We Can Never Go Back Quotes & Sayings

All right," Malcolm said. "Let's go back to the beginning." He paused, staring at the ceiling. "Physics has had great success at describing certain kinds of behavior: planets in orbit, spacecraft going to the moon, pendulums and springs and rolling balls, that sort of thing. The regular movement of objects. These are described by what are called linear equations, and mathematicians can solve those equations easily. We've been doing it for hundreds of years." "Okay," Gennaro said. "But there is another kind of behavior, which physics handles badly. For example, anything to do with turbulence. Water coming out of a spout. Air moving over an airplane wing. Weather. Blood flowing through the heart. Turbulent events are described by nonlinear equations. They're hard to solve - in fact, they're usually impossible to solve. So physics has never understood this whole class of events. Until about ten years ago. The new theory that describes them is called chaos theory. — Michael Crichton

There are many things I don't know, but quite a few I do. I know you can't be lost if you know where you are. I know that life is full of precious and fragile things, and not all of them are pretty. I know that the sun follows the moon and makes days, one after another. Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it, and though we can never go back to the beginning, sometimes, we can start again. — Megan Hart

Okay, go ahead and fill these out," Jeff said, standing as he glanced over the growing crowd in the club. "When you're done, we'll go back to my brother's office and you can show us what you've got." He grinned. "Normally we'd do that first, but something tells me you know exactly how to keep a man's attention."
Indeed I did. Get a tight grip on his balls. A man's attention never wandered far from his crotch, especially when it was in mortal jeopardy. — Rachel Vincent

I'd say that tea's probably strong enough to hammer nails by now. Do you still want it?"
She looked ... interesting in his shirt. Interesting enough that his blood began to churn again. "What are my options?"
"On my schedule, we have a cup of tea, a little conversation, then you get to seduce me back into bed and make love to me again before I go home."
"That's not bad, but I think it bears improving."
"Oh,and how's that?"
"We cut out the tea and conversation."
She ran her tongue over her top lip-his taste was still there-as he walked toward her. "That would take us straight to you seducing me? Correct?"
"That's my plan."
"I can be flexible."
His grin flashed. "I'd like to test that out."
They never got around to the tea. — Nora Roberts

It is idle to say that nations can struggle to outdo each other in building armaments and never use them. History demonstrates the contrary, and we have but to go back to the last war to see the appalling effect of nations competing in great armaments. — Frank B. Kellogg

No matter what you touch and you wish to know about, you end up in a sea of mystery. You see there's no beginning or end, you can go back as far as you want, forward as far as you want, but you never got to it, it's like the essence, it's that right, it remains. This is the greatest damn thing about the universe. That we can know so much, recognize so much, dissect, do everything, and we can't grasp it. And it's meant to be that way, do y'know. And there's where our reverence should come in. Before everything, the littlest thing as well as the greatest. The tiniest, the horseshit, as well as the angels, do y'know what I mean. It's all mystery. All impenetrable, as it were, right? — Henry Miller

By going one step further back in thought, discordant opinions are reconciled by being seen to be two extremes of one principle, and we can never go so far back as to preclude a still higher vision. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can never go wrong cuttin' fence,' repeated Smith, warming to his task. (Pling!) "Always cut fence. That's the law west of the 100th meridian. East of that don't matter none. Back there it's all lost anyhow. But west, we cut fence,' (Plang!) — Edward Abbey

You taste injustice, even if it's fictional, really taste it,it has a way of doing that. Sometimes, you can never put the shoe on the other foot. We can't go back in time and know what it was like to be a black person then. Even today, when things are supposed to be so much better, not one of you can understand what it's like to be black, to live with the knowledge of what happened to your ancestry and still face injustice. But that book makes us taste it and, reading it, we know how bitter that taste is and we know we don't like it. But that bitter wakes you up, and when you wake up, you open your mind to things in this world, you make yourself think. Then you'll decide you don't like the taste of injustice, not for you and not for anyone, and you'll understand that even though all the battles can't be won, that doesn't mean you won't fight. — Kristen Ashley

One can simply never take back the words he spoke.
And when you know you unintentionally did hurt someone, instead of letting it go or keeping a distance from that person, you can actually do something to mend the broken. That's the least we can do, when circumstances never are on our side; we can stick to our words and promises even if people change and fate ruins.. — Sanhita Baruah

As a species, tragedy dwells within us all. We push it to the back of our thoughts, but it is never so far gone that it cannot return, crashing and writhing into our souls: a rogue wave overturning a boat on a calm day. Tragedy is never more than a breath away. We hide from its certainty and go about our lives as though time can be wasted. Somewhere deep inside ourselves we know that we tell ourselves lies. We know that someday everything we love will be gone. — Logan Kain

I can't
I can't think about anything or anyone else," he whispered. A hand drifted up, dragging back through his hair. "I can't think straight when you're around. I can't sleep. It feels like I can't breathe
I just
"
"Liam, please," I begged. "You're tired. You're barely over being sick. Let's just ... Can we just go back to the others?"
"I love you." He turned toward me, that agonized expression still on his face. "I love you every second of everyday, and I don't understand why, or how to make it stop
"
He looked wild with pain; it pinned me in place, even before what he had said registered in my mind.
"I know it's wrong; I know it down to my damn bones. And I feel like I'm sick. I'm trying to be a good person, but I can't. I can't do this anymore. — Alexandra Bracken

