Quotes about going
page 53

“You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Sense

“I don't want to hear any words like that while I'm here. Scout, you'll get in trouble if you go around saying things like that. You want to grow up to be a lady, don't you?'

I said not particularly.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Scouting

“But if you didn't believe in monsters, then how were you going to be able to keep safe from them?”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

“It isn't expectations that carry us forward, it's our desire to go on.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

“I look at life like a big book and sometimes you get half way through it and go 'Even though I've been enjoying it, I've had enough. Give us another book”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 2 Episode 2
On Life

Life, Books, Way

“So?" Bob said. "Hat up, go kill her. Problem solved."
"Bob," I said. "You can't just go around killing people."
"I know. That's why you should do it."
"No, no. I can't go around killing people, either.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

People, Problem

“Don’t be with him, don’t want him, don’t go with him. Be with me. Want me. Stay with me.
I don’t know how to be without you.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“Is he a good boy? (Cherise)
No, Mom, he’s Satan incarnate. In fact, once it’s over, we’re going to get liquored up and tattooed, then find some cheap hos and have a good time with his trust fund. (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Boy, Moms, Time, Tattoo

“Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”

Arthur C. Clarke book The Nine Billion Names of God

1950s
Source: "The Nine Billion Names of God", 1953

Star

“We cannot go backward. We cannot erase time and events. But we can go forward, hand in hand, hope in our hearts and love lighting our way.”

Sharon Shinn (1957) American science fiction writer

Source: Jenna Starborn

Love, Hope, Way, Light

“So why did you get shot? One of your witticisms go awry? (Nekoda)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

“I’d like to go out in the front yard and shout something. “None of this is worth it!” That’s what I’d like people to hear.”

Raymond Carver book Elephant

Source: Elephant and Other Stories

People

“When we are confronted by failure and mistakes, we can leave them behind and go on with our lives.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Failure

“No, no—there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don’t know what I don’t see—what I don’t fear!”

Henry James book The Turn of the Screw

Source: The Turn of the Screw

Fear

“Annabeth jogged towards us, giving me one of those annoyed expressions like, If you get yourself killed, I’m going to murder you.”

Rick Riordan book The Crown of Ptolemy

Source: The Crown of Ptolemy

“But if everything was always smooth and perfect, you'd get too used to that, you know? You have to have a little bit of disorganization now and then. Otherwise, you'll never really enjoy it when things go right.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Perfection

“We buy balloons, we let them go.”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

“Hold up your head! You were not made for failure, you were made for victory. Go forward with a joyful confidence.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Confidence, Failure, Victory

“I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us. I also know that if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Dead

“But this road doesn't go anywhere,” I told him.
“That doesn't matter.”
“What does?” I asked, after a little while.
“Just that we're on it, dude,” he said.”

Bret Easton Ellis book Less Than Zero

Source: Less Than Zero

“If you're going to hold someone down you're going to have to hold on by the other end of the chain. You are confined by your own repression.”

Toni Morrison (1931–2019) American writer

“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961)

“We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean; the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Tree, Grass

“I just wish that God or my parents or Sam or my sister or someone would just tell me what's wrong with me. Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense. To make this all go away.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

God, Way, Parent, Sense

“Do you love me?" he asked.
I fell silent.
"For the rest of it is glitter and noise," he said. "At the heart of it all is love. You make that choice, and you go forward from there.”

Sharon Shinn (1957) American science fiction writer

Source: Summers at Castle Auburn

Love, Heart

“This is not going to be easy. I'm good at being bad, but I'm bad at being good. I don't know the first thing about good deeds.”

Neal Shusterman book Everlost

Source: Everlost

“Let them go, I tell myself. Say good-bye and forget them. I do my best, thinking of them one by one, releasing them like birds from the protective cages inside me, locking the doors against their return.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Katniss, p. 189
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Bird, Thinking, Forgetting

“- If I tell you, will you let met go?
- You bet, partner. […]
- You promised!
- Nope. I said ""you bet."" You did… and you lost.”

Scott Snyder (1976) American writer

American Vampire, Vol. 1

“People are like animals. Some are happiest penned in, some need to roam free. You go to recognize what's in her nature and accept it.”

