Quotes & Sayings About Walking Away From The Past

Some of the most life-shaping decisions you make in this season will be about walking away from good-enough, in search of can't-live-without. — Shauna Niequist

I developed friends in the community that were in walking distance or a bicycle ride away, so that I socialized and did a lot of things that children do in their early years. — Paul Smith

Being our best involves walking away from every situation with less than what we had when we encountered it because we left something behind in the exchange. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Your objective is to avoid being on a string.
The first step, I think, is to get over the fear of losing a man by confronting him. Just stop being afraid, already. The most successful people in this world recognize that taking chances to get what they want is much more productive than sitting around being too scared to take a shot. The same philosophy can be applied to dating: if putting your requirements on the table means you risk him walking away, it's a risk you have to take. Because that fear can trip you up every time; all too many of you let the guy get away with disrespecting you, putting in minimal effort and holding on to the commitment to you because you're afraid he's going to walk away and you'll be alone again. And we men? We recognize this and play on it, big time. — Steve Harvey

One has to go away, leave the self. How far must one not arrive in order to write, how far must one wander and wear out and have pleasure? One must walk as far as the night. One's own night. Walking through the self toward dark. — Helene Cixous

No, not really. I mean, at the end of the day, it's just a part. You just go into it, and like your life, you're walking along the street, as a really bad analogy, you step on a little stone, and it just kind of flies away and you have no idea where it's going. And then you are just trying not to drown afterwards. And that's my life. See, that was really terrible. — Robert Pattinson

In the end, it was such a simple, small thing. He had felt flashes of it before in his life, the absolute certainty. But the truth was that he'd kept walking away from it. It was a far more terrifying idea to imagine how much control he really had over how his life turned out. Easier to believe that he was a gallant ship tossed by fate than to captain it himself. — Maggie Stiefvater

Carried away in a sort of dream, he smiled, then he began to hurry back towards the lady; he was walking faster than usual, and his shoulders swayed backwards and forwards, right and left, in the most absurd fashion; altogether he looked, so utterly had he abandoned himself to it, ignoring all other considerations, as though he were the lifeless and wire-pulled puppet of his own happiness. — Marcel Proust

I will never, ever regret stopping you from walking out of my life a second time, Kyle," she said in an emotional voice. "And I can prove it."
She reached for the buttons on her trench coat and undid them, one at a time. Then she opened the coat and let it drop to the floor.
And even if she didn't say a single word more, Kyle knew he would never again doubt the way Rylann felt about him.
She was wearing his flannel shirt.
"You kept it," he said softly. "All this time."
She nodded. "For nine years, I've held on to this darn shirt, literally dragging it across the country and back."
Kyle touched her cheek, gently brushing away a tear with his thumb. "Why?"
She paused hesitantly, and then with a tender smile, finally put it all on the line, too. "I guess I always hoped you'd come back for it someday. — Julie James

Coyotes move within a landscape of attentiveness. I have seen their eyes in the creosote bushes and among mesquite trees. They have watched me. And all the times that I saw no eyes, that I kept walking and never knew, there were still coyotes. When I have seen them trot away, when I have stepped from the floorboard of my truck, leaned on the door, and watched them as they watched me over their shoulders, I have been aware for that moment of how much more there is. Of how I have only seen only an instant of a broad and rich life. — Craig Childs

We've been helping you out in Alaska in considerable ways, and you're walking away from the responsibility, and we're not going to allow that. — Lisa Murkowski

Toby, if I say challenging him is futile, that you'll change nothing and only grant the omen you saw this morning power over you ... if I say you can save your life and your heart by walking away from this, will it matter?" Part of me
most of me
wanted to say, "Yes, it would matter; please tell me to stay here. If you tell me, I'll stay." I didn't want to go. I'm not a hero; I never have been. I just do what has to be done. But when you get right down to it, isn't that the definition of hero? — Seanan McGuire

Do you realize how many abusers are walking around unpunished? How many rape charges are dropped because of 'insufficient' evidence, or how many date rapists get away with what they've done because the victim is too scared to tell anyone? — Elle Kennedy

If writing is the ultimate act of self-pleasure, then mine certainly qualifies as masturbatory.
Still, if you gave me a box of pens and a box of tissues, and then locked me in a room with nothing else but skin mags and blank notebooks, I'd be lying if I told you I'd run out of pens before tissues.
The nice thing about writing is that you actually get to share it with other people when you're done, which usually doesn't go over so well with spent bodily fluids, but ideally you don't want readers walking away from your book with the sneaking suspicion that they've just spent hours of their precious lives watching you masturbate.
Unless of course it's that type of publication. — Arthur Graham

Pause and remember - You deserve peace! So, don't feel bad for one moment about walking away from people, jobs, and situations that keep you from having peace of mind. — Jennifer Young

George W. Bush and his administration embarked on a full-scale assault on civil liberties, human rights and the rule of law, walking away from his international obligations, tearing up international treaties, protocols and UN conventions. — Bianca Jagger

The way I see it, truth only looks good when you're looking at it from far away. It's kind of like that beautiful girl you see on the street when you're riding past in the bus ... there she is, this amazing girl walking by on the street, and you think if you could only get off this stupid bus and introduce yourself to her, your life would change.
The thing is, she's not as perfect as you think, and if you ever got off the bus to introduce yourself, you'd find out ... This girl is truth. She's not so pretty, not so nice. But then, once you get to know her, all that stuff doesn't seem to matter. — Neal Shusterman

I have learned to not let a bad race or failure bring me down, and always walking away with something positive and learning from mistakes so I can be better or stronger next time. — Erin Hamlin

He hunched his shoulders and drove his feet harder, as if he wasn't so much walking to Queenie as away from himself. — Rachel Joyce

If traveling was free, you'd never see me again. — Anonymous

You know when you're walking to the trash can at the zoo and you're holding something important in one hand, and you have something you have to throw away in the other hand, and you're sort of distracted because you just realized the universal truth that everything in the world either is or isn't pandas and you're trying to decide if that's an important epiphany or not and it's so distracting that it's not until you're halfway back to the lemur house that you realize you're still holding the garbage in your hand and that you seem to have thrown your car keys in the trash? — Jenny Lawson

Meeting Harrison hadn't been part of her plan, but once she'd met him, walking away from him had never been an option. Now she wondered if he'd be the one to walk away from her when he knew the truth about her past. He'd been so brutally honest with her about his own life and his career with the CIA before he'd started working for Red Stone Security.
But she'd kept her secrets. — Katie Reus

In the past I had often tried to escape the grown-up world of sorrow through my imagination- dreaming that a handsome young lieutenant would ride to my rescue or that a great empresario would discover my musical talents and whisk me away. I had envisioned knights in shining armor and happily ever after scenes to escape from rules or boredom or pain; including a vision of my mother walking through our front door whole and well again. Now I knew that a lifetime of escape led to a life like Aunt Bertie's. My imagination was a gift, but I had to live in the real world. My eyes had been opened this summer to poverty and crime and abuse and I needed to use my imagination not to escape, but to help people like Irina and Katya, to make my own contribution as the women in the women's pavilion had done. I couldn't do it in the same way Jane Adams and my grandmother and Aunt Mat were, but I would find my own way and my own time. — Lynn Austin

It's long past dark, and I don't see anyone walking tonight. Maybe Sundays are off-limits. Maybe my ninja girl even goes to bed and gives her swaying, beautiful hair a break. I wonder where she sneaks off to. I wonder, does she have a secret boyfriend or a favorite place? The ants say: What the hell are you doing to yourself? You'll never see her again. She lives two thousand miles away!
Then I think of Granddad and wonder why I dream about a man who is twelve thousand miles away. It makes me ask: Why do I care so much about people who are so far away from me? — A.S. King

She felt some strange yearning, but she couldn't decide what it was for. Not for the city: it seemed like another country to her now, remembered, not felt. She knew if she were there, walking past the market with its glistening stacks of fruit that sometimes rolled onto the pavement, stepping into the pharmacy for overpriced shampoo and body cream, passing the windows full of nice clothes like the clothes she already has (once she got a linen blouse home only to discover that she owned one almost exactly like it), she would be convinced that she could no longer stand to be be away, that she missed it all terribly. But from here that life seemed unreal, like something she saw in a movie. She wondered if that's how her grandparents had managed to leave the old country behind, whether it had ceased to exist as a discernible thing once it was gone along the watery horizon, whether they had told themselves that some day they would come back to reclaim it. — Anna Quindlen

Walking with our heads down trying to pull the weight of our mistakes doesn't make them go away. Choice it the only thing that conquers regret. Choosing to learn from our past and waking up with hope on the pillowcase beside us rather than remorse. — Robin Bielman

Oh, God, I would give anything to change the past," he gasped. "To make it so that the last thing you saw was not me walking away from you. In your memories I am forever one and twenty, and cocky, and sneering, and looking self-righteous. And I've changed, Beth," he gasped, choking on a sob he could not hide. "I want so damn much for you to see how I've changed. To see me now. There are no lies in my eyes. No motives other than to show you that I am not the callous man I was. And that I love you ... . I love you so damn much."
He was crying. The tears trickled unchecked down his cheeks, dripping onto his lips. She touched them, wiped them away, which only caused them to spill faster and harder. — Charlotte Featherstone

And finally it was too much. I could not talk myself down from the feeling, and the feeling became unbearable. I reached in deep to the recesses of my locker. I pushed everything - photographs and notes and books - into the trash can. I left the locker open and walked away. As I walked past the band room, I could hear through the walls the muffled sounds of "Pomp and Circumstance." I kept walking. — John Green

Leave off sniffing the carcass of your old life-do you enjoy unending pain? There is no shame in walking away from bones. Nor is there any special wisdom in injuring oneself over and over. What is your loyalty to that pain? To abandon it will not lessen you. — Robin Hobb

Viola had a harrowing story about riding a bicycle west out of the burnt-out ruins of a Connecticut suburb, aged fifteen, harboring vague notions of California but set upon by passersby long before she got there, grievously harmed, joining up with other half feral teenagers in a marauding gang and then slipping away from them, walking alone for a hundred miles, whispering French to herself because all the horror in her life had transpired in English and she thought switching languages might save her, wandering into a town through which the Symphony passed five years later. — Emily St. John Mandel

For me it's all about creating chaos.. and then getting away with it. — Hafsa Shah

It's like I'd been walking a tightrope with a big safety net underneath me, but I never really thought about the net until someone took it away. And then every single step scared me to death. — Margaret Peterson Haddix

Walking away from you was like walking away from the best part of me. I almost didn't recognize him.Walking away from you was like walking away from the best part of me. I almost didn't recognize him. — Amy Lane

... as a convention, you get up and walk to the window to make the audience believe that you're looking out. It's for the audience, not for you! And what it means to you is something emotional [...] If you went to the Actors Studio you'd spend six months seeing the snow before you could say, 'Look at the snow.' This takes a terrible burden away from the actor, who thinks he's got to see the woods and the snow. 'Give me my gun! I see a rabbit! Give me my gun!' "

Meisner sounds thrilled at the possibility of a hunt.

"That happens when you're still sitting there reading. Then when they put in the scenery you move to the window. Isn't that simple? How simple it is to solve the problem of seeing things when you know that it's all in you emotionally, and that walking to the window is only a convention. — Sanford Meisner

When your target is too far away from you, continue walking singing the song you like. — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Neither of us ever threw anything away. We made
a lot of mix tapes while we were together. Tapes for making out, tapes for dancing, tapes for falling asleep. Tapes for doing the dishes, for walking
the dog. I kept them all. I have them piled up on my bookshelves, spilling out of my kitchen cabinets, scattered all over the bedroom floor. I don't
even have pots or pans in my kitchen, just that old boom-box on the counter, next to the sink. So many tapes. — Rob Sheffield

Now, Miss Bentley," he said with mock seriousness. "I'll have you know that yes, you are correct, I will always be the master in a relationship. I will always be the master when it comes to sex. I am the man."
Harly was having a hard time trying to maintain her own contrite, meek expression; her quivering lips gave that away. "Yes, Sir."
"See, when I say strip, you strip. When I say come here, you come. When I say kiss me, you kiss me. When I say you're walking around in my presence in nothing but silk stockings and a garter belt and a red satin bra, you will do so."
"Not happening."
"Insubordination will not be tolerated."
"I'll tell my mother."
"I'm not scared of her."
"All right. I'll tell your mother."
"Okay, some insubordination will be tolerated."
"I thought so."
"And when I say get the bondage gear-"
She guffawed right in his face. — Angela Verdenius

when you stay with something instead of walking away, it builds something new inside of you, something solid and weighty, something durable. But you do have to wait for it. You have to earn it the hard way. — Shauna Niequist

All I know is that I am walking on a bridge. Amidst the mist the point where it started appears faded and the bridge ends in bright light that makes it too hard to even look. I need to cross this and I am walking. But, my Lord, I am tired!

I love this blue; I wish if I could see the depth of the river beneath, come back to the surface, float and then to be carried away by the tranquil waves to the banks where a thousand lilies will bloom, look at the sun and say 'we love you'.

O Lord, remember, they are my eyes that longed for a life the boon of your sight! — Preeth Nambiar

I say, did you hear me?" The old man shook a worn walking stick at the oak. "I said move it and I meant it! I was sitting on that rock" -he pointed to a boulder- "enjoying the rising sun on my old bones when you had the nerve to cast a shadow over it and chill me! Move this instant. I say!" The tree did not respond. It also did not move. "I won't take any more of your insolence!" The old man began to beat on the tree with his stick. "Move or I'll - I'll -" "Someone shut that looney in a cage!" Fewmaster Toede shouted, galloping back from the front of the caravan. "Get your hands off me!" the old man shreiked at the draconians who ran up and accosted him. He beat on them feebly with his staff until they took it away from him. "Arrest the tree!" he insisted. "Obstructing sunlight! That's the charge! — Margaret Weis

In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the lips and face and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smile and kept moving. If I could have physically passed away, just let it all go, like that, without doing anything, stepped out of life as easily as walking through a door I would have done. But I was going to sleep at night and waking in the morning, disappointed to be there and resigned to existence. — Neil Gaiman

Honestly, Edward." I felt a thrill go through me as I said his name, and I hated it. "I can't keep up with you. I thought you didn't want to be my friend."
"I said it would be better if we weren't friends, not that I didn't want to be."
"Oh, thanks, now that's all cleared up." Heavy sarcasm. I realized I had stopped walking again. We were under the shelter of the cafeteria roof now, so I could more easily look at his face. Which certainly didn't help my clarity of thought.
"It would be more ... prudent for you not to be my friend," he explained. "But I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella."
His eyes were gloriously intense as he uttered that last sentence, his voice smoldering. I couldn't remember how to breathe. — Stephenie Meyer

The war was just a mile or so away, and I wondered at my simply walking to it, as I might walk to the market or to school. Today I will walk to the war. — Cynthia Rylant

Oh,' the priest said, 'that's another thing altogether - God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn't it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around. — Graham Greene

I had so looked forward to her walking." Maud carried her thirteen-month-old sister a few steps away and put her down on her feet. "Walk to Daddy," Maud said, and the baby threw out her arms and took the few steps across the space to her father's chair. — Katherine Paterson

For nearly four weeks, his family had been walking on eggshells around him, expecting him to fall apart at any moment and he was damn tired of it. He wished he could apart. Maybe it would hurt less if he could just say to hell with everything and find a corner to hide away in. — Nicola Sinclair

Keep walking! Keep walking!" Agres hissed as they headed away from Gila walking as fast as they could at this point they didn't care how they looked. — Charon Lloyd-Roberts

What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that's what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by. How do you know ... I felt that by walking away I was abandoning [them], that I spent my entire life, day after day, abandoning people. — Peter Cameron