Quotes about return
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“Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books

“Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.”

Steven Erikson book House of Chains

Source: House of Chains

War, Nature, Light

“There’s a belief that to take care of someone else, or to let someone else take care of you—that both are inherently unfeminist. I don’t agree. There’s no shame in devoting yourself to another person, as long as he devotes himself to you in return.”

Curtis Sittenfeld book Eligible

Source: Eligible

Personality

“True. I'd always hoped that when I finally said 'I love you' to a girl, she'd say 'I know' back, like Leia did to Han in Return of the Jedi.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Variant: I'd always hoped that when i said 'I Love You' to a girl, she'd say 'I Know' like Leia did to Han in Return Of The Jedi
Source: City of Bones

Love, Hope, Girl

“Did the Order return your sense of humor as part of the severance package?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

Sense, Parting

“Sometimes he felt like he'd been gone his whole life--in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he'd never been.”

Gillian Flynn book Dark Places

Source: Dark Places

Life

“What they forget is that, from Ancient Greece on, the people who returned from battle were either dead on their shields or stronger, despite and because of their scars.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

People, Dead, Forgetting

“How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

Death, Country

“We do not pass through the same door twice
Or return to the door through which we did not pass”

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

“Haven't you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you've had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Books, Feeling, Idea

“There was nothing like having a dead husband return from the grave to ruin a fine spring morning.”

Jayne Ann Krentz (1948) American novelist

Source: Second Sight

Spring, Dead

“For twenty years I have ached to go back home, when there was nobody there to whom I could return.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Home

“I can see that the sadness has returned. And it's not a beautiful sadness- beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Sadness, Beauty

“Revolutions spring not from accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the factitious to the real. It takes place because it must.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Spring

“…… When one loves, one is only too ready to believe one's love returned.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Source: CliffsNotes on Dumas's The Three Musketeers

Love

“Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Source: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Heart

“I didn't know that, you take your coffee seriously, dont you?'
'Every morning, I run to the coffeemaker like a soldier returning to a lost love after the war.”

Lisa Kleypas book Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor

Source: Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor

Love, War, Coffee

“I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.

--From the poem "Mad Girl's Love Song”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Love, Way, Girl, Madness

“I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much… so, so much.”

Jacqueline Woodson (1963) American writer

Source: Maizon at Blue Hill

Death, Hope, Way, Star

“At night, when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Way, Night

“There are more than two chances– many more. I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? (2011), p.38
Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Life, Chance, Forgetting

“No, my friend, I am not drunk. I have just been to the dentist, and need not return for another six months! Is it not the most beautiful thought?
--Poirot”

Agatha Christie book One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Source: One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Beauty

“It is only the dead who do not return.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

Dead

“There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Fear

“If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 130.

Star, Light

“I'm starting to understand that fear is like cancer - you can beat it back, but if it returns, it can be worse than ever.”

Darren Shan Slawter

Source: Slawter

Fear, Understanding

“We are not.
We never were; we never shall be. We return to the void we never, for mehay is the center of all, and all is the center of nothing.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Wyvernhail

Source: Wyvernhail

“Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.”

Herman Wouk (1915–2019) Pulitzer Prize-winning American author whose novels include The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War and War and …

Imagination

“She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had taught her to ignore.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Beauty, Sense

“I longed to return to that bloody riverbank, to throw myself in the path of the final arrow, to die ignorant, and so, in love. Better to be killed by an arrow than by the words of the one I most trusted.”

Robin Wasserman (1978) American writer of speculative fiction for young people

Source: The Book of Blood and Shadow

Love

“The more precious His gift, the more anxious God for its return.”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

God

“Friendship is something in the soul. It is a thing one feels. It is not a return for something.”

Graham Greene book The Heart of the Matter

Source: The Heart of the Matter

Friendship, Feeling, Soul

“Love is, to be loved,” said Alexander, “in return.”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Source: The Bronze Horseman

Love

“You must behave as if return is certain, not a matter of chance", Jem said.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Chance

“In the Kamigata area, they have a sort of tiered lunchbox they use for a single day when flower viewing. Upon returning, they throw them away, trampling them underfoot. The end is important in all things.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai

Flowers

“Gone for a while
Hoping, always, to return
If you will let me”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Perfect Fifths

Hope

“It would seem from this fact, that man is naturally a wild animal, and that when taken from the woods, he is never happy in his natural state, 'till he returns to them again.”

Benjamin Rush (1745–1813) American physician, educator, author

Source: A Memorial Containing Travels Through Life or Sundry Incidents in the Life of Dr Benjamin Rush

Happiness, Nature, Animals

“We lose ourselves in what we read, only to return to ourselves, transformed and part of a more expansive world.”

Judith Butler (1956) American philosopher and gender theorist

World, Reading, Parting

“The farther you go… the harder it is to return. The world has many edges and it's easy to fall off.”

Anderson Cooper (1967) journalist and author

Variant: The farther you go, however, the harder it is to return. The world has many edges, and it's easy to fall off.
Source: Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival

World

“The wand ricocheted through the swarm, thumping six, seven, eight of the little monsters before returning to Carter’s hand.
“Not bad,” I said. “Keep it up!”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“Maybe this was what Aunt Peg meant all along - returning was a weird thing. You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe our what came before.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

Time

“When nobody will look at you, you can stare a hole in them. Picking out all the little details you'd never stare long enough to get if they'd even just return your gaze, this, this is your revenge.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Revenge

“You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Understanding

“I am the son of the road, my country is a caravan and my life is the most unexpected of voyages. i belong to earth and to the god and it is to them that I will one day soon return”

Amin Maalouf (1949) Francophone Lebanese writer based in France

Life, God, Country

“Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.”

Franz Kafka book The Trial

5; variant translations:
From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
As quoted in The Unfinished Country: A Book of American Symbols (1959) by Max Lerner, p. 452; also in Wait Without Idols (1964) by Gabriel Vahanian, p, 216; in Joyce, Decadence, and Emancipation (1995) by Vivian Heller, 39; in "The Sheltering Sky" (1949) by Paul Bowles, p. 213; and in the poem "Father and Son" by Delmore Schwartz.
There is a point of no return. This point has to be reached.
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)
Variant: From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
Source: The Trial

“What he could bear in the waking world he could not by night and he sat awake for fear the dream would return.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

World, Fear, Dreams, Night

“There is absolutely nothing wrong with returning to the house you grew up in every now and again. It's good for the soul.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Soul, Housing

“The greatest thing is to have someone who loves you and—and to love in return.”

Winston Graham (1908–2003) British writer

Source: Ross Poldark

Love

“You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back”

Paul Theroux (1941) American travel writer and novelist

Variant: You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
Source: Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

Way, Time, Personality

“Only the happy ones return to contentment. Those who were sad return to despair.”

Kóbó Abe book The Woman in the Dunes

Source: The Woman in the Dunes

Happiness, Sadness, Despair

“I don't think anyone ever remembers what they were really like as kids. Adults think they do, but they don't. Photos and videos don't capture the real you, or bring back to life the person you used to be. You have to return to the past to do that.”

Darren Shan book Sons of Destiny

Source: Sons of Destiny

Life, Photo, Thinking, Past

“And the seasons they go round and round,
And the painted ponies go up and down,
We’re all captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go 'round and 'round and 'round
In the circle game.”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

"Circle Game"
Songs
Source: The Circle Game

Game, Time, Painting, Season

“Thatʹs a dangerous look,ʺ said Dimitri, giving me a brief glance before returning his eyes to the road.
ʺWhat look?ʺ I asked innocently.
ʺThe one that says you just got some idea.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Variant: That's a dangerous look," said Dimitri, giving me a brief glance before returning his eyes to the road.
"What look?" I asked innocently.
"The one that says you just got some idea."
"I didn't just get an idea. I got aidea.
Source: Last Sacrifice

Idea

“because the past was always around her and might return at any time. It prowled the world searching for her, and she knew it was growing angrier at every passing day.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

World, Search, Time, Past