The Year She Left Us Quotes & Sayings

Paige, the way you just stood up and left like that, I was awful proud of you. Really, you're stronger than you let on." She sighed. "I should've stood up and left sooner. I was real close." "Me, too," he said. "I think maybe we tried too hard with Bud. Both of us. He always act like that?" "When he's not real quiet and sulky." "He get along with Wes okay?" Preacher asked. "Bud thinks Wes is awesome. Because he thinks Wes is rich. Wes thinks Bud's an idiot." "Hmm." Preacher contemplated. He didn't let go of her hand. "You think Bud really believes it would be all right to get your head bashed in a few times a year for six thousand square feet and a pool?" "I believe he does," she said. "I really believe he does." "Hmm. Think he'd like to move into my big house - test that theory?" She laughed. "Do you have a big house somewhere, John?" "Not at the moment." He shrugged. "But for Bud, I'd be willing to look around." * — Robyn Carr

So I spoke to my old friend Bruce and told him I was feeling it, his loss of Clarence. We talked for quite a while, and there is no need to go into what two old friends had to say to each other at this point, except to say that two old friends spoke to each other about their music, their muses, their partners in crime, their proof, their friendship, their souls and their lives. Ben Keith was my Clarence Clemons. Clarence Clemons was Bruce's Ben Keith. When he died last year it touched me to the core. I don't want to ever think of any one else playing his parts or occupying his space. No one could. I can't do those songs again unless it's solo. So I told Bruce, "Waylon once looked at me and said, 'There's very few of us left.'" He liked that. I told him when he looked to his right I would be there. That's enough. I'm not talking about that anymore. — Neil Young

I never told her I loved her. What an ass I am. No wonder she left. I mean, I told her in a dozen different ways, but I never said the words."
"Are they so hard to say?"
"Yes, but ... I don't know. They shouldn't be." Gray shook his head. "Do you know, that fifteen-year-old boy had the courage to say in front of the whole crew what I couldn't bring myself to whisper in the dark? He'll make a fine officer someday, Davy Linnet. Got bigger stones than either of us, I'd wager."
Joss snorted. "Speak for yourself. — Tessa Dare

And then, when I left Princeton in the middle of my sophomore year, I went into the navy. — Harry Mathews

I see not a step before me as I tread on another year;But I've left the Past in God's keeping,-the FutureHis mercy shall clear;And what looks dark in the distance may brighten as I draw near. — Mary Gardiner Brainard

A month ago, Gavin had given his employer four weeks' notice. "I'll get a job around here," he'd told her. "Something low-stress, part-time, maybe. We're not paying rent, and Dad's left us plenty. You should quit, too." A year earlier this news would have filled her with delicious, full fat, chocolate-coated joy. But now, after a grueling routine of shitty work, shitty- weird home life in a house where the shadow of a dead boy walked more solidly than the grownups, shitty headaches, shitty worry about a husband who couldn't keep his dick out of other women, the golden offer just weirded Laine out. She didn't trust it. — Stephen M. Irwin

I'm not a vegetarian. Now, don't get me wrong - I like animals. And I don't think it's just fine to industrialize their production and to churn them out like they were wrenches. But there's no way to treat animals well when you're killing 10 billion of them a year. Kindness might just be a bit of a red herring. Let's get the numbers of animals we're killing for eating down, and then we'll worry about being nice to the ones that are left. — Mark Bittman

It took Lucy forty hours to die and we hardly left her side ... We spent those last hours kissing her frequently and telling her how deeply we loved her. Then I began to read Leah's children's books out loud to her. She had lived a storyless childhood, so I read in the last day of her life the books she had missed. I told her about Winnie the Pooh and Yertle the Turtle, took her Where the Wild Things Are, introduced her to Peter Rabbit and Alice in Wonderland. Each of us took turns reading to her out of Grimm's Fairy Tales, and, at the very last, Leah insisted that I tell all the Great Dog Chippie stories I had told her during our year of exile from the family in Rome. — Pat Conroy

In hockey, nearly everyone plays with a partner. The offense forward line is made up of a left wing, a center, and a right wing. The defense skates in pairs. Only the goalie is alone and he's always weird. Always.

