Gayle Forman Quotes

He can't possibly live up to the person you've built him to be

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.

It just wasn't the fairy tale I had hoped for.

America to me is so varied and exciting. I always feel nostalgia for the place I'm not in, and then I get there and find myself in a traffic jam going into the Lincoln Tunnel, and I think, 'God, why was I romanticizing this part of the country?' I think it has to do with the romantic, unrealistic temperament.

Weekends are a bit like rainbows; they look good from a distance but disappear when you get up close to them.

Holidays in general breed unrealistic expectations. The minute you start wondering, 'is it going to be wonderful enough?,' it never will be.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations.

It's a source of great sadness to me that my father died without having seen me do anything worthwhile. He was constantly having to make excuses for me.

I don't think you should meet the people you most admire. I don't want reality to interfere with my image.

If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these acceptance speeches there wouldn't be any inducement to go to heaven.

I have somebody I admire and want to keep at a distance. I've had the opportunity to meet her a couple of times - it's Chrissie Hynde from The Pretenders. I just am nuts about her, but I have no interest in meeting her because I just don't think she could live up to what she's been to me in my head.

I have one thing to say about the mental asylum. I've romanticized two things in my life, and both have fallen short. One is being in a mental asylum. Really, really not as fun as you think it is.

I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn’t do at all.

She had waited all her life for something, and it had killed her when it found her.

God, how that stings! I've spent a lifetime loving science fiction and now I find that you must expect nothing of something that's just science fiction.

I was crying a little for the boy I had wanted him to be and the boy he hadn’t turned out to be.

What does not satisfy when we find it, was not the thing we were desiring.

Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.

Even if you find him. Even if he didn't leave you on purpose, he can't possibly live up to the person you've built him into." It's not like the thought hasn't occurred to me. I get that the chances of finding him are small, but the chances of finding him as I remember him are even smaller. But I just keep going back to what my dad always says, about how when you lose something, you have to visualize the last place you had it. And I found―and then lost―so many things in Paris.

I should have known right then it was too good to last, God, it's such a drag when you're livin' in the past

Be careful what you’re doing, because no one is ever who you want them to be. And the less you really know them, the more likely you are to confuse them with the girl or boy in your head

Pick a man, any man. Every guy I fall for becomes Jesus Christ within the first twenty-four hours of our relationship. I know that this happens, I see it happening, I even feel myself, sometimes, standing at some temporal crossroads, some distinct moment at which I can walk away and keep it from happening, but I never do. I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft. I mourn for the loss of something I never even had.

To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei