Quotes about parting
page 17

“But adulthood," continued the barely twentysomething, "doesn't give you power over what matters most. It doesn't protect you from pain, loss, fate. That's part of being human.”

Cynthia Leitich Smith (1967) American writer and poet

Source: Tantalize

Pain, Fate, Loss, Adulthood

“I have accepted fear as part of life – specifically the fear of change… I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back….”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

Life, Fear, Change, Heart

“Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems

“Wildness had never been a part of her life. Home, work, home, work. That's all her life had consisted of, really. She'd told Maddox that she'd been glad for her solitude, bu the truth was, there were times she'd been starved for touch. Any touch.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Night

Life, Truth, Home, Solitude

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame

Change

“Some part of me knew he would show up, that if I stood in one place long enough he would find me, like you're taught to do when you're lost. But they never taught us what to do if both of you are lost, and you both end up in the same place, waiting.”

Nick Flynn book Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Source: Another Bullshit Night in Suck City

Waiting

“There was a man who was worthless, and knew he was worthless, and yet however far down he tried to sink his soul, there was always some part of him capable of great action.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Soul

“Forgiveness is the best part of valor… Discretion is easy. It's finding the courage to forgive yourself and others that is hard. [Acheron]”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Forgiveness, Courage

“This is where you can find your soul if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you that you've never dared look at before. Do not come here and ask me to show you how to draw a face. Ask me to help you find the wind.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Soul, Help, Drawing

“So here I am walking around with another person inside of me. Though I think I put it better the day we parted when I said there is a third person we have created from the two of us. And I am stalked now by that other entity.”

Robert James Waller The Bridges of Madison County

Source: The Bridges of Madison County

Thinking, Personality

“Love is not simply the sum of sweet greetings and wrenching partings and kisses and embraces, but is made up more of the memory of what has happened and the imagining of what is to come.”

Anita Shreve book Fortune's Rocks

Source: Fortune's Rocks

Love, Imagination, Kiss, Memory

“As long as we remember a person, they're not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us.”

Justin Cronin book The Twelve

Bradford J. Wolgast
The Passage Trilogy, The Passage (2010)
Source: The Twelve

Feeling, Memory, Personality

“When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.”

Mark Strand (1934–2014) Canadian-American poet, essayist, translator

"Keeping Things Whole" (1969)
Source: Selected Poems
Context: p>In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.</p

“There was no twinkle in his eyes.
"Maybe I just love some of you. Maybe not enough."
Tiger Lily blinked at him, and she didn't understand how anyone could only love a part. Her greedy heart didn't work that way.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Love, Way, Understanding, Heart

“Clary and Simon continued to stare judgmentally. It made Simon very happy. Judging people together was an essential part of best friendship.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Born to Endless Night

Friendship, Happiness, People

“People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. -Studs Terkel”

Studs Terkel (1912–2008) American author, historian and broadcaster

People, History

“This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren't.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

“Victories and defeats form part of everyone's life - everyone, that is, except cowards, as you call them, because they never lose or win.”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

Life, Victory

“Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: Swiftly Tilting Planet

Star, Sun

“On the contrary, there is something pleasing about his mouth when he
speaks. And there is something of dignity in the way his trousers cling to those most English parts
of him.”

Seth Grahame-Smith book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Source: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Way

“It has been my experience that most human stories are circular rather than linear. Regardless of the path we choose, we somehow end up where we commenced - in part, I suspect, because the child who lives in us goes along for the ride.”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Glass Rainbow

“Sometimes I feel the need to reaffirm all of it, the whole unhappy territory and all the things loved and unlovable in it, for all of it is part of me.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Epilogue.
Source: Invisible Man (1952)

Love, Feeling

“I know part of what turns me on so hard, makes me so violent with lust, is that he's dangerous. I fell for the bad guy. I'm crazy about the one who's trouble. The alpha that doesn't play well with others and doesn't take orders from anyone.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Guy

“God cannot take sides; for He is in all of us. We are all a part of Him, and when we try to destroy Him, we destroy ourselves.”

