakes her head.
Bass?"
Same response.
Crab claws? We got a lot of them, in the nets."
She turns her chair around and pushes the wheels along--now she's the one who goes away.
Snobby Parisienne!" he yells after her. "And to think I almost fell for you! I smell too fishy is that it? — Sebastien Japrisot

It's easy to write a good column if you've got good information. It's hard if you have to depend on style alone. I suppose there are people who can get away with styling on a regular basis. I'm not one of them. You're probably not, either. — Allan Sloan

People die of love. I'm one of the few who'll admit it. That doesn't mean it isn't true.
Take all the people who died yesterday, or last week, or last year. Subtract all the suicides and the so-called accidents of the brokenhearted. Take away the men who got blown away for being in the wrong bed at the wrong moment, the women in abusive marriages who died of cancer because they couldn't find any other exit from their lives. All the AIDS deaths except from the needles and the transfusions, the ones they call the innocent victims. Like if you have sex, you're guilty. Deserved just what you got.
Now tell me who all you've got left.
Without love the world would be overpopulated, except that without love it wouldn't be populated at all. Love giveth and love taketh away and all that crap. You'll probably say all those people died from the lack of love, but I say it's two sides of the same coin. So it's the same coin. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

If you have people who treat you badly in your life, they will be a human shield against people who will treat you well. If that's not true then we should apply it to marriage and start saying to woman who are being put down or beaten, "you gotta stay with him because he needs you and he has been your husband for 20 years for heaven sakes. You just have to work to love him more and so on." This is the advice they gave to woman like 200 fucking years ago and it was abusive advice.
I view the parent child relationship (This just not my made up perspective.) it is the least voluntary relationship. At least the woman who got married chose to get married. We don't choose our parents. The highest standards of behavior are required for parents and no one else. There is no one else whose standards of behavior need be higher than parents and so often parents get away with the lowest possible standards of behavior with regards to their children. — Stefan Molyneux

Junko: Why don't you find a guy who's a fan of Trapnest, and go to the concert with him?
Kyousuke:Yeah! Do that, Nana. You'll find yourself a boyfriend, and you'll even be able to see the concert! Then you'll be killing two birds with one stone.
Nana Komatsu: I don't want a boyfriend. I'll never fall in love again.
*SILENCE*
Nana Komatsu, thinking: Plus, I've got Nana <3
Junko and Kyousuke, thinking: What will we do? If you take love away from Nana, there's nothing left! — Ai Yazawa

Reactionary: One who wants the rules enforced so nobody can take his pile away from him the way he got it from others. — Evan Esar

You Kowalskis have always gotten a little carried away."
This wasn't Mitch's first traffic stop. He knew it was best to be polite to the cop, who was just doing his job, and neither offer lame excuses nor get belligerent. But Durgin was too much. "We got carried away sometimes when we were young and stupid. Most kids do. But I'll be damned if I'm going to sit here and take shit from you because you lost control of the new cruiser and rolled it into a ball. I'm not a kid anymore and I'm not going to be spoken to like one. Write me the damn ticket and get on with your life. — Shannon Stacey

The person who kills for fun is announcing that, could he get away with it, he'd kill you for fun. Your ... life may be of no consequence to anyone else but is invaluable to you because it's the only one you've got. Exactly the same is true of each individual deer, hare, rabbit, fox, fish, pheasant and butterfly. Humans should enjoy their own lives, not taking others'. — Brigid Brophy

It's like asking, what's an impostor look like?" Arctor said. "I talked one time to a big hash dealer who'd been busted with ten pounds of hash in his possession. I asked him what the nark who busted him looked like. You know, the
what do they call them?
buying agent that came out and posed as a friend of a friend and got him to sell him some hash."
"Looked," Barris said, winding string, "just like us."
"More so," Arctor said. "The hash-dealer dude
he'd already been sentenced and was going in the following day
he told me, 'They have longer hair than we do.' So I guess the moral of that is, Stay away from guys looking the same as us. — Philip K. Dick

Radley rolled his eyes. He actually rolled his eyes at my father. Alpha of the south-central territory and head of the Territorial Council. Sure, I did that all the time but I'd also peed on his lap when I was two. No one else got away with such disrespect toward an Alpha, which meant Radley either didn't know who my father was, or didn't care — Rachel Vincent

I got a kick out of those who whined about their soul. Worried they were losing it. Let's get one thing straight, you didn't lose your soul. You always knew where it was or where it went, you cannot lose something you gave away or sold or had broken past repair. Your soul was like your arm, you didn't lose your arm. Your arm was either there or it wasn't, and you usually knew why it wasn't there — L.A. Kennedy

Did you love well what very soon you left? Come home and take me in your arms and take away this stomach ache, headache, heartache. Never so full, I never was bereft so utterly. The winter evenings drift dark to the window. Not one work will make you, where you are, turn in your day, or wake from your night toward me. The only gift I got to keep or give is what I've cried, floodgates let down to mourning for the dead chances, for the end of being young, for everyone I loved who really died. I drank our one year out in brine instead of honey from the seasons of your tongue. — Marilyn Hacker

Mom, you have to leave Dad," I said. She stopped doing her toe touches. "I can't believe you would say that," she said. "I can't believe that you, of all people, would turn on your father." I was Dad's last defender, she continued, the only one who pretended to believe all his excuses and tales, and to have faith in his plans for the future. "He loves you so much," Mom said. "How can you do this to him?" "I don't blame Dad," I said. And I didn't. But Dad seemed hell-bent on destroying himself, and I was afraid he was going to pull us all down with him. "We've got to get away. — Jeannette Walls

I'm the one who steps from the shadows, all trenchcoat and cigarette and arrogance, ready to deal with the madness. Oh, I've got it all sewn up. I can save you. If it takes the last drop of your blood, I'll drive your demons away. I'll kick them in the bollocks and spit on them when they're down and then I'll be gone back into darkness, leaving only a nod and a wink and a wisecrack. I walk my path alone ... who would walk with me? — Garth Ennis

How can you truly love the one you're with when you can't forget the one who got away? — Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

He never hurries. He never shows his cards. He always hangs up first ... Like when we first started talking on the phone, he would always be the one who got off first. When we kissed, he always pulled away first. He always kept me just on the edge of crazy. Feeling like I wanted him too much, which just made me want him more ... [It was] excruciating and wonderful. It feels good to want something that bad. I thought about him the way you think about dinner when you haven't eaten for a day and a half. Like you'd sell your soul for it. — Rainbow Rowell

After about midday my dad sent cars from his private collection for us. We were told to get in. We had almost lost contact with my father and brothers because things had got out of hand. I saw with my own eyes the [Iraqi] army withdrawing and the terrified faces of the Iraqi soldiers who, unfortunately, were running away and looking around them. Missiles were falling on my left and my right - they were not more than fifty or one hundred metres away. We moved in small cars. I had a gun between my feet just in case. — Raghad Hussein

embodied in the remark that dear far-away Ruth's intentions were doubtless good. She and Kent are even yet looking for another prop, but no one presents a true sphere of usefulness. They complain that people are self-sufficing. With Saltram the fine type of the child of adoption was scattered, the grander, the elder style. They've got their carriage back, but what's an empty carriage? In short I think we were all happier as well as poorer before; even including George Gravener, who by the deaths of his brother and his nephew has lately become Lord Maddock. His wife, whose fortune clears the property, is criminally dull; he hates being in the Upper — Henry James

Anybody," said Johnny, carried away by his personal dream of Democracy, "can ride in one of the hansom cabs, provided," he qualified, "they get the money. So you can see what a free country we got here."
"What's free about it if you have to pay?" asked Francie.
"It's free in this way: If you have the money you're allowed to ride in them no matter who you are. In the old countries, certain people aren't free to ride in them, even if they have the money. — Betty Smith

It's got you thinking - you've never really known anyone who's died of natural causes, have you? Parents and grandparents, plus friends and neighbors and casual lovers, they've all left you too early, and in such ghastly ways. Cancers and violence, accidents and congenital defects, aneurysms of the brain and psyche. You've heard of people who've slipped peacefully away in their sleep, or in their favorite easy chairs, after ripe octogenarian lives, but suspect they must be mythical, in the company of unicorns and mermaids. If you didn't know better, you'd think there was a deliberate methodology behind it all, a gradual pattern of calamity spiraling inward until, at last, you're the only one left to be dealt with. You could be expected to think that, but don't, because you still keep your wits about you, thank god - So to speak. — Brian Hodge