Jeannette Walls book Half Broke Horses

Source: Half Broke Horses

People, Nature, Animals

“You didn't get past something like that, you go through it -- and for that reason alone, I understood more about her than she ever would have guessed.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Past

“If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, "This sucks. I'm going to do my own thing.”

Yvon Chouinard (1938) American mountain climber

Source: Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman

Understanding, Study

“ONE THING I AM NEVER GOING TO DO WHEN I GROW UP
Is fall in love, drop out of college, learn to subsist on water and air, have a species named after me, and ruin my life.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Love, Life, Learning, Water

“It felt like I'd been living underground, and for a moment, I'd been given this glimpse of the sky. Once you've seen that, how can you go back where you came from?”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

“Everyone is always going through tough things, the irony in it is that everyone thinks what they're going through is just as hard as what you are. Life isn't about surviving this, it's about understanding this.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Life, Understanding, Thinking

“It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees (2002)

World, Nature

“I didn’t hear him behind me. I felt him. Electric. Wild. One foot in the swamp. Never going to crawl all the way out.
And I wanted to have sex with whatever he was. Where was I supposed to put that in my head?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

Sex, Way

“Please may this not be a game. Please may this not be a game. Because if it’s a game, I know I’m going to lose.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Game

“You can go on like this for a very long time, and no one will notice. You keep thinking you're going to hit some sort of bottom, but I'm here to tell you: There is no bottom.”

Dan Chaon (1964) American writer

Source: Among the Missing

Thinking, Time

“If you find yourself drawn to an event against all logic, go. The universe is telling you something.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

Universe

“It's like my garden, love. Everything grows. Including love. And with that growing everyday how can you expect missing her to ever fade away? Everything builds, including our ability to cope with it. That's how we keep going.”

Cecelia Ahern book Thanks for the Memories

Source: Thanks for the Memories

Love

“You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

For Friend, Waiting

“I didn't know a van could go up on two wheels like that, for so long." -Nudge”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“But maybe it's better to go after something, and not get it, than to not even try.”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Crimson Crown

“Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

People, Question, Thinking

“Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is.”

Russell Banks book Continental Drift

Source: Continental Drift

Books, World, Help

“The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don't want to go there.”

Bart D. Ehrman (1955) American academic

Source: Forged: Writing in the Name of God

Truth, Search

“Maybe instead of stalking her, you should go out with someone else."

He sighed. "You don't think I've tried? How can anyone compare? You might not believe this, but there is no one like Ageline at this school.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

School, Thinking

“The hardest battle you’re ever going to fight is the battle to be just you.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Speaking Of Love (1980)
Variant: The hardest battle you are ever going to have to fight is the battle to be just you.

Fight

“Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.

Information is control.”

Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking

Source: The Year of Magical Thinking

Literature, Learning, Reading

“Why is it that weeks and months and years go by so quickly, all in a blur, but moments last forever?”

Jennifer Donnelly (1963) American writer

“I'm not going anywhere without you. We're swimming to China together. And if the worst happens, I'm dying with you before I'm living without you.”

Ann Brashares book My Name is Memory

Source: My Name Is Memory

“Ready to put your claws where your mouth is, or are you going to cringe behind the big boys and yip all day?"
His eyes flared yellow "Is that a challenge?"
"Yes it is.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Boy

“They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye.”

Martin Amis book Time's Arrow

Source: Time's Arrow

“You should always be trying to write a poem you are unable to write, a poem you lack the technique, the language, the courage to achieve. Otherwise you're merely imitating yourself, going nowhere, because that's always easiest.”

John Berryman (1914–1972) American poet

Courage

“Max-Dogs, dogs, go away, let me live another day.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Dogs

“Let me go.”
“I can’t”, he said hoarsely, (…)” I’ve tried a hundred times to let you go, Victoria, but I can’t.”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Once and Always

Time

“It would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

This Is Where I Leave You (2009), 2014-January-15 http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/This_Is_Where_I_Leave_You.html?id=3jVps2Z9LQcC, <br class="br">Source: This is Where I Leave You

Life, People, Thinking

“But as I guided her to my belt and then laid her down on the bed, I knew which way our path would go. Webe together forever. We had to be. There was no way that all these feelings between us could ever dim or be defeated.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Way, Feeling

“Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them."

"I don't believe in ghosts," I said, faintly.