Sidney Sheldon book The Sands of Time

Source: The Sands of Time

God

“He put a dark place in me and I can't forgive him for that. But it's a part of me now and how can I regret what I am - though it often makes me sad.”

Valerie Martin (1948) American writer

Sadness, Forgiveness

“And as he held his first true lover against him, feeling that familiar difference in their heights and smelling that wonderful cologne, part of him wanted to debate this break up until they both gave in and kept trying.
But that wasn’t fair.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Feeling, Lovers

“It’s hard to throw away history. It was like you were throwing away a part of yourself.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

History

“But for the most part, love is a recognition, an opportunity to say, 'There is something about you I cherish.”

Raymond E. Feist book Magician: Master

Source: Magician: Master

Love

“I try hard not to judge anyone, and I try to bless everyone who is a part of my life, particularly anyone with whom I am having any problems”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Source: It's Not Easy Being Green: And Other Things to Consider

Life, Problem

“Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

Suicide

“But sometimes, too, you have this little feeling of knowing, this fuzzy, gnawing sense that someone will become a major something in your life. You just know that theirs will be a life you will enter and become a part of.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Life, Feeling, Sense

“I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

“She struggled with her sadness, but tried to conceal it, to divide it into smaller and smaller parts and scatter these in places she thought no one would find them.”

Nicole Krauss book Great House

Source: Great House

Sadness

“The only thing true about what you just said was the storybook damsel part - and that only because you're pretty enough to be one.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

World, History, Time, Reading

“It was his subconscious which told him this — that infuriating part of a person's brain which never responds to interrogation, merely gives little meaningful nudges and then sits humming quietly to itself, saying nothing.”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 17

Personality

“Judging people together was an essential part of best friendship”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Born to Endless Night

Friendship, People

“That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal; from which it follows that irregularity—that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment, are an essential part and characteristic of beauty.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Beauty

“Enough," Curran said. An unmistakable command saturated his voice. Jim clicked his mouth shut. I crossed my arms. "I'm sorry, is this the part where I fall to my knees and shiver in fear, Your Furriness? Silly me, I didn't get the memo.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Gifts

Fear

“We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck... But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.”

Ellen Goodman (1941) American journalist and writer

Attributed

Love, People, Forgiveness

“There's some illogical part of me that still believes if you want Superman to show up, first there's got to be someone worth saving.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

“If this is love, no thanks. I don’t want any part of it. When I’m older, I’m just going to do my own thing. If I like a boy, fine, I’ll date him, but I’m not going to sit at home and cry over him. I cry over important things.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Love, Home, Boy, Cry

“It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

"Imaginary Homelands (1992)
Source: Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
Context: It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity. Which seems to be self-evidently true; but I suggest that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form. It is made more concrete for him by the physical fact of discontinuity, of his present being in a different place from his past, of his being "elsewhere"… human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capably only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because of our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death.

Loss, Past, Country

“The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.”

Daniel Woodrell (1953) Novelist

Source: Winter's Bone

Love

“Because it gives him and excuse to be around her--without making it look like he gave in first. That way, he can still seem manly."

"That's ridiculous." Especially the part about Christian being manly.

"Guys do ridiculous things for love.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Love, Way, Guy

“part memory part distance remaining
mine in the ways that I learn to miss you”

W.S. Merwin The Shadow of Sirius

Source: The Shadow of Sirius

Way, Learning, Memory

“When the love of your life dies, the problem is not that some part of you dies too, which it does, but that some part of you is still alive.”

Jackie Kay (1961) Poet and novelist

Source: Trumpet

Love, Life, Problem

“Everything comes home, my mother used to say; every word spoken, every shadow cast, every footprint in the sand. It can't be helped; it's part of what makes us who we are.”

Joanne Harris book The Lollipop Shoes

Source: The Lollipop Shoes

Home, Help

“A compassion swirled form nowhere in the high I was lost in. She needed me. She needed me to accept her for what she was. And when I realized that I had it within myself to give her at least this small part of me, the last of my fear melted away.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Fear

“Because she was raw and uncertain, and she liked to keep all the messy parts of herself to herself…. As much as Lena liked to hide the mess and display the finished product, by this point she was all mess and no product.”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

“The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

Source: Nature

World, Nature

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Suffering, Training, Hurtful

“The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Life, Falseness

“We clung to books and to our friends; they reminded us that we had another part to us.”

Annie Barrows book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Books

“I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.”

Jonathan Lethem You Don't Love Me Yet

Source: You Don't Love Me Yet

World

“Soldiers don't complain… I am not going to do it; I will pretend this is part of a war.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

War

“Pieces and parts were always easier to process. The full picture, the entire story, was another thing entirely. But you just never knew. Sometimes, people could surprise you.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

People

“All young people worry about things, it's a natural and inevitable part of growing up, and at the age of sixteen my greatest anxiety in life was that I'd never again achieve anything as good, or pure, or noble, or true, as my O-level results.”

David Nicholls book Starter for Ten

Source: Starter for Ten

Life, People, Age, Nature

“Part of the function of memory is to forget; the omni-retentive mind will break down and produce at best an idiot savant who can recite a telephone book, and at worst a person to whom every grudge and slight is as yesterday's.”

Christopher Hitchens book Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

Source: Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

Books, Memory, Personality, Forgetting

“Part of growing up is making sure your sense of reality isn't entirely grounded in your own mind.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Reality, Sense

“It’s so hard to communicate because there are so many moving parts. There’s presentation and there’s interpretation
and they’re so dependent on each other it makes things very difficult.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Communication, Dependency

“Something inside me shuts down and I'm too numb to feel anything. It's like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games. But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers.

Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Hunger, Feeling, Game, Flowers

“Devour me.
I'll become part of you and always be with you.”

Matsuri Hino Japanese manga artist

Source: Vampire Knight, Vol. 9

“No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which he took no interest- for it is a part of education to learn to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: Quoted in Herbert Howarth, Notes on Some Figures behind T. S. Eliot (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964), p. 89

Education, Study, Learning

“The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean. So each wave of creation is a part of the eternal Ocean of Spirit. The Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

“Sometimes I have the urge to conquer large parts of Europe.”

Patricia Briggs book Cry Wolf

Source: Cry Wolf

“People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a part of it.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Life, People

“My "fear" is my substance, and probably the best part of me.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Fear

“How do you know that you are not part of a book? That someone's not reading your story right now?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Books, Reading

“There’s no democratic state that’s not compromised to the very core by its part in generating human misery.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

“I know that even now, having watched enough television, you probably won't even refer to them as lepers so as to spare their feelings. You probably call them 'parts-dropping-off challenged' or something.”

Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Feeling

“It's all connected. When you save any part of the world, you've saved the whole world. In fact, that's the only way it can be done.”

Robin Hobb (1952) American fiction writer (pseudonym)

Source: Golden Fool

World, Way

“Every relationship has a hard part at the beginning. This is our hard part. It's not like a puzzle piece where there's an instant fit. With relationships, you have to shape the pieces on each end before they go perfectly together.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

“People parted, years passed, they met again- and the meeting proved no reunion, offered no warm memories, only the acid knowledge that time had passed and things weren't as bright or attractive as they had been.”

Jacqueline Susann book Valley of the Dolls

Source: Valley of the Dolls

People, Knowledge, Memory, Time

“Remember, attraction is only one part of a relationship. Loyalty, commitment, responsibility and maturity make up the rest.”

Ruth Westheimer (1928) American sex therapist

Loyalty

“A relationship isn't something that has to be created in a day or perfected in a day. Part of the game is to keep working on it. It's something that'll always be just a little flawed.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Game, Perfection

“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”

Anatole France book The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard

Tous les changements, même les plus souhaités ont leur mélancolie, car ce que nous quittons, c'est une partie de nous-mêmes; il faut mourir à une vie pour entrer dans une autre.
Pt. II, ch. 4
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)

Life, Change, Goodbye