Au contraire, he's the person you wanted to be. One who was less arrogant, and undisciplined as a youth. One who was less like me. The Jean-Luc Picard you wanted to be, the one who did not fight the Nausicaan, had quite a different career from the one you remember. That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realised how fragile life is or how important each moment must be. So his life never came into focus. He drifted for much of his career, with no plan or agenda, going from one assignment to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves. He never lead the away team on Milika Three to save the ambassador, or take charge of the Stargazer's Bridge when its Captain was killed. And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe. And he never, ever got noticed by anyone. — Q

Your friends are at the house.'
I sit up, straight. 'Who'?
'I don't know. Weird people. The Sullivan girl, whose father got the Gosford police to pick you up.'
'Siobhan?'
'And another one who's making cups of tea for everyone, and keeping the boy who's telling Luca fart jokes away from the girl who says he's "the last bastion of patriarchal poor taste".'
'Justine, Thomas and Tara.'
And the drug fiend, Jimmy, is keeping Mia calm and the Trombal boy's rung about ten times. I don't like his manner on the phone.'
'You won't like any guy's manner on the phone. — Melina Marchetta

He obliterates things, she realized. He shatters them. They think they've won because he's a bit vague and he waffles, but that only goes so far. It's his shell, like a tortoise, if a tortoise was soft on the outside and dangerous on the inside. That's how the Time War ended: he got to the bottom of his patience, and he took two entire civilisations out of the universe and lock them away, and one of them was his own. That's how sharp his sense of obligation is.
And he lives like that. He does it all the time. — Nick Harkaway

I was a fool for ever thinking I could live with letting you be the one who got away. — Melissa Cutler

If he thinks I'm going to sit around crying over him, he's got another thing coming. I can live without him, I can do without him just fine - but I don't like to lose. It's not like me. None of this is like me. I don't get rejected. I'm the one who walks away. — Paula Hawkins

Death went on, If I'd sent you, with your taste for expeditious methods, the matter would have been resolved, but times have changed a lot lately, and one has to update the means and the systems one uses, to keep up with the new technologies, by using e-mail, for example, I've heard tell that it's the most hygienic way, one that does away with inkblots and fingerprints, besides which it's fast, you just open up outlook express on microsoft and it's gone, the difficulty would be having to work with two separate archives, one for those who use computers and another for those who don't, anyway, we've got plenty of time to think about it, they're always coming out with new models and new designs, with new improved technologies, perhaps I'll try it some day, but until then, I'll continue to write with pen, paper and ink, it has the charm of tradition, and tradition counts for a lot when it comes to dying. — Jose Saramago

Brick stood silhouetted against the frozen lake through this front window. "Be careful. It sounds like you've got at least one killer out there. Someone who thought they'd gotten away with murder. It's easier to kill after the first time, they say. — B. J. Daniels

It's not about knowin where you are. It's about thinkin you got there without takin anything with you. Your notions about startin over. Or anybody's. You don't start over. That's what it's about. Ever step you take is forever. You can't make it go away. None of it. You understand what I'm sayin?
You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it's made out of. Nothin else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I don't know what all. Start over. And then one mornin you wake up and look at the ceilin and guess who's layin there? — Cormac McCarthy

Look at your own mind. The one who carries things thinks he's got things, but the one who looks on sees only the heaviness. Throw away things, lose them, and find lightness. — Ajahn Chah

The whole thing is so degrading! That a man like Eric should be reduced to crawling before those bloodsuckers who are taking every advantage of his weakened state. And strip himself of one whole third of his wealth to throw it away like all the huge sums they've already got out of him! — Louis Auchincloss

For a while I thought you were the one who got away. That one day I would somehow piece it all back together, but I was wrong. You were the one."
I might've stopped breaking.
He curled the tips of his fingers around my chin. "You are the one. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Nowadays, no one believes in evil. It is considered, at most, a mere negation of good. Evil, people say, is done by those who know no better - who are undeveloped - who are to be pitied rather than blamed. But, M. Poirot, evil is real! It is a fact! I believe in Evil as I believe in Good. It exists! It is powerful! It walks the earth!' He stopped. His breath was coming fast. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and looked suddenly apologetic. 'I'm sorry. I got carried away. — Agatha Christie

Don't you see? It's just not possible for one person to watch over another person forever and ever. I mean, suppose we got married. You'd have to work during the day. Who's going to watch over me while you're away? Or if you go on a business trip, who's going to watch over me then? Can I be glued to you every minute of our lives? What kind of equality would there be in that? What kind of relationship would that be? Sooner or later you'd get sick of me. You'd wonder what you were doing with your life, why you were spending all your time babysitting this woman. I couldn't stand that. It wouldn't solve any of my problems. — Haruki Murakami

