Gayle Forman, If I Stay

"Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that’s what it’s like, I wouldn’t mind."

"Life might take you down different roads. But each of you gets to decide which one to take."

"Love, it never dies. It never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it. Love can make you immortal"

"I remember watching it all and getting the tickling in my chest and thinking to myself: This is what happiness feels like."

"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."

"She didn't care that people called her a bitch. 'It's just another word for feminist,' she told me with pride."

"I do have a point to all this,” she continues. “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."

"And now I am here, as alone as I've ever been. I am seventeen years old. This is not how it's suppose to be. This is not how my life is suppose to turn out."

"Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you."

"Sleep would be so welcome. A warm blanket of black to erase everything else. Sleep without dreams. I've heard people talk about the sleep of the dead. Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that's what it's like, I wouldn't mind. If that's what dying is like, I wouldn't mind that at all."

"My stomach lurched, an appetizer before the full portion of heartache I had a feeling was going to be served at some point soon."

"I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It’s okay if you have to leave us. It’s okay if you want to stop fighting."

"But the you who you are tonight is the same you I was in love with yesterday, the same you I’ll be in love with tomorrow."

"I'm not sure this is a world I belong in anymore. I'm not sure that I want to wake up."

"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."

"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."

"I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard."

"Please Mia,"he implores. "Don't make me write a song."

"Fake it 'till you make it."