James Frey Quotes

There's some bells you can't unring.

The harm done is often difficult to repair.

But once that string gets cut, kid, you can't uncut it. Do you get what I'm saying?

Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it's hard to get it back in.

Some things you can never get back.

There's no way I can go back and uninjure myself.

Teach us the names of what we have destroyed.

It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered. That damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again.

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.

When the honey's out of the comb, there's no putting it back.

I don't think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.

Things that are easily done are often much harder to undo. Sometimes, impossible.

A red map isn't easy to follow. Any document made of blood and bones is tricky. Wrong turns are easily made, and there are often piles of stones in the road. A person has to disregard time and sorrow and all the damage done. If you follow, if you dare, the thread always leads to whomever or whatever you've forgotten.

You can’t undo something that’s happened; you can’t take back a word that’s already been said out loud.

What is already woven cannot be undone. It will not make the trees grow again for you to bring the building down on our heads.

My soul is lost, my friend, tell me how do I begin again? My city's in ruins, my city's in ruins.

You cant put the toothpaste back in the tube.

We don't have to start all over again and try to keep the slate clean. There is no more slate.

Victory was to be bought so dear as to be almost indistinguishable from defeat.

The Young Man came to the Old Man seeking counsel. I broke something, Old Man. How badly is it broken? It's in a million little pieces. I'm afraid I can't help you. Why? There's nothing you can do. Why? It can't be fixed. Why? It's broken beyond repair. It's in a million little pieces.

You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful, and before you know it, it's neither of those things, and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.

It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree.

And there she was, alone and walking out in the cornfield while everyone else I cared for sat together in one room. She would always feel me and think of me. I could see that, but there was no longer anything I could do. Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose tot ell it, even to one person at a time.

I never wish death on nobody, cause there ain't coming back from that.

She died on a windy gray day in March when the sky was full of darting crows and the world lay prostrate and defeated after winter. Peter Lake was at her side and it ruined him forever. It broke him as he had not ever imagined he could have been broken. He would never again be young, or able to remember what it was like to be young. What he had once taken to be pleasures would appear to him in his defeat as hideous and deserved punishments for reckless vanity.