We tell each other everything. You take the rap for bad things I do, we have this amazing time together and then all day in classes you ignore me like I don't exist. And I have to watch you and Sally together, and you licking her arse and not telling her about me. And when she says something mean to me you just stand there. I don't even answer back like I used to, I take it and you just stand there and let her speak to me the way she does. What about the fact that I am your best friend now? How do you think that feels, Flo? It feels HORRIBLE, that is how it feels. HORRIBLE.'
I leave her standing in the rain. I deliberately go slowly so she can catch me up, but she doesn't. I get all the way home and she never comes after me. — Dawn O'Porter

The three of us do not go out very often as the three of us. I think Daniel is perfect for Jed, which is the highest compliment I can give. But my friendship isn't with him, and Jed understands that. When we hit the road, we hit it together alone.
We get to the bridge, out undestined destination. Even though there's no sign, no arrow, Jed turns at the last minute and parks us in a verge right before the bridge leaves the ground.
The trunk pops open, and Jed runs round back to retrieve a bag of oranges and a sweatshirt that fits me better.
Shall we make like lizards and leap? he asks.
I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin.
Would you stroll me down the promenade instead? I ask back.
Most certainly, my splendid.
There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people tho don't see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy. — David Levithan

It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely -and why?
We're still reminded-: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on
as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.
And became as lonely as a shepherd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Jump, if you want to, 'cause I'll catch you, girl. I'll catch you "fore you fall. Go as far inside as you need to, I'll hold your ankles. Make sure you get back out. I'm not saying this because I need a place to stay. That's the last thing I need. I told you, I'm a walking man, but I been heading in this direction for seven years. Walking all around this place. Upstate, downstate, east, west; I been in territory ain't got no name, never staying nowhere long. But when I got here and sat out there on the porch, waiting for you, well, I knew it wasn't the place I was heading toward; it was you. We can make a life, girl. A life. — Toni Morrison

And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.'
'What did you say?'
'I said we could have everything.'
'We can have everything.'
'No, we can't.'
'We can have the whole world.'
'No, we can't.'
'We can go everywhere.'
'No, we can't. It isn't ours anymore.'
'It's ours.'
'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back. — Ernest Hemingway,

I wish we'd never got divorced. He and I both wish we'd never got divorced, but we did. I wish I could go back and be the bride again, but I can't. — Sarah Ferguson

Most inspirational writers were born as driftwood and will say they have been beaten against every shoreline during their life. We understand storms. We understand drowning. We understand being devalued. We understand being stranded alone on a beach. God made us this way so we would know where every lighthouse can be found and tell others how to find them. We were never meant to stand on the beach with you because every rescue we do rescues ourselves. We always go back to the sea because that is where driftwood belongs
forever searching for answers to our endless questions and sharing what we learned ... (2012, Writer's Conference) — Shannon L. Alder

I think you're asking too much. You know what I have? Toward this Pris android?"
"Empathy," he said.
"Something like that. Identification; there goes I. My god; maybe that's what'll happen. In the confusion you'll retire me, not her. And she can go back to Seattle and live my life. I never felt this way before. We are machines, stamped out like bottle caps. It's an illusion that I - I personally - really exist; I'm just representative of a type."
He could not help being amused; Rachael had become so mawkishly morose. "Ants don't feel like that," he said, "and they're physically identical."
"Ants. They don't feel period."
"Identical human twins. They don't - "
"But they identify with each other; I understand they have an empathic, special bond. — Philip K. Dick

For years I lived my life suspended, trapped by the past, unable to move into the future. Like every wounded child I just wanted to turn back time and be in that paradise again, in that moment of remembered rapture where I felt loved, where I felt a sense of belonging. We can never go back. I know that now. We can go forward .We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago, when we were little and had no voice to speak the heart's longing. All the years of my life I thought I was searching for love I found, retrospectively, to be years where I was simply trying to recover what had been lost, to return to the first home, to get back the rapture of our first love. I was not really ready to love or be loved in the present. I was still mourning
clinging to the broken heart of girlhood, to broken connections. When that mourning ceased I was able to love again. — Bell Hooks

People need to believe in more than what they see in everyday life. Somewhere inside, we all know that there is more out there than we experience normally. A belief in the other world can help explain why things happen to us. It can give us hope. I feel that we all hope we never get to be too old to fly to Never-Never Land or go through a wardrobe into Narnia. We want to think that there is something looking back at us when we look at the stars. We want to think that just around the bend in the forest, we'll find fairies dancing in a ring. I hope that my work affirms those beliefs," she continues. "I want people to think of my work as a key to that other world. — Wendy Froud

I wanted to write down every bit of wisdom he could impart to me. All sons should write down every word of what their fathers have to say to them. I tried. Why did it take an illness for me to recognize the value of time with him? It seems we humans never learn. And so we relearn the lesson every generation and then want to write epistles. We proselytize to our friends and shake time by the shoulders and tell them, "Seize the day! What matters is this moment!" Most of us can't go back and make restitution. We can't do a thing about our should haves and our could haves — Abraham Verghese

Time goes by so fast, people go in and out of your life. You must never miss the opportunity to tell these people how much they mean to you. - UNKNOWN Loss is a part of life. Over the years I've lost several people who are dear to my heart. Nothing can ever bring them back but when I think of them, their values and virtues, I can keep their spirit alive within me and that is a meaningful feeling. The most important thing to remember, however, is to make the most of the precious time we have with the ones we love. Goal: Light a candle or say a prayer for someone you love today who is no longer with you. — Demi Lovato

The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own. — Charles De Lint

You told me once, long ago, to look into a mirror and see your face. I refused to then. But now Mnimi has forced me to look at my own reflection. I've seen it through my eyes and I've seen it through yours. I wish to the gods that I could change what happened between us. If I could go back, I would never deny you. But I can't. We both know that. Now I just want the chance to know you as I should have known you all those centuries ago. (Styxx) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I could tell he wanted the best for me. Of course, he assumed that would be getting out. Everyone always thought that, not of what we had to go back to, at home. Maybe our parents had thrown away our mattresses. Maybe they'd told our siblings we'd been run over by trains, to make our absence fonder.
Not everyone had a parent. It could be that nothing was waiting for us. Our keys would no longer fit the locks. We'd resort to ringing the bell, saying we've come home, can't we come in?
The eye in the peephole would show itself, and that eye could belong to a stranger, as our family had moved halfway across the country and never informed us. Or that eye could belong to the woman who carried us for nine months, who labored for fourteen hours, who was sliced open with a C-section to give us life, and now wished she never did.
The juvenile correctional system could let us out into the world, but it could not control who would be out there, willing to claim us. — Nova Ren Suma

Nothing is ever truly gone ...
Not for me, nor for any human being. We can only go forward, unless we are guests in some enchantment that is not is ours. We are condemned to an endless present, and we can never go back-the source of all our joy, and all our sorrow.
-Hem at Zelika's grave — Alison Croggon

Can we switch rooms?" Lend called. "I'm king of starving."
"I'll make you something!" Jack said, cheerfully skipping into the kitchen.
"Can you even cook?" I asked, a valid question considering he didn't eat normal food. He could only eat food in the Faerie Realms. Jack could help; he could get me to wherever Raquel was. And he knew the Center better than I did, even.
"Never underestimate what I can do."
"Oh, believe me I don't." I sighed. "Lend, do you want me to go around back so you can come in here?"
"Yeah. Man, this brings whole new levels of suck into my life. — Kiersten White

You can go through your whole life telling yourself that life is logical, life is prosaic, life is sane. Above all sane. And I think it is. I've had a lot of time to think about that. And what I keep coming back to is [her] dying declaration: 'So you understand that when we increase the number of variables, the axioms themselves never change.' — Stephen King

We put the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the other things out. That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea. It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very loudly to each other about how you don't need any tea, and are not going to have any. You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and then you shout out, "I don't want any tea; do you, George?" to which George shouts back, "Oh, no, I don't like tea; we'll have lemonade instead - tea's so indigestible." Upon which the kettle boils over, and puts the stove out. — Jerome K. Jerome

How many times
Can you go back to the same spot
With love? I never hope to know.
We work patiently at our quarrels,
Starting them now like love,
Deliberately but with elaborate
Ease. When they catch
We marvel at the blaze,
Crowding in close.
'Inexhaustible!' we shout at one another,
Happy for the moment.
I never hope to know
How many times. — Harvey Shapiro

You can never rely on musicians. I quit high school at one point to make a go of it with this band and we kept breaking up. So I went back to school. — David James Elliott

There's competition among women everywhere you go. But back home, we understand that you can look like a variety of things and still be from the same culture. What I'm saying is that I've never felt like I was a light-skinned black woman. Never felt that way because we shared the same culture back home. — Grace Gealey

No!" She headed back to her tent. "Leave me, dragon. I never want to see you, or your family, again. Ever!"
Danelin glanced at Brastias. "Family?"
"Don't ask."
The dragon silently watched Annwyl's retreating form. He began chanting and flame surrounded him. That's when Brastias wondered if he would die this day. The flames grew, enveloping the beast, but eventually the flames died away, leaving a very large, very naked man.
With a growl, he followed after Annwyl, disappearing into the tent after her.
"So they can shape-shift then?" Danelin asked quietly.
"Seems so."
"Should we go after him?"
Brastias looked at Danelin. It took him awhile, but he'd finally figured out what he'd just witnessed. A lover's quarrel. Leave it to Annwyl. — G.A. Aiken

We never let go. Ever. Even with punctuation. It's frightening. I can't see anyone from any record company ever writing an email to Neil and not getting it back, with corrections. — Chris Lowe

None of us are superheroes," she said. "These sadnesses that we have never fully go away. And sometimes they rear up, and if we're not careful, if we don't find ways to remind ourselves of what we know-who we know we can be-they make us forget what we've learned, and take us back to the dark place where we started. The place where every decision is a wrong one. — Erin Saldin

I will do everything I can to give the kids the kind of childhood we never had, Zeb," I promised. "Unconditional love, holidays without drunken nudity, and birthday parties where they don't end up crying. Of course, we'll have to go underground to get away from your families. But I'm sure Dick can forge the necessary paperwork." Zeb squeezed me back. "You know, when I pictured us having this conversation, I didn't think nudity and forgery would come into it." I sighed heavily. "And you think you know me so well. — Molly Harper

People are really excited about robotic exploration. I understand the feeling there because, in fact, robots can do things humans can't. They can survive harsh conditions, they can explore places we would never go, plus you never actually have to bring them back. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

My twin, Go. I've said this phrase so many times, it has become a reassuring mantra instead of actual words: Mytwingo. We were born in the '70s, back when twins were rare, a bit magical: cousins of the unicorn, siblings of the elves. We even have a dash of twin telepathy. Go is truly the one person in the entire world I am totally myself with. I don't feel the need to explain my actions to her. I don't clarify, I don't doubt, I don't worry. I don't tell her everything, not anymore, but I tell her more than anyone else, by far. I tell her as much as I can. We spent nine months back to back, covering each other. It became a lifelong habit. It never mattered to me that she was a girl, strange for a deeply self-conscious kid. What can I say? She was always just cool. — Gillian Flynn

He drops his head, his cheek pressed to mine, and he whispers in my ear. "If we go, we can't come back. Not ever. Things will never be the same."
I lean into him, needing to feel every inch of him, wishing he could absorb me and put me out of my misery.
"I'm not perfect Cami. I'm not a thoroughbred like he is. I never will be."
I'm under his spell, but I hear what he's saying. And I don't care. I don't care about anything but having Trick, having him in my life, having as much as he can give me.
"I hear sometimes the wild ones are the best."
He says nothing at first, but I can almost hear his smile as he no doubt recognizes his own words. — M. Leighton

He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumi's note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart. — John Green

All three of them started my way. I bit back a groan.
"It's you," the guy said, coming up beside me.
My eyes snapped up to his and I realized I knew him. Well, sort of. He'd been with Romeo when I ran into him on campus. People never recognized me, so of course this guy did. Here. Now.
"You know him?" Ivy asked, turning to look at me.
"He's drunk and confused," I said. "Can we go now?"
-Braeden, Ivy, & Rimmel — Cambria Hebert

We shall never stop until we can go back home and Israel is destroyed ... The goal of our struggle is the end of Israel, and there can be no compromises or mediations ... the goal of this violence is the elimination of Zionism from Palestine in all its political, economic and military aspects ... We don't want peace, we want victory. Peace for us means Israel's destruction and nothing else. — Yasser Arafat

Here in Southern California we San Diegans have a saying. Hawaiians wouldn't appreciate it, but we say it nonetheless. We go outside, look around, and then say, "Just another day in paradise." The saying fits most every day of the year. In San Diego, near the ocean, it's never bitterly cold and it's never oppressively hot. I can appreciate the realities of the nonsublime weather in certain areas of the country. I spent a few years in Chicago for college, before heading back to San Diego. Then I returned to the Chicago area for two years of graduate school. I have figured that in the five years (sixty months) that I spent in the Midwest, forty months consisted of glacial winter. Another seventeen months were hot, airless summer. Perhaps three months over the entire five years were pleasant. Maybe even a day or two could have been described as idyllic. San Diego is different from that. Every five years we have about sixty months of heavenly weather. — Anonymous

Marry me, Kiara," he blurts out in front of everyone.
"Why?" she asks, challenging him.
"Because I love you," he says, walking up to her and bending down on one knee while he takes her hand in his, "and I want to go to sleep with you every night and wake up seein' your face every mornin', I want you to be the mother of my children, I want to fix cars with you and eat your crappy tofu tacos that you think are Mexican. I want to climb mountains with you and be challenged by you, I want to argue with you just so we can have crazy hot makeup sex. Marry me, because without you I'd be six feet under ... and because I love your family like they're my own ... and because you're my best friend and I want to grow old with you." He starts tearing up, and it's shocking because I've never seen him cry. "Marry me, Kiara Westford, because when I got shot the only thing I was thinkin' about was comin' back here and makin' you my wife. Say yes, chica. — Simone Elkeles

I miss talking to you, Fallen."
"That's too bad. I don't ever miss anything about you."
"You're fun." His eyes sparkled like sunlit gems. "You're never afraid to go tit for tat with me."
"I don't want anything to do with your tits or tats."
He laughed again, his eyes darkening back to brown.


"Did we really just get beat up by that little Junior Guardian?"
"If anyone asks we'll say that there were fifty of them."
I touched my cheek and hissed. "Goddamn ninja punk."
"I feel terrible and I don't mean my wounded ego. I feel really bad." He groaned and rolled to his side, not moving from the floor. "I can't believe we just got our asses handed to us by a goddamn Jonas-brother wannabe."
"He had the hilt piece. Did you see it?"
"No, I was too busy crying like a girl. — Cori Moore

We can never go back. We can rise up from our failures, screwups, and falls, but we can never go back to where we stood before we were brave or before we fell. Courage transforms the emotional structure of our being. This change often brings a deep sense of loss. During the process of rising, we sometimes find ourselves homesick for a place that no longer exists. We want to go back to that moment before we walked into the arena, but there's nowhere to go back to. What makes this more difficult is that now we have a new level of awareness about what it means to be brave. We can't fake it anymore. We now know when we're showing up and when we're hiding out, when we are living our values and when we are not. Our new awareness can also be invigorating - it can reignite our sense of purpose and remind — Brene Brown

Consider just a few of the expressions that fall under the umbrella ARGUMENT IS WAR, collected by the linguist George Lakoff and the philosopher Mark Johnson.
Your claims are indefensible. He attacked every weak point in my argument. His criticisms were right on target. I demolished his argument. I've never won an argument with her. You don't agree? Okay, shoot! If you use that strategy, he'll wipe you out. She shot down all of my arguments.
Or the many variations of LOVE IS A JOURNEY:
Our relationship has hit a dead-end street. It's stalled; we can't keep going the way we've been going. Look how far we've come. It's been a long, bumpy road. We can't turn back now. We're at a crossroads. We may have to go our separate ways. The relationship isn't going anywhere. We're spinning our wheels. Our relationship is off the track. Our marriage is on the rocks. I'm thinking of bailing out. — Steven Pinker

What we do and what we take seriously can often be so far removed from what it is actually all about that it is laughable. We get bogged down in trivia, lost in irrelevant detail to such an extent that our life can whizz past and we don't even notice. By letting go of things that really aren't important, we can put ourselves back on the right track. And the best way to do that is through humor - laughing at ourselves, laughing at our situation, but never laughing at others - they're just as lost as we are and don't need to be laughed at. — Richard Templar

eat here every day if I could. I'm surprised you never heard about this place, seeing as you're part Texan.' The jab had her smiling. 'My grandmother was a great cook, and we ate in almost all the time. As a kid I'd beg to go to a fast food joint, but she'd never allow it unless it was my birthday. Looking back I can see what a dope I was as a kid.' 'My mother was either working or going — Mary Burton

Our life is a one way journey; we can never go back. — Debasish Mridha

One thing is certain: We can't go back. The musical will never be the same as it was. — Harold Prince

There are friends, I think we can't imagine living without. People who are sisters to us, or brothers. Jimmy was one of those. I never thought I might have to go through life without him. I never thought he might be killed by a drunken driver or anything else. Who thinks about things like that when you're seventeen? If I had known ahead of time what was going to happen to him, I would have gone crazy. I guess I did go a little crazy. My Aunt Lo, who's a hospital psychiatrist, says grief travels a certain route-that if you could plot it out on a map you'd have a line that twists and weaves and eventually ends up near the point of departure. I say "near" because although
you may survive the grief, you won't ever be exactly the same. It took me a long time to learn that, and sometimes the whole experience comes back on me and I have to learn it all over again. — Julie Reece Deaver

Anya: I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's- There's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid. It's mortal and stupid. And-and Xander's crying and not talking, and-and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why. — Joss Whedon

That which we witness, we are forever changed by, and once witnessed we can never go back. — Angeles Arrien

The inorganic world out of which life has emerged and into which, in season, it falls back, possesses the latent capacity for endless ramification and diversity. A few chance elements which appear thoroughly stable in their reactions dress up as for a masked ball and go strolling, hunted and hunter together. Their forms alter through the ages. They are shape-shifters, role-changers. Like flying lizard or ancestral men, they run their course and vanish, never to return. The chemicals of which their bodies were composed lie all about us but by no known magic can we return a lost species to life. Life, in fact, is the product of singular and unreturning contingencies of which the inorganic world disclaims knowledge. Only its elements, swept up in the mysterious living vortex, evoke new forms, new habits, and new thoughts. — Loren Eiseley

What if I hate it?" "As long as you've given it a fair shot, then we'll talk about it and figure it out." "If it really, really sucked, I could move back and live with Dad." "Yeah, you could. Though I'd like to think living with me wouldn't really, really, suck." "I've never moved out of Whitford, either. What if I hate Brookline?" "You sure as hell can't go live with Dean. — Shannon Stacey

Kiss me," I whispered, placing my fingers against his chest, taking in the feeling of his heart resting in my hands.
He hesitated. "If I kiss you, we can't go back. If I kiss you ... I'll never want to stop."
My tongue slowly danced across his bottom lip and then I used it to part his mouth as I spoke in a whisper, "Kiss me. — Brittainy C. Cherry

But I enjoyed the feeling of wind in my hair, and I knew my father liked to see it blow straight out when we stood on the quay and watched the boats come in. And after all it was my only pride.
The train waited behind us, puffing and hissing through its valves, and even though it was only an hour's journey to Skagen, I had never been there.
'Can't we go to Skagen one day?' I asked. Being with Jesper and his friends had made me realize the world was far bigger than the town I lived in, and the fields around it, and I wanted to go travelling and see it.
'There's nothing but sand at Skagen,' my father said, 'you don't want to go there my lass. And because it was Sunday and he seldom said my lass, he took a cigar from his waistcoat pocket with a pleased expression, lit it, and blew out smoke into the wind. The smoke flew back in our faces and scorched them, but I pretended not to notice and so did he. — Per Petterson

God has not forgotten you. He will as readily order about the forces of the universe on your account as He did on Noah's. His plans for Noah were also plans for the whole world through Noah. So they are for you. He will use you for the good of the whole world if you will let Him. SELECTED We may forget; God does not! God's time is never wrong, Never too fast nor too slow; The planets move to its steady pace As the centuries come and go. Stars rise and set by that time, The punctual comets come back With never a second's variance, From the round of their viewless track. Men space their years by the sun, And reckon their months by the moon, Which never arrive too late And never depart too soon. Let us set our clocks by God's, And order our lives by His ways, And nothing can come and nothing can go Too soon or too late in our day. ANNIE JOHNSON FLINT "There are no dates in His fine leisure. — Lettie B. Cowman

We all have a " someone " who we carry in our hearts sometimes for an entire lifetime. That one that just doesn't fully remove itself from your journey, reminded at coffee shops through scent and character of a stranger, or a song that you once shared. Years can go by without a thought and then one day you are reminded and it all comes crashing back. The one that could have been, the one that you never knew exactly how to say goodbye to. The one you wish to meet first in another life. — Nikki Rowe

Another voice rages.
I hate that boy! I hate me! I am so incredibly stupid!
A sunflower leans over the fence, smiling
How dare you!
I rip off its head and throw it in the gutter.
The smart thing to do is to keep going on. Walk away quickly and no one will know what I've done. But I can't move because my eyes are locked on the slowly opening front door - locked on Mrs Muir.
'I'm sorry.' My tiny voice sounds so pathetically lame, but I've still got more lameness for her. 'I never do this sort of thing. I like sunflowers. I was just angry about something - nothing to do with you or the flower. I'm really, really sorry.'
'Oh, you are upset! Well, never mind'. Mrs Muir comes closer to me. 'Goodness, we all get cross. The main thing is: did it make you feel any better?'
'No. Yes. Maybe. A little bit.'
'Would you like to do another one? There's more out the back, too. You go for your life dear. I don't mind at all - they need a good pruning. — Bill Condon

When things fall apart and we can't get the pieces back together, when we lose something dear to us, when they whole thing is just not working and we don't know what to do, this is the time when the natural warmth of tenderness, the warmth of empathy and kindness, are just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be embraced. This is our chance to come out of our self-protecting bubble and to realize that we are never alone. This is our chance to finally understand that wherever we go, everyone we meet is essentially just like us. Our own suffering, if we turn toward it, can open us to a loving relationship with the world. — Pema Chodron

When I'm with him, I can feel myself getting better. It's like he's picking up broken pieces of me and putting me back together, and I don't even know he's doing it. We never talk about it. We don't go to therapy. He just loves me and that's enough. — Ilona Andrews

I was banished from that world forever, I knew. I couldn't go back now. One day soon I would go away from here entirely; I would leave this house, perhaps never to return.
I hugged myself, comforting my fear. Very well then, I thought, I will be my own house. I will build myself a house out of my own flesh and bones where my frightened child-self can find shelter. After all, isn't that one of the things that women do? We are houses for our children, shielding them from harm within the stronghold of our bodies, until they are strong enough to breathe and walk alone. So surely I must be able to give myself shelter now. — Patrice Kindl

If you could go back and relive any perfect moment in your
life, which one would it be?"His smile took her breath away. "You know I'm forbidden to use that'gift' except in the direst of circumstances. And itdoesn't work like that - remember, I can only bend it to gain back the last few minutes.""I know, but
if
youcould. Humor me."He thought for a long
moment. "None of them."Disappointment stabbed her. "Why not?""Because the perfect moment can never be improved, and should be remembered, cherished, just the way it was. Like every moment I spend in your arms," he said."We should just go forward and make more of them. — J.D. Tyler

My mom's coming home soon," I said. "We should go to your place."
Patch ran a hand across the shadow of stubble along his jaw. "I have rules about who I take there." I was getting really tired of that answer.
"If you showed me, you'd have to kill me?" I guessed, fighting the urge to feel irritated. "Once I'm inside, I can never leave?"
Patch studied me a moment. Then he reached into his pocket, twisted a key off his key chain, and slipped it into the front pocket of my pajama top. "Once you've gone inside, you have to keep coming back. — Becca Fitzpatrick

You don't have to go back to the way things were. Just go back to the point where you left off. Don't start over ... just keep going, but there's a right way of keeping going. And no one here is going to be angry at you for leaving. We all have to leave sometimes. And some of us never come back. But there's always a choice, even if you've already decided never to return. You can still come back from this. That is the only kind of faith that matters. Not in the world, not in ... God ... , not in our friendship ... just in yourself. — Dave Matthes

There's a cave, we go inside of ourselves because we want to know more, and we turn this one corner and we go, Oh my god - I didn't know that was in here. We can never go back to the way we were. It's like a horrible car accident - you're never the same after that. It's something that you'll think about every day for the rest of your life. — Wayne Coyne

What do you consider the most interesting man-made structure in the galaxy?
The dam they are building at the Three Gorges on the Yangtse. Though perhaps '"baffling'" would be a better word. Dams almost never do what they were intended to do, but create devastation beyond belief. And yet we keep on building them, and I can't help but wonder why. I'm convinced that if we go back far enough in the history of the human species, we will find some beaver genes creeping in there somewhere. It's the only explanation that makes sense. — Douglas Adams

It's not too late," he says. "Zahra, I - "
"Sh." I lay a finger across his lips. "Don't say it. You will marry Caspida, and you will learn to love each other. You will live a happy life, long after my lamp has passed to new hands."
"I won't make my third wish," he says. "That's the answer! If I don't make the wish, you can stay here in the palace for as long as you want. You'll never have to go back to your lamp. We can fight off anyone who tries to take you from me. — Jessica Khoury

But I also knew that there was no going back. One can never go back; nothing and no one is ever the same. All that remained was an occasional evening of sadness, the sadness that we all feel because everything passes and because man is the only animal who knows it. — Erich Maria Remarque

There was a knock at the door. It was Lumiere. The Beast bade him enter.
"Is there anything else you require tonight before retiring, master?"
"I - I thought we might go skating tomorrow."
Lumiere's eyebrows shot up. "Skating, master? You? You've never skated in your life!"
"Belle mentioned that she has skated before. Back in her village. I thought she might like to try it here. How hard can it be?"
"On the backside? Very," said Lumiere. — Jennifer Donnelly

Some things happen to us from which we never recover, and they disrupt the normalcy of our lives. That's how life is. Human nature has a tendency to try to reconstruct old ways and pick up where we left off. If we're wise, we won't continue to go back to the way things were (we can't anyway). We must instead forget the old standard and accept a 'new normal. — Don Piper

THERE IT IS,' my mother says, and what she means is that the dot we've been nearing for weeks, the one that's been growing into a larger dot with two smaller dots circling it, has now become even larger than that, growing from a dot to a disc, shining back the light from its sun, until you can see the blue of its oceans, the green of its forests, the white of its polar caps, a circle of colour against the black beyond. — Patrick Ness

Go back 2,400 years, and you can hear it from the Athenian orator Demosthenes as he chastises his fellow citizens for responding to Macedonian aggression by "forever debating the question and never making any progress" and issuing "empty decrees." "All words, apart from action," Demosthenes warned, "seem vain and idle, especially from Athenian lips: for the greater our reputation for a ready tongue, the greater the distrust it inspires in all men." We've had several years now of watching Obama and his foreign policy team prove this eternal truth as they have feebly and fecklessly responded to crisis after crisis in Ukraine, Syria, and a dozen other venues. — Anonymous

Today, I go east. It's one of my favorite times of day: that perfect in-between moment when the light has a liquid feel, like a slow pour of syrup. Still, I can't shake loose the knot of unhappiness in my chest. I can't shake loose the idea that the rest of our lives might simply look like this: this running, and hiding, and losing the things we love, and burrowing underground, and scavenging for food and water.
There will be no turn in the tide. We will never march back into the cities, triumphant, crying out our victory in the streets. We will simply eke out a living here until there is no living to be eked. — Lauren Oliver

Walt had a way of communicating that was just magical," composer Richard Sherman told me. "Simple, but magical. He would give you a challenge and say, 'I know you can do this.' He made you believe anything was possible. He made you proud to be on his team. And it really was a team effort - Walt would roll up his sleeves and go to work alongside the rest of us. "He saw potential in people who had never really done anything great. My brother Robert and I really had no track record in the music industry, but Walt heard a few of our songs and he gave us an opportunity and inspired us to keep topping ourselves. Without Walt to inspire us, I don't know where we'd be today. "Walt always wanted you to find something wonderful in yourself, to believe in it and consider it God's gift to you. God gives you the gift, and the rest is up to you. Walt taught me that what you do with that gift is your gift back to God. — Pat Williams

I'm behind what is happening to you. I'm doing it. It's both of us. But without me, nothing would be changing in you. I'm . . . taking something from you. And giving something in return. It's the way it used to work, though I can't remember how or when. I just know that it was. I'm willing to stop it, if you want. But I would go back to being as I was before. That scares me. Floating on the wind, never remembering anything for longer than a few minutes. It's because of this tie between us that I can think again, that I can remember what and who I am. If we end it, I lose that. — Brandon Sanderson

We've already altered our relationship with last night," Nick said. "We'll never get that back."
"I know," Kelly said softly.
"We can stop here and just go to sleep.
"Kelly narrowed his eyes, a smile flitting across his lips. "You're going to look for the exit at every turn, aren't you?"
Nick huffed.
Kelly began to unbutton his shirt. "Well there ain't no exits on this ride, babe, 'cause I know all your tricks. — Abigail Roux

I spent as much time as I could with Ghosh. I wanted every bit of wisdom he could impart to me. All sons should write down every word of what their fathers have to say to them. I tried. Why did it take an illness for me to recognize the value of time with him? It seems we humans never learn. And so we relearn the lesson every generation and then want to write epistles. We proselytize to our friends and shake them by the shoulders and tell them, "Seize the day! What matters is THIS moment!" Most of us can't go back and make restitution. We can't do a thing about our should haves and our could haves. But a few lucky men like Ghosh never have such worries; there was no restitution he needed to make, no moment he failed to seize.
Now and then Ghosh would grin and wink at me across the room. He was teaching me how to die, just as he'd taught me how to live. — Abraham Verghese

Things will never go back to the way they were.
My chin tightens. You're right. Because we've both grown and changed. Because we understand each other on every level now. I've seen all your secrets. You've seen mine. We can live for today. Not think about forever. — A.G. Howard

We both know I can't fight you, so go back to your group and shove your offer up your ass. I'll never be that desperate. — Danielle Monsch

each of us humans has a moment-if not many-in which we lapse. for some, the transgression involves sex. for others, simply doubt or a rage so all encompassing, it impels us to make irreversible decisions.
but whatever the transgression is doesn't really matter. what matters is that lapsing is our fate. we humans are doomed to it. worse, it is our destiny to look back longingly, with nostalgia, at our world before we changed, at who we were Before.
we can never forget.
but we can never go back. — Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

It is a queer weapon, a shotgun. Every effort to secure additional range is well paid for. A bird may be going away at tremendous speed, "burning the air" as a youngster would put it. Seemingly nothing but chain-lightning, which zig-zagged a bit, could stop him. A crack of the gun and that wild flier is dead in the air, a full forty yards away. Right then the conviction comes to us that man never made another weapon so deadly as the shotgun. However, go back another forty yards, set the bird up on the limb of a tree and you might shoot at him all day and not kill him. The shotgun is a deadly weapon but its range is strictly limited and we are ourselves pretty well convinced that nothing less than a two-inch cannon will regularly kill single game-birds at one-hundred yards, with any kind of shot that can be put in the gun. — Charles Askins

A cruel joke has been played on us. We are fated always to remember what we learned but never to recall the experiences that taught us. Who can remember being born? Yet, it is possible to speculate that anxiety has its roots in this experience, that dread of abandonment, fears of separation, intolerable loneliness go back to this moment. Who can remember being cared for as an infant? ... Who can remember being toilet-trained? ... Who can remember the attachment which developed to the parent of the opposite sex? ... We cannot remember but what we have forgotten lives on dynamically. — Jo Coudert

We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic - now mercifully stilled, thank God - might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had before. — Daphne Du Maurier

For a second, I feel a sense of overwhelming grief: for how things change, for the fact that we can never go back. I'm not certain of anything anymore. I don't know what will happen
— Lauren Oliver

We want a money-back guarantee before we take a step of obedience, but that eliminates faith from the equation. Sometimes we need to take a flying leap of faith.

We need to step into the conflict without knowing if we can resolve it. We need to share our faith without knowing how our friends will react to it. We need to pray for a miracle without knowing how God will answer. We need to put ourselves in a situation that activates a spiritual gift we've never exercised before. And we need to go after a dream that is destined to fail without divine intervention.

If we want to discover new lands, we've got to lose sight of the shore. We've got to leave the Land of Familiarity behind. We've got to sail past the predictable. And when we do, we develop a spiritual hunger for the unprecedented and lose our appetite for the habitual. We also get a taste of God's favor. — Mark Batterson

Galen places a hand on my thigh under the table and gives it a gentle squeeze. It's not meant to be sensual at all, but I've been going through Galen-withdrawals and I can't help but acknowledge the sensation of lava flowing through my veins. I try, try, try to respect that it's meant to comfort me. Galen must see it on my face because his eyes widen before he moves his hand away from me. "There's nothing for us to go back to, Emma," Galen says, clearing his throat. "That tribunal should have never happened. The Syrena world we once knew doesn't exist anymore."
So I was right. The only thing stopping him in the bedroom earlier was my wound. Not Syrena law. Not Syrena tradition. — Anna Banks

I never say "If I were her, this is how I would have acted, this is what I would have done, etc. etc." And why? Well because I am not her and she is not me. We cannot say what we would have done if we were someone else, because, we are us and they are they. If you want to say that, then you must also be willing to go back into the womb of their mothers and live their lives from that point on - then - you can say that. — C. JoyBell C.

Nonetheless, after we've dropped off the birds and volunteered to go back to the woods to gather kindling for the evening fire, I find myself wrapped in his arms. His lips brushing the faded bruises on my neck, working their way to my mouth. Despite what I feel for Peeta, this is when I accept deep down that he'll never come back to me. Or I'll never go back to him. I'll stay in 2 until it falls, go to the Capitol and kill Snow, and then die for my trouble. And he'll die insane and hating me. So in the fading light I shut my eyes and kiss Gale to make up for all the kisses I've withheld, and because it doesn't matter any more, and because I'm so desperately lonely I can't stand it.
Gale's touch and taste and heat remind me that at least my body's still alive, and for the moment it's a welcome feeling. I empty my mind and let the sensations run through my flesh, happy to lose myself. — Suzanne Collins

Journalism is not like fiction and will never be. In fiction, you can feed people with lies, yet at the end of the reading, people still live the same life - go to work, eat, come back home, and sleep - nothing really changes aside from, at the very least, their perception of the world. But, things are different in journalism. You tell people a barefaced life, they will believe it, and something is going to happen. People will promptly respond to what they believe is true because it relates to their life, and we take life seriously, don't we? — Aishah Madadiy

Optimism is contagious, he states.
If that were the case, all your would have to do is go to the person you loved with a huge grin, full of plans and ideas, and know how to present the package. Does it work? No. What is really contagious is fear, the constant fear of never finding someone to accompany us to the end of our days. And in the name of this fear we are capable of doing anything, including accepting the wrong person and convincing ourselves that he or she's the one, the only one, who God has placed in our path. In very little time the search for security turns into a heartfelt love, and things become less bitter and difficult. Our feelings can be put in a box and pushed to the back of the closet in our head, where it will remain forever, hidden and invisible. — Paulo Coelho

I hope every person who reads or hears this will take the time to go back and read the Declaration of Independence. Only by recapturing the spirit of independence can we ensure our government never resembles the one from which the American States declared their separation. — Ron Paul

I have a theory that life is gathering the raw materials, and when we die, we get to make patterns out of our lives and relive them in whatever order we want. That way I can spend forever repeating the days when I was really happy, and never have to experience any of the sad days. So that's how you live a really great life. You make sure you have enough good days that you want to go back to. — Robyn Schneider

You can't know that." "But I do," she said. "I can feel it. Goddamn it, you think you're the only one with a voice inside? Samantha Aldovar is in there, and she is out of time. If we back off, they kill her and eat her. And if we take the time to go through channels and go in with SRT and all that, she disappears and she's dead. I know it. She's in there now, Dex. I got such a strong feeling; I've never been more sure about something." It — Jeff Lindsay

Thousand years ago, we all descended from Africans who left the continent. Those ancestors, we will never know their name. We can go back 200 or 300 years and actually populate your family tree with real people who had names and documents. They had customs, characteristics that, unbeknownst to you, you have inherited. Almost through osmosis it has been passed down to you. — Henry Louis Gates

We can't change anything in the past. All we can do now is take comfort in each other, and the truth that we never need to go back to our dark places. — Emily Faith