Kenny Simms, who graduated last year, was one of the greatest goalies at Briar and probably the reason we won three Frozen Fours in a row, but that guy had the strangest fucking habits. He talked to himself more than he talked to anyone else, sat in the back of the bus, preferred to eat alone. On the rare occasion that he came out with us, he'd argue the entire time. I once got into it with him over whether there was too much technology available to children. We argued about that topic for the entire three hours we were knocking back beers at the bar.

Sabrina reminds me of Simms. — Elle Kennedy

Young girls always know. They know older women look at them and see what they've left behind and can't get back. It's a truth everyone knows but no one acknowledges: There's nothing more powerful than an eighteen-year-old girl. — Sarah Addison Allen

Of course there always will be darkness but I realize now something inhabits it. Historical or not. Sometimes it seems like a cat, the panther with its moon mad gait or a tiger with stripes of ash and eyes as wild as winter oceans. Sometimes it's the curve of a wrist or what's left of romance, still hiding in the drawer of some long lost nightstand or carefully drawn in the margins of an old discarded calendar. Sometimes it's even just a vapor trail speeding west, prophetic, over clouds aglow with dangerous light. Of course these are only images, my images, and in the end they're born out of something much more akin to a Voice, which though invisible to the eye and frequently unheard by even the ear still continues, day and night, year after year, to sweep through us all. — Mark Z. Danielewski

What we said publicly is that we know that Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons, he's used them; we know about his biological weapons programs; and in the nuclear equation, left to his own devices, with no fissile material, by the end of the decade, he'll have a nuclear weapon. But if fissile material is provided to Saddam Hussein, he'll have a nuclear weapon within a year, so I'd say the year is the outside timetable. — Richard Armitage

Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death. — John Green

Carl Friedrich Gauss, often rated the greatest mathematician of all time, played the market. On a salary of 1,000 thalers a year, Euler left an estate of 170,587 thalers in cash and securities. Nothing is known of Gauss's investment methods. — William Poundstone

Whoever is in charge of such things had been sparing with his blessings on the moment Benno was born. He had neither looks nor wit nor skill. He was not large or strong, he could not sing; in fact, he had a stammer, which on most occasions left him self-consciously mute. One gift only had been given, a gift as simple as it is rare: the gift of pure goodness. He knew, unerringly, what was right, what was kind, what would make people happy, and he did it without fail. His goodness took no effort; there was no internal scale to be balanced. He hoped for no reward and feared no hell. He was not clever- in his final year of school before the teachers despaired of him, he was asked how he would equitably divide a half-pound loaf of bread among himself and two friends. He said he would go without and his two friends would each have a quarter pound, and neither threats of failure not the switch could persuade him to change his answer. — Laura L. Sullivan

They ask me what kind of perfume I wear or how I choose a signature scent or what to wear to what occasion. The truth is, I just go into the perfumery and pick out the most beautiful smell. I sniff the scent and then see with my mind's eye the vision that it brings to my heart. If I want to wear that vision with me every day until the bottle is all used-up, then that's the perfume I'll purchase. And I do use it up until there's nothing left and only then do I go out to buy another one. Another vision for another year or two. Fragrance, to me, is about wearing a perspective on your skin. The scent itself is the vehicle by which you can be reminded of those pictures that those notes have opened in your soul. — C. JoyBell C.

Their world will eat at you," Mab said. "Strip you away bit by bit. Cut off from the Nevernever, you will not survive. Whether it takes one mortal year or a thousand, you will gradually fade away, until you simply cease to exist." Mab stepped closer, pointing at me with the scepter. "She will die, Ash. She is only human. She will grow old, wither and die, and her soul will flee to a place you cannot follow. And then, you will be left to wander the mortal world alone, until you yourself are only a memory.And after that-" the queen opened her empty fist "-nothing. Forever. — Julie Kagawa

I would sit up on top of the woodpile playing and singing at the top of my lungs. Sometimes I would take a tobacco stake and stick it in the cracks between the boards on the front porch. A tin can on top of the tobacco stake turned it into a microphone, and the porch became my stage. I used to perform for anybody or anything I could get to watch. The younger kids left in my care would become the unwilling audience for my latest show. A two-year-old's attention span is not very long. So there I would be in the middle of my act, thinking I was really something, and my audience would start crawling away. I was so desperate to perform that on more than one occasion I sang for the chickens and the pigs and ducks. They didn't applaud much, but with the aid of a little corn, they could be counted on to hang around for a while. — Dolly Parton

