Quotes about leave
page 7

“I know I got a bad reputation
'Walk around, always mad' reputation
'Leave a pretty girl sad' reputation
Start a Fight Club, Brad reputation Close your eyes and let the word paint a thousand pictures
One good girl is worth a thousand bitches
Bound.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Bound 2
Lyrics, Yeezus (2013)

Sadness, Girl, Fight, Painting

“Never was much of a romantic
I could never take the intimacy
And I know I did damage
'Cause the look in your eyes is killing me
I guess you knew of that advantage
'Cause you could blame me for everything
And I don't know how I'ma manage
If one day, you just up and leave.”

Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter

Runaway
Lyrics, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)

“Leave the world and live your life.”

Engr.Abah Sule

Life, World

“Ultimately, both self and belief drift away, like autumn leaves in a stream.”

Ladybelle Fiske (nickname)

Autumn

“At this point in life they leave
strengthening homegrown earthquakes,
after having verified that the questions
Thrown into the air they then fall in the form of a slap.”

Mariano Torrent

Source: Book: Behind infinity is life (2021)

Life, Question

“If there is any treasure that will last until we die, it is love, care, sincerity, acceptance, kindness, friendship, integrity, wisdom and the memories we leave in the hearts of others.”

Titon Rahmawan

Love, Wisdom, Friendship, Memory

“I almost did not come, because I did not want to leave it."
He smiled. "Now I know how to make you follow me everywhere."
The sun sank below Pelion's ridges, and we were happy.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Happiness, Smile, Sun

“When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn't go off and leave us- he enters into our trouble and saves us.”

Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) American translator

God

“Women often seemed to leave things unsaid, and in his limited experience it was what they did not say that proved the most trouble.”

Robert Jordan The Great Hunt

Source: The Great Hunt

Women

“Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.”

Zadie Smith book White Teeth

Source: White Teeth

Women, Men, Family, Change

“If you listen very carefully, you can hear the good fairy come in the night and leave our assignment for tomorrow.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Night

“Ghosts are memories, and we carry them because those we love do not leave the world”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Love, World, Memory

“You got to tell me the brave captain
Why are the wicked so strong?
How do the angels get to sleep
When the devil leaves the porch light on?”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Angels, Sleep, Light, Strong

“And you haven’t been betrayed yet, Nick. You don’t know what that’s like. What it does to you. The scars it leaves that never fade. (Ambrose)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

“She felt a cage coming down around her; too late she realized that he had her trapped by the heart. And like any unwilling animal that was well and truly caught, she could escape only by leaving a piece of herself behind.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Heart, Animals

“It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.”

John Galsworthy book The Forsyte Saga

Source: The Forsyte Saga

Pain, Spring, Grass

“Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden (1854)

Animals, Parting

“… to all the monsters in my nursery: May you never leave me alone.”

Guillermo del Toro The Strain Trilogy

Source: The Strain

“Your shadow stealthily
leaves nothing of where you go, like a poisoned needle
that sews together my footsteps.
Your light pliantly
strikes the water tower, like a lightning bolt
that severs the source of my life.
-Soifon”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach, Volume 18

Life, Light, Water

“All our days are marked with/
unexpected/
affronts--some/
disastrous, others/
less so/
but the process is/
wearing and/
continuous./
Attrition rules./
Most give/
way/
leaving/
empty spaces/
where people should/
be.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People, Way

“She did not believe he could have really gone, because for her, to leave the person you loved was impossible.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

Love, Personality

“We have an hour before we have to leave," Cray said. "So I thought I might tell you a little about myself. I thought it might pass the time."

"I'm not really all that interested," Alex said.”

Anthony Horowitz book Eagle Strike

Source: Eagle Strike

Time

“Lord Peter Wimsey: I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Gaudy Night (1936)

Memory

“He was silent for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. I uncrossed my legs under the table and wondered if this was the right moment to leave. It was as if my whole life revolved around trying to judge the right point in a conversation to say goodbye.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories

Life

“If you don't leave home you suffocate, if you go too far you lose oxygen.”

Vivian Gornick (1935) US author

The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative

Home

“You can’t keep messing me around like this. It’s been going on too long. I can’t take it anymore. I get sick every time you come around. Then I get sick when you leave. You’re like a disease to me.”

Sam Shepard Fool for Love

Source: Fool for Love

Disease, Time

“Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer. Camp out among the grass and gentians of glacier meadows, in craggy garden nooks full of Nature's darlings. Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves. As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail. … The petty discomforts that beset the awkward guest, the unskilled camper, are quickly forgotten, while all that is precious remains. Fears vanish as soon as one is fairly free in the wilderness.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" The Yellowstone National Park http://books.google.com/books?id=smQCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA509", The Atlantic Monthly, volume LXXXI, number 486 (April 1898) pages 509-522 (at pages 515-516); modified slightly and reprinted in Our National Parks http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/our_national_parks/ (1901), chapter 2: The Yellowstone National Park <br class="br">1900s, Our National Parks (1901)

Age, Fear, Peace, Mountain

“It would be good to live in a perpetual state of leave-taking, never to go nor to stay, but to remain suspended in that golden emotion of love and longing; to be loved without satiety.”

John Steinbeck book The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Source: The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Love

“That’s the thing when people leave us too suddenly, isn’t it? We always have so many questions.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

People, Question

“What doesn't kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you incredibly annoying”

Rob Sheffield (1966) American music journalist

Source: Love Is a Mix Tape

Pain, Time

“There are all these people here I don't know by sight or by name. And we pass alongside each other and don't have any connection. And they don't know me and I don't know them. And now I'm leaving town and there are all these people I will never know.”

Carson McCullers book The Member of the Wedding

Source: The Member of the Wedding

People

“Dive deep into the ocean, Sita, and you will find that the greatest treasures you find are the illusions you leave behind.”

Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden

Source: Black Blood

“Sentences must stir in a book like leaves in a forest, each distinct from each despite their resemblance.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857

Books

“It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Source: Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour

Sadness, Travel

“You don't make me feel like you used to.
That's why I'm leaving
That's why people leave each other
They come to their senses and get selfish again.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: See A Grown Man Cry/Now Watch Him Die

People, Feeling, Sense, Selfishness

“I can’t exactly describe how I feel but it’s not quite right. And it leaves me cold.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Feeling

“Move or die. (Quills)
Never give someone a choice that doesn’t leave them with any way out except to hurt you. (Devyn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Ice

Way, Hurt

“For those who know the value of and exquisite taste of solitary freedom (for one is only free when alone), the act of leaving is the bravest and most beautiful of all.”

Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904) Swiss explorer and author

Source: The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

Beauty, Freedom

“I'd have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

People, Way, Thinking, Learning

“Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next.”

Dean Koontz book Fear Nothing

Source: Fear Nothing

Life, World, Hope, Friendship

“She squeezed my hand, and I drew a shaky breath, marveling at the fact that while on an ordinary leave in an ordinary place, I'd somehow fallen in love with an extraordinary girl named Savannaah Lynn Curtis.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Love, Girl

“When you leave New York you ain't going anywhere.”

Jimmy Breslin (1928–2017) American journalist and author

“Hal: "… Then we'll leave in a huff, taking you with us."
"I've always wanted to travel in a huff," Ingvar mused. "It sounds very comfortable. I imagine they're well padded."
"Lined with feathers, in fact," Gilan put in.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Slaves of Socorro

Travel, Imagination

“Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

World, Housing

“She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a token behind?”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Happiness, Dreams

“So, tomorrow, I’m leaving. And I’m not going to let that happen again with anyone else. I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to be who I really am. And I’m going to figure out what that is.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

“And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary?”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

Source: The Corrections (2001)
Context: All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary - of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didn't have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively uncool?

Truth, Sadness

“Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under
them, too, don't I? I'm just like a pile of leaves.”

Frank O'Hara book Meditations in an Emergency (book)

Source: Meditations in an Emergency

Lie, Understanding, Tree

“… the sun would leave my sky if I couldn't assume you'd simply come and tell me you were sad.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Sadness, Sun

“The wacky thing about those bad guys is that you can't count on them to be obvious. They forget to wax their mustaches and goatees, leave their horns at home, send their black hats to the dry cleaner's. They're funny like that.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

Guy, Home, Forgetting

“Because we managed to keep our heart open, despite the pain.
Because we realized that the person who left us did not take the sun with them or leave darkness in their place.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Pain, Sun, Heart, Personality

“Watch where you leave your victims! I stubbed my toe on that.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Amulet of Samarkand

Source: The Amulet of Samarkand

“I didn't want to leave things the way we had, unresolved,… and tried to tell myself he cared about me enough not to look elsewhere for what I wasn't giving him.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Someone Like You

Way

“Maybe I should, I don't know leave? Because this is starting to sound like one of those reality shows I don't want to be in. Maybe you guys want to take turns in the confessional booth.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Feast of Fools

Guy, Reality

“Why do people move? What makes them uproot and leave everything they've known for a great unknown beyond the horizon?… The answer is the same the world over: people move in the hope of a better life.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Life, People, World, Hope

“why won't they
leave me
alone?
don't they
realize I
have a
tinder heart
and a
paper body
and that
any spark
will turn me
straight to ash?”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

Heart

“You keep waiting for the heaviness to leave you. You keep waiting for the moment you never think about the ex again. It doesn't come.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Thinking, Waiting

“The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone”

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) British missionary

“Jessica: “You great drunken jackass!”
Dain: “I did not give you leave to use my Christian name.”

Loretta Chase book Lord of Scoundrels

Source: Lord of Scoundrels

“Let people be, boss; don't open their eyes. And supposing you did, what'd they see? Their misery! Leave their eyes closed, boss, and let them go on dreaming!”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek

People, Dreams

“Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it.”

Wilkie Collins book The Moonstone

[Street, 1868] ( p. 86 https://books.google.com/books?id=sAqXBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA82) <br class="br">Also in Soulsalsa: 17 Surprising Steps for Godly Living in the 21st Century https://books.google.com/books?id=E2S3nWp-lAgC&pg=PT61 by Leonard Sweet [Zondervan, 2009, ISBN 0-310-83380-9] <br class="br">Source: The Moonstone (1868)

World, Tear

“Hannah: Life could be wonderful if people would leave you alone.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

To the barber, while being shaved by him.
The Great Dictator (1940)

Life, People

“It must be good to die in the knowledge that one has done some truthful work… and to know that, as a result, one will live on in the memory of at least a few and leave a good example for those who come after.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Truth, Knowledge, Memory

“Maybe you had to leave in order to miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Variant: Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.
Source: Handle with Care

Travel

“Strange though it is, Sarov still cares about you. He told me to leave you alone. But I think, this time, I must disobey the general. You are mine! And I intend to make you suffer…"

"Just talking to you makes me suffer," Alex said.”

Anthony Horowitz book Skeleton Key

Source: Skeleton Key

Thinking, Suffering, Time

“Only do not forget, if I wake up crying
it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child

hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands….”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Dreams, Cry, Night, Forgetting

“This is the worst problem with living history museums. They always leave the best parts out. Like typhus. And opium. And scarlet letters. Shunning. Witch-burning.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

History, Problem, Parting

“Writers have to keep on writing if they want to mature, like caterpillars endlessly chewing on leaves.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: 1Q84 BOOK 3

“He was the owner of the moonlight on the ground, he fell in love with the most beautiful of the trees, he made wreaths of leaves and strung them around his neck.”

Tove Jansson book Tales from Moominvalley

Source: Tales from Moominvalley

Love, Beauty, Tree

“Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.”

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

Source: Education of a Wandering Man

Way, History, Question

“There are some people who leave impressions not so lasting as the imprint of an oar upon the water.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

People, Water

“Leave three Englishmen in a room and they will invent a rule that prevents a fourth joining them.”

Julian Fellowes book Snobs

Source: Snobs

“The only way someone can leave you is if you let them.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Way

“Love is messy. If you really love someone, you can't avoid the pain. People die, people leave, things change, but sometimes it all works”

Danielle Steel book Friends Forever

Source: Friends Forever

Love, Pain, People, Change

“So in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have a choice, to laugh or cry. No other animal does either. We do, depending on the season and the need.”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Animals, Dependency, Cry, Season

“Some people need a red carpet rolled out in front of them in order to walk forward into friendship. They can't see the tiny outstretched hands all around them, everywhere, like leaves on trees.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Friendship, People, Tree

“Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind.

Their leaves are telling secrets. Their bark sings songs of olden days as it grows around the trunks. And their roots give names to all things.

Their language has been lost.

But not the gestures.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Secret, Tree, Singing

“The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion

Way, Time, Waiting

“Here is all I ask of a book- give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Source: My Reading Life

Books

“Miracles are to come.
With you I leave a remembrance
of miracles: they are by
somebody who can love
and who shall be continually reborn,
a human being.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Love

“It's not the traveling that takes courage Tally. I've done much longer trips on my own. It's leaving home.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Travel, Home, Courage

“You told us to leave you in the desert, because you planned to start a new life as cactus," Catarina said, her voice flat. "Then you conjured up tiny needles and threw them at us. With pinpoint accuracy.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

Life

“But after I got them to leave and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn't any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Farewell to Arms

Source: A Farewell to Arms

Light

“Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they please.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in The World's Laconics: Or, The Best Thoughts of the Best Authors (1853) by Everard Berkeley
Variant: Rest satisfied with doing well, and leave others to talk of you as they will.

Powerful

“I was walking through the leaves Falling from the trees.
Feelin' like a stranger nobody sees.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Love and Theft (2001), Mississippi

Tree

“Because I'm selfish. I'm a coward. I'm the kind of girl who, when she might actually be of use, would run to stay alive and leave those who couldn't follow to suffer and die.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Girl, Suffering, Selfishness

“It’s what we chase but never find. It is the mystery of our lives, the understanding that even when we have everything we want it is one day to leave us. It’s the something unseen, the lurking devastation, the darkness that gives our lives dimension.”

Marisha Pessl (1977) American writer

Source: Night Film

Understanding

“Don't let anyone take care of you. Can you maybe leave that for me to do? I mean, take care of you? Feel free to take care of me in return… because I think I'll need you to do that.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: The Piper's Son

Feeling, Thinking

“Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience; taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Change

“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the message. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty – psychic or physical.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967), p. 26
Source: The Medium is the Massage

Way, Understanding, Knowledge, Change

“Because I never have any definite destination. This ship is not for going to places, but for getting away from them. When I stop at a port, it's only for the sheer pleasure of leaving it. I always think: here's one more place that can't hold me.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Pleasure, Thinking

“For the time being
Words scatter
Are they fallen leaves?”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Time

“As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity.
The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber
Burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning.
So one generation of men will grow while another dies.”

Homér Iliad

VI. 146–149 (tr. R. Lattimore); Glaucus to Diomed.
Alexander Pope's translation:
: Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground:
Another race the following spring supplies,
They fall successive, and successive rise:
So generations in their course decay;
So flourish these, when those are past away.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)
Source: The Iliad

Men, Spring, Season

“I know I should just leave. Just go. Because there's a point where a mistake turns into a big mistake, and I should probably come to my senses before I get there.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Sense

“Is where you're from the place you're leaving or where you have roots?”

Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants

Source: Water for Elephants

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: As quoted in Pearls of Wisdom: A Harvest of Quotations From All Ages (1987) by Jerome Agel and Walter D. Glanze, p. 46. From The Importance of Living: "besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone" (p. 162), "the wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials" (p. 10).

Life, Wisdom, Art