"Some people can't see the color red. That doesn't mean it isn't there," she replied.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

Source: M is for Malice

People, Color

“Alec dragged the heavy canvas bag out of the back of the van, dropping it on the sidewalk. "Ready to go." He announced. "Lets kick some demon butt!"
Jace looked at him a little oddly. "You alright?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

“This is love, to sit with someone you've known forever in a place you've been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it's time to go.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs

Love, Life, Time

“How did you go bankrupt?' Bill asked.
'Two ways,' Mike said. 'Gradually and then suddenly.”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Book 2, Ch. 13
Mike's response is often misquoted as "It occurs first very slowly, then all at once."
Source: The Sun Also Rises (1926)

Way

“I should go to Paris and jump off of the Eiffel Tower. If I took the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Dead

“Thinking about her was the same as the hole you keep on feeling with your tongue after you lose a tooth. Time after time, my mind kept going to that empty spot, the spot where I felt like she should be.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

Feeling, Thinking, Time

“Sometimes you need to lie make the world go around”

Koushun Takami book Battle Royale

Source: Battle Royale

Lie, World

“I feel ill,” he announced. “I’m going to bed, where I may die.” He tottered piteously to the stairs. “Bury me beside Mrs. Pentstemmon,” he croaked as he went up then to bed.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

Feeling

“I can tell we’re going to get along like Batman and the Joker. (Fang)
Just remember one thing, world. I’m the best friend you’ll ever have or the last enemy you’ll ever make. (Thorn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Moon Rising

World

“They can pump whatever they want into my arm, but it takes more than that to keep a person going once she's lost the will to live.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Katniss, p. 389
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Personality

“How is it possible that our parents lied to us?"

"Lets see: Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter bunny, um, God. You're the prettiest kid in school. This wont hurt a bit. Your face will freeze like that…"

"Everythings going to be alright.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Source: Runaways, Vol. 1: Pride and Joy

God, School, Parent, Hurt

“I know I'm not going to be able to change the world, but I think it's important to try to make a difference”

Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride

Source: The Longest Ride

World, Thinking, Change

“We need to be together."
"Why?" I asked softly. The word was carried away on the wind, but he heard.
"Because I want you."
I gave him a sad smile, wondering if we'd meet again in the land of the dead. "Wrong answer," I told him.
I let go”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Sadness, Smile, Dead

“There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going to let anybody see you.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Bluebird
The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)
Context: there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see you.
... I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
... he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
... and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Heart

“Where are you going?" he asked.

"To break someone's heart," I replied.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Heart

“The only time people turned to watch her go by was when she hurtled past them as she fell.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

People, Time, Past

“I've decided. I'm going to become a Shinigami. Become a Shinigami and change things. So that they'll end… without Rangiku having to cry.”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Change, Cry

“That was the thing about being on the inside: the world was just going on, even when it seemed like time for you had stopped for good.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

World, Time

“You don't get to decide," she said, "where I go, or when."
"I know." His voice was ragged. "I've always known that about you. I don't know why I had to fall in love with someone who's more stubborn than I am.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Love

“Do you know how to pick a lock?"
"Not in the least, I'm afraid."
"I often wonder what we go to school for," said Wimsey.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Strong Poison

Source: Strong Poison

School

“It's a total lie to say there's only one person you're going to be with for the rest of your life. If you're lucky - and if you try really hard - there will always be more than one.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Life, Lie, Personality

“Just because things don't work out, it doesn't mean there aren't other people you can't love. Love is too big a thing for you to go without it in life.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Heat

Love, Life, People

“Iggy: So what are we going to do? lead.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Maximum Ride The Angel Experiment

“Aren't you going to introduce your little girlfriend to your mother?”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

“I understand that love and tragedy go hand in hand, for there can’t be one without the other, but nonetheless I find myself wondering whether the trade-off is fair.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride

Ira Levinson, Chapter 17, p. 237
Source: 2009, The Longest Ride (2013)
Context: My marriage brought great happiness into my life, but lately there's been nothing but sadness. I understand that love and tragedy go hand in hand, for there can't be one without the other, but nonetheless I find myself wondering whether the tradeoff is fair. A man should die as he had lived, I think; in his final moments, he should be surrounded and comforted by those he's always loved.

Love, Understanding