The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done,
I stand above my father's grave with rage,
often, often before
I've made this awful pilgrimage to one
who cannot visit me, who tore his page
out: I come back for more,
I spit upon this dreadful banker's grave
who shot his heart out in a Florida dawn
O ho alas alas
When will indifference come, I moan & rave
I'd like to scrabble till I got right down
away down under the grass
and ax the casket open ha to see
just how he's taking it, which he sought so hard
we'll tear apart
the mouldering grave clothes ha then Henry
will heft the ax once more, his final card,
and fell it on the start. — John Berryman

As far as he was concerned, a man who decided to rob and kill deserved what he got when he lost the game. He did not dwell on them, but neither did he jerk his eyes away if they fell on one of the robbers. — Robert Jordan

What's got you smilin' like a bitch who just had good cock?" I was interrupted by a sexy drawl.
I looked up to see Nash leaning against the door frame, arms crossed in front of him, sexy smirk plastered on his face. He was tall, all muscle and ink; he exuded a couldn't-give-a-fuck attitude. Nash was one of the cockiest men I had ever met and the women flocked to him.
I rolled my eyes. "Can a woman not smile unless she's had cock?" I asked.
He uncrossed his arms and pushed away from the door frame; coming towards me, "No, sweet thing, it all comes down to cock."
"Well, I hate to tell you, Nash, but this woman hasn't had any today, and yet I am still smiling. I think your theory is a little off." I loved bantering back and forth with him.
He raised his eyebrows. "J's fallin' down on the job there sweetheart. You sure you don't want to jump ships? I've got all you'll ever need," he grinned at me, opening his arms wide in an inviting gesture. — Nina Levine

Whose truth do you want to know, Dr. Amin Jaafari? The truth of a Bedouin who thinks he's free and clear because he's got an Israeli passport? The truth of a serviceable Arab per excellence who's honored wherever he goes, who gets invited to fancy parties by people who want to show how tolerant and considerate they are? The truth of someone who thinks he can change sides like changing a shirt, with no trace left behind? Is that the truth you're looking for, or is it the one you're running away from? What planet do you live on, sir? ... Our cities are being buried by machines on caterpillar tracks, our patron saints don't know which way to turn, and you, simply because you're nice and warm in your golden cage, refuse to see the inferno consuming us. — Yasmina Khadra

Very soon she'll join all the others who know the secret and will not tell it. Or cannot. Or try and fail because they do not know enough. They can be recognized. White faces, dazed eyes, aimless gestures, high-pitched laughter. The way they walk and talk and scream or try to kill (themselves or you) if you laugh back at them. Yes, they've got to be watched. For the time comes when they try to kill, then disappear. But others are waiting to take their places, it's a long, long line. She's one of them. I too can wait - for the day when she is only a memory to be avoided, locked away, and like all memories a legend. Or a lie ... — Jean Rhys

[On Jerry Falwell] No, and I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to ... The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you'll just get yourself called Reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September 11th were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification. People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup. — Christopher Hitchens

Some people who see cooking as a job. They got into cooking at some stage and they're sort of ticking along trying to get the money together to buy the car to impress the girlfriend and you know they're doing their job, but some of these people one day, all of a sudden it becomes wonderfully exciting to them. They find this love of what they're doing and they're away. — Paul Rankin

People look at me in many ways. They've said, 'The guy has no regard for money.' That is not true. I have had regard for money. It depends on who's saying that. Some people worship money as something you've got to have piled up in a big pile somewhere. I've only thought about money in one way, and that is to do something with it. I don't think there's a thing I own that I will ever get the benefit of except through doing things with it. I don't even want the dividends from the stock in the studio, because the government's going to take it away. I'd rather have that in (the company) working ... — Walt Disney

They're a funny lot, suicides. I remember one man who couldn't get any work to do and his wife died, so he pawned his clothes and bought a revolver; but he made a mess of it, he only shot out an eye and he got alright. And then, if you please, with an eye gone and a piece of his face blown away, he came to the conclusion that the world wasn't such a bad place after all, and he lived happily ever afterwards. Thing I've always noticed, people don't commit suicide for love, as you'd expect, that's just a fancy of novelists; they commit suicide because they haven't got any money. I wonder why that is."
"I suppose money's more important than love," suggest Philip. — W. Somerset Maugham