The red haired waitress arrived with their drinks, dancing about the table as she placed their orders in front of them. "Hiya, keeds. Peachy place, ain't it?" Before anyone could respond, she kicked her heels in the air and flitted off again.
Waldo lit up a cigarette and tasted his drink. "Listen, I don't think we ought to stay here very long...."
"No shit, Sherlock!" Brisbane chortled. "But first I want to have a little fun. I think I'm gonna talk to some of these guys."
The fredneck left the table and walked over to a group of five men, all of them clad in the old baseball uniforms that were apparently quite popular at The One Year Wonder And All-Around Oddity Bar. They were huddled together on one side of the bar, and Brisbane broke into their conversation with a burst of fredneck chutzpah. — Donald Jeffries

When trying to explain the violent path of some Islamists, Western commentators sometimes blame harsh economic conditions, dysfunctional family circumstances, confused identity, the generic alienation of young males, a failure to integrate into the larger society, mental illness, and so on. Some on the Left insist that the real fault lies with the mistakes of American foreign policy.
None of this is convincing. Jihad in the twenty-first century is not a problem of poverty, insufficient education, or any other social precondition. (Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was earning more than $90,000 a year working for a drilling company in British Columbia, where he also reportedly proclaimed his support of the Taliban and joked about suicide bombing vests, with no repercussions.) We must move beyond such facile explanations. The imperative for jihad is embedded in Islam itself. It is a religious obligation. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

How soon do you want to move in?" "As soon as possible after school is out. In about six or seven weeks." "Are you a teacher too?" AJ asked. Shelby shook her head. "I have a first grader. And a three-year-old." "You're married?" As AJ's brown eyes flitted to her left hand, she self-consciously folded it into her waist. It'd been over a year since Gary's death, but she still wore her wedding band. More for her daughters' sakes than her own. "I was. — Johnnie Alexander

Beauty has long since disappeared. It has slipped beneath the surface of the noise, the noise of words, sunk deep as Atlantis. The only thing left of it is the word, whose meaning loses clarity from year to year. — Milan Kundera

The fantasy/reality confusion ... it's just marvelous in her work. I mean, there, it's practically like what we do, the fantasy working as a sort of metalogic, with which she can solve real, aesthetic problems in the most incredible ways
I was actually in a few of her productions last year, a sort of ersatz member of the company. But finally I just had to get out. Because when that fantasy seeps into the reality, she just becomes an incredibly ugly person. She feels she can distort anything that occurs for whatever purpose she wants. Whatever she feels, that's what is, as far as she's concerned. But then, I suppose ... ' Bron laughed at the ground, then looked up: they'd just left the Plaza
'that's the right we just fought a war to defend. But Audri, when someone abuses that right, it can make it pretty awful for the rest of us. — Samuel R. Delany

The clouds crossed the sky, country rains washed the gardens, moons shone on the lake and the hillsides, cicadas sang in the August grass, boys and girls fell in love. In the early October of that year, in the cathedral hush of a Quebec Indian summer with the lake drawing into its mirror the fire of the maples, it came to me that to be able to love the mystery surrounding us is the final and only sanction of human existence. What else is left but that, in the end? All our lives we had wanted to belong to something larger than ourselves. We belonged consciously to nothing now except to the pattern of our lives and fates. To God, possibly. I am chary of using that much-misused word, but I say honestly that at least I was conscious of His power. Whatever the spirit might be I did not know, but I knew it was there. Life was a gift; I knew that now. And so, much more consciously, did she. — Hugh MacLennan

How could I not love him, after that? That is not to say that I approved of all he did, or much enjoyed the company of the man that he became ... but every little girl needs a big brother to protect her. Tywin was big even when he was little." She gave a sigh. "Who will protect us now?"
Jaime kissed her cheek. "He left a son."
"Aye, he did. That is what I fear the most, in truth."
That was a queer remark. "Why should you fear?"
"Jaime," she said, tugging on his ear, "sweetling, I have known you since you were a babe at Joanna's breast. You smile like Gerion and fight like Tyg, and there's some of Kevan in you, else you would not wear that cloak ... but Tyrion is Tywin's son, not you. I said so once to your father's face, and he would not speak to me for half a year. Men are such thundering great fools. Even the sort who come along once in a thousand years. — George R R Martin

Remember this moment, she said to herself, meaning savor the happiness, though her instinct also took it as a kind of warning. — Katherine Ma

Once, I'd made the mistake of not trusting. When I found Poppy kissing her ex-boyfriend, I'd assumed the worst and left the scene without even trying to talk to her. She'd done it as a purposeful attempt to drive us apart, unable to bear the guilt of being the catalyst for my schism from the clergy. If I had trusted her, if I had stayed, we could have had another year together. Instead, I'd run away, believing that she was unfaithful, and we'd spent a year miserably apart. — Sierra Simone

And yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that it may be compared to the husbandman whereof Aesop makes the fable, that when he died he told his sons that he had left unto them gold buried under the ground in his vineyard: and they digged over the ground, gold they found none, but by reason of their stirring and digging the mould about the roots of their vines, they had a great vintage the year following: so assuredly the search and stir to make gold hath brought to light a great number of good and fruitful inventions and experiments, as well for the disclosing of nature as for the use of man's life. — Francis Bacon

Comrade life,
let us
march faster,
March
faster through what's left
of the five-year plan. — Vladimir Mayakovsky

As an organization, would we like to be in a better spot Everybody would like to know they're in the playoffs. But that's not a reality, year after year being in a playoff spot with 10, 12, 15 games left. We don't have that this year, so our playoffs have started. — John Tortorella

Records subpoenaed from the state Liquor Authority proved that the bar was owned by someone else, not by the witness who had testified to be the owner. The real owner testified that he had closed the bar before the alleged kidnapping, that he had visited it every day during the period of time it has hosted the "kidnapping," and had locked the door as he left and had given no one permission to use it. The bar had been closed for one year before the alleged crime. The irrefutable and obvious conclusion was that, in fact, there was no bar, no "scene" of the alleged crime, and, therefore, no crime. — Assata Shakur

He knew that he was very near achieving the General Temporal Theory that the Ioti wanted so badly for their spaceflight and their prestige. He knew also that he had not achieved it and might never do so. He had never admitted either fact clearly to anyone. Before he left Anarres, he had thought the thing was in his grasp.
...
He wasn't quite sure he was ready to publish. There was something not quite right, something that needed a little refining. As he had been working ten years on the theory, it wouldn't hurt to take a little longer, to get it polished perfectly smooth. The little something not quite right kept looking wronger. A little flaw in the reasoning. A big flaw. A crack right through the foundations...The night before he left Anarres he had burned every paper he had on the General Theory. He had come to Urras with nothing. For half a year he had, in their terms, been bluffing them.

Or had he been bluffing himself? — Ursula K. Le Guin

Few and fewer pigeons visit us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem, few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the grove in our minds is laid waste
sold to feed unnecessary fires of ambition, or sent to mill
and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on. — Henry David Thoreau

It will be my birthday on Tuesday. Last year, I reached the painful conclusion that there wasn't enough time left to read every book ever written. This year, my gloomy realisation is even more painful - I will not be able to correct everyone's mistakes before I depart. — Daniel Finkelstein

This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary - from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river - at least our parents would not let us. — Mark Twain

I don't let anyone touch me," I finally said.
Why not?"
Why not? Because I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. Men who didn't come to the emergency room with you, men who left on Christmas Eve. Men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them then changed their minds. Forests of boys, their ragged shrubs full of eyes following you, grabbing your breasts, waving their money, eyes already knocking you down, taking what they felt was theirs. ( ... ) It was a play and I knew how it ended, I didn't want to audition for any of the roles. It was no game, no casual thrill. It was three-bullet Russian roulette. — Janet Fitch

At school I was called Fred, which is my middle name. At that time, Fred was considered to be a bit of a horrible name, so that's why. Otherwise, I was called Titchy because I was little. I was still only about 4ft something when I left school. I grew a foot under glass in my first year as a gardener. It's really quite amazing what sun and manure can do. — Alan Titchmarsh

I'm not one to insist that a man can't possibly make it without a lot of formal education, since my own formal education pretty much stopped when I graduated from Independence High School in 1901. And then there was a twenty-two-year gap, while I worked on a farm and as a railroad timekeeper and served in the Army and did a lot of other things, before I started to attend night classes at Kansas City Law School - and I left there in 1925 and never got a degree. But I've tried to increase my knowledge all my life by reading and reading and reading, — Harry Truman

Prescott's life was changed from the accepted norm of a proper Bostonian by that crust of bread. While in his junior year at Harvard,the students one day,while eating in the Commons, turned the room into pandemonium by bombarding each other with food;in the midst of it Prescott, who turned at the call of his name, was struck by a crust of bread accurately thrown. It hit him in the open left eye,striking the unprotected pupil;it had the effect usually attending a brain concussion. When he recovered he was made instantly aware that he had lost sight of his left eye. — Victor W. Von Hagen

I know I found his lips and let him caress me without realizing that I, too, was crying and didn't know why. That dawn, and all the ones that followed in the two weeks I spent with Julian, we made love to one another on the floor, never saying a word. Later, sitting in a cafe or strolling through the streets, I would look into his eyes and know, without any need to question him, that he still loved Penelope. I remember that during those days I learned to hate that seventeen-year-old girl (for Penelope was always seventeen to me) whom I had never met and who now haunted my dreams. I invented excuses for cabling Cabestany to prolong my stay. I no longer cared whether I lost my job or the grey existence I had left behind in Barcelona. I have often asked myself whether my life was so empty when I arrived in Paris that I fell into Julian's arms - like Irene Marceau's girls, who, despite themselves, craved for affection. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

There was a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in. — Mark Twain

Even though I left for a year, I grew here as a Jazz man. If I'm fortunate enough to go into the Hall of Fame, I will go as a Jazz man. — Karl Malone

The Times ran an article titled "The Jihadist Next Door." The article noted with alarm that "[i]n the last year, at least two dozen men in the United States have been charged with terrorism-related offenses," leaving intelligence operatives "scurrying for answers."55 The "Americans" who left government officials "scurrying for answers," were: Najibullah Zazi, Afghan Daood Sayed Gilani, Pakistani Umer Farooq, Pakistani Waqar Khan, Pakistani Ramy Zamzam, Egyptian Ahmed Abdullah Minni, Eritrean Aman Hassan Yemer, Ethiopian It makes no sense - it's the freckle-faced boy next door! — Ann Coulter

Well, it's New Year's now but I don't feel that way anymore. I wonder if you do either. Something's happening to me. It's like I'm shrinking smaller and smaller and I can't stp it. There's just os much wrong that I can't imagine the shame in admitting even the tiniest part of it. When you left it was like there was this huge gap to fill, but instead of spreading wide enough to do it I just fell right in, and I'm still falling. Like I'm half-asleep, and I can't wake up, can't wake up ... — Sarah Dessen

Don't we all discover, at some stage or another that there are some things we'll never get any better at, even though we have no idea why and hardly ever notice it when it happens, even though we may have enjoyed these things and might not have been lagging behind last time we checked? Learning to draw, for instance, was a familiar catastrophe - all of a sudden, unaware, you just stop getting any better at it, your drawings never progress beyond those of a four-year-old or a six-year-old, you're left behind by those who "can draw," condemned to producing flat, doughy figures on the page, with no sense of perspective to them and (this was what really struck me) no resemblance to the outside world: condemned by your ruined self to a shameful childhood. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

An annual or frequent choice of Magistrates, who in a year, or in a few years, are again left upon a level with their neighbors, is most likely to prevent usurpation and tyranny ... If rulers know that they shall in short period of time, be again out of power, and ... may be liable to be called to account for misconduct, it will guard them against maladministration. — Clinton Rossiter

The most remarkable thing about Calvin Coolidge is that he served for 67 months, and when he left office, the budget was lower than he came in. In real terms - in nominal terms with vanilla on top - he cut the budget year over year. — Amity Shlaes

If you just do something, then you're a five-year wonder and, goodbye, you're gone. But if people feel it's worthwhile, not only do they copy but they want to learn how to do it To me, that's what it's all about. If someone were to ask me, 'What's the number one thing, in essence, that you left behind?' It was the teaching of others so that they could take my work and take it further. — Vidal Sassoon