Leaving Quotes

“There are times when the actual experience of leaving something makes you wish desperately that you could stay, and then there are times when the leaving reminds you a hundred times over why exactly you had to leave in the first place.”
― Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way

“Though there had been moments of beauty in it Mariam knew that life for most part had been unkind to her. But as she walked the final twenty paces, she could not help but wish for more of it. She wished she could see Laila again, wished to hear the clangor of her laugh, to sit with her once more for a pot of chai and leftover halwa under a starlit sky. She mourned that she would never see Aziza grow up, would not see the beautiful young woman that she would one day become, would not get to paint her hands with henna and toss noqul candy at her wedding. She would never play with Aziza's children. She would have liked that very much , to be old and play with Aziza's children.
Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had loved and been loved back. She was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad , Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legitimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“It was a life I didn’t want to leave behind.It was a life I didn’t want to forget.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Linger

“I know absolutely nothing about where I'm going. I'm fine with that. I'm happy about it. Before, I had nothing. I had no life, no friends, and no family really, and I didn't really care. I had nothing, and nothing to lose, and then I knew loss. What I cared about was gone; it was all lost. Now I have everything to gain; everything is a clean slate. It's all blank pages waiting to be written on. It's all about going forward. It's all about uncertainty and possibilities.”
― Gregory Galloway, As Simple as Snow

“I go to the ocean to say goodbye.”
― Charlotte Eriksson

“And yet, even as she spoke, she knew that she did not wish to come back. not to stay, not to live. She loved the little yellow cottage more than she loved any place on earth. but she was through with it except in her memories. ”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Heaven to Betsy

“Things go away to return, brightened for the passage”
― A.R. Ammons, Sphere: The Form of a Motion

“I wanted to start over completely, to begin again as new people with nothing of the past left over. I wanted to run away from who we had been seen to be, who we had been... It's the first thing I think of when trouble comes - the geographic solution. Change your name, leave town, disappear, make yourself over. What hides behind that impulse is the conviction that the life you have lived, the person you are, is valueless, better off abandoned, that running away is easier than trying to change things, that change itself is not possible.”
― Dorothy Allison, Skin: Talking About Sex, Class And Literature

“The reason for leaving sometimes is to return. Simply to return.”
― Yrsa Daley-Ward

“Leaving a place, a person or a country silently and without any notice is a heroic and a noble way of teaching the importance of your presence to those who ignore your existence!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“When I'm all grown up, come what may,
I'll build a boat to carry me away”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn't happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“There. That is the answer to this riddle. The promises I can make, and the one I can't. Gwen. I will never leave you willingly. Life is a risk, and so love is, as well. But I swear to God, you will not regret the gamble.”
― Meredith Duran, Wicked Becomes You

“I don't understand, Jem. I don't understand why you'd leave me. Why would you that?”
― Rachel Ward, Numbers

“Just wait a second. We can't leave it like this." But this too, wasn't true. Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so damned hard.”
― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

“This is how it is in life and love. In life and love we are with people for a while, and then we join other people, people we have not met, and we walk with them, and we leave behind all the things we used to be. Sometimes we leave people behind too... This happens everyday. Everyday this happens and scarcely anybody cares.”
― Daniel Handler, Adverbs

“There are people out there who do this. They pick up and they leave. Sometimes they were never really there. Other times they are with you, but in their minds they are a thousand miles away. They are taking a walk down an endless road; they are standing in a field of daisies on some unknown cliff; they are floating through space. -The Art of Leaving”
― Shilo Niziolek, Broad River Review

“It was interesting for us to watch, how he didn’t even have to go anywhere in order to leave her.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater

“A spiritual pilgrim needs to discern when his or her life is stunted in an old field and find the courage and determination to go to a "new land" that the Lord will show. (Abraham-Journey) ...so that you can find the wholeness you seek.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved

“হয়তো তোমাকে হারিয়ে দিয়েছি
নয় তো গিয়েছি হেরে
থাক না ধ্রুপদী অস্পষ্টতা
কে কাকে গেলাম ছেড়ে।”
― Helal Hafiz

“We keep to our usual stuff, more or less, only inside out. We do on stage the things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“No" she jerked back, stared up at him.
Her eyes were like thunderclouds. He'd never seen them like that. Shock and fear filled them. Her face was paper white. Her body shuddering.
"Don't you leave me!" She gripped his shirt and tried to shake him, tears falling from her eyes. "Don't you leave Noah."
His head lowered. He touched her lips with his and knew this woman held the best part of him. The memories of the husband he had been, the man he had been. He couldn't destroy that. He refuse to.
He pushed her to Jordan slowly, loath to let her go. To release her. Knowing that releasing her was the only way to save the memories she held.
"Don't you leave!" She screamed the order, eyes blazing, her lips trembling as tears fell and hysteria threatened to overwhelm her. "If you leave me, Noah Blake, if you don't come back when this is over, don't bother coming back at all.
He touched her cheek. Ran his thumb over her lips. "You are the best part of me," he whispered. "Always remember that, Sabella. The best part of me."
Before she could grab him, hold him to her, he pulled away, grabbed one of the rifles Mike had set on the table across the room. And left.”
― Lora Leigh, Wild Card

“It was in those moments that I became one of them, one of the leavers. I'm leaving and I'm never coming back, I thought. It felt powerful. I finally felt in control. Is this how it felt to all the others. the leavers, the takers, the breakers? I became what they were. I could disappear. -The Art of Leaving”
― Shilo Niziolek, Broad River Review

“But, sometimes, especially late at night, when only the wind is awake with my thoughts, I feel an urgent need. I think of lacing up my tennis shoes and stepping out the door, already in a half run. I think of running and running forever, until I become part of the night sky. -The Art of Leaving”
― Shilo Niziolek, Broad River Review

“Time is a great deadener; people forget, get bored, grow old, go away.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

“He had a charm about him sometimes, a warmth that was irresistible, like sunshine. He planted Saffy triumphantly on the pavement, opened the taxi door, slung in his bag, gave a huge film-star wave, called, "All right, Peter? Good weekend?" to the taxi driver, who knew him well and considered him a lovely man, and was free.
"Back to the hard life," he said to Peter, and stretched out his legs.
Back to the real life, he meant. The real world where there were no children lurking under tables, no wives wiping their noses on the ironing, no guinea pigs on the lawn, nor hamsters in the bedrooms, and no paper bags full of leaking tomato sandwiches.”
― Hilary McKay, Saffy's Angel

“But that was all bravado. Already - how had it come about so quickly - desire had begotten need. A few whispered words (perhaps he didn't mean them) and I was ready to follow. It was worse to think of staying behind, to grind one day upon another. Nothing to hold me here. None to regret my leaving, save Az.”
― Sarah Micklem, Firethorn

“The more you believe, the more you'll be leaving you, when what you believed turns out to be just lies. Or unjust lies. Or any lies, anyway.”
― Will Advise, Nothing is here...

“Everyone knows: people who cross boarders do so for a reason.”
― M.D. Elster, Four Kings

“Thomas Wolfe warned in the title of America's great novel that "you can't go home again." I enjoyed the book but I never agreed with the title. I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.”
― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter