Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I’m feeling things at last. I’m feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill.”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
If you stay, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I’ll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would be too painful, that maybe it’d be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I’d do it. I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay.”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
You just work through it. You just hang in there.”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
Fake it ‘till you make it.”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
This is the you I like. You definitely dressed sexier and are, you know, blond, and that’s different. But the you who are tonight is the same you I was in love with yesterday, the same you I’ll be in love with tomorrow. I love that you’re fragile and tough, quiet and kick-ass. ”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
Then I smell the sweat on him, a clean musky scent that I’d bottle and wear as perfume if I could. ”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
We are like Humpty Dumpty and all these king’s horses and all these king’s men cannot put us back together again”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
Please Mia,” he implores. “Don’t make me write a song.”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
And that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s how we manage to survive the loss. Because love, it never dies, it never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it.”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
But I also know that sometimes Adam needs to do things the dramatic way. He is fond of the Grand Gesture”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
“There are like twenty people in that waiting room right now. Some of them are related to you. Some of them are not. But we’re all your family.’
“She stops now. Leans over me so that the wisps of her hair tickle my face. She kisses me on the forehead. ‘You still have a family,’ she whispers.”
~Gayle Forman
And that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s how we manage to survive the loss. Because love, it never dies, it never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it.”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
How am I supposed to decide this? How can I possibly stay without mom and dad? How can I leave without Teddy? Or Adam? This is too much. I don’t even understand how it all works, why I’m here in the state that I’m in or how to get out of it if I wanted to. If I were to say, I want to wake up, would I wake up right now? I’ve already tried snapping my heels to find Teddy and tried to beam myself to Hawaii, and that didn’t work. This seems a whole lot more complicated.
But in spite of that, I believe it’s true. I hear the nurse’s words again. I am running the show. Everyone’s waiting on me.
I decide. I know this now.
And this terrifies me more than anything else that has happened today.”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
All I can think about is how fucked up it would be for your life to end here, now. I mean I know that your life if fucked up no matter what now, forever. And I’m not dumb enough to think that I can undo that, that anyone can. But I can’t wrap my mind around the notion of you not getting old, having kids, going to Juilliard, getting to play that cello in front of a huge audience, so that they can get the chills the way I do every time I see you pick up your bow, every time I see you smile at me.”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)
It’s like the piano and the cello are being poured into my body, the same way the IV and blood transfusions are. And the memories of my life as it was, and the flashes of it as it might be, are coming so fast and furious. I feel like I can no longer keep up with them but they keep coming and everything is colliding, until I cannot take anymore. Until I cannot be like this a second longer.”
~Gayle Forman (If I Stay)