Gabrielle Zevin Quotes

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.

I am dead to them, even though I once flowered.

The clothes are packed off to Goodwill I said my good-byes up on the hill The house is empty, the furniture sold Soon your smell will decay to mold Don't know why I bother calling, ain't nobody answering Don't know why I bother singing, ain't nobody listening "Disconnect" Collateral Damage, Track 10

I am not so different in my history of abandonment from anyone else after all. We have all been split away from the earth, each other, ourselves.

I long for the time of no more departures. It has something to do with age, probably.

Separate we come, and separate we go, And this be it known, is all that we know.

Everyone I used to play with has either given up or is dead.

We enter the world alone, we leave the world alone.

Being sent away to school was no different from my biological mother giving me away.

Of my friends I am the only one left.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

The logs of wood which move down the river together Are driven apart by every wave. Such inevitable parting Should not be the cause of misery.

I'm not cynical, but the reality is that life is mortal. Terrible, sad things happen. Everybody loses friends and family. I'll be on tour and get really scared if my wife won't answer her phone within one minute. I'm sensitive.

I'll look as if I'm dead, and that won't be true.' I said nothing. 'You understand. It's too far. I can't take this body with me. It's too heavy.' I said nothing. 'But it'll be like an old abandoned shell. There's nothing sad about an old shell...' I said nothing. 'It'll be nice, you know. I'll be looking at the stars, too. All the stars will be wells with a rusty pulley. All the stars will pour out water for me to drink...' I said nothing. 'And it'll be fun! You'll have five-hundred million little bells; I'll have five-hundred million springs of fresh water...' And he, too, said nothing more.

I feel I am a child that's lost its mother. I feel like a calf whose mother has gone off to slaughter.

Life is a train ride, and at the many stations along the route, people important to us debark, never to get aboard again, until by the end of the journey, we sit in a passenger car where most of the seats are empty.

The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.

Have not all past human beings parted, And must not all the present, one day part?

But everyone disappears, no matter who loves them.

When Mother died I was both freed and abandoned, as are we all at this profound juncture in our lives.

Love is transient even on a very personal level. We lose everyone that we love. Sometimes we drift apart and sometimes we die.

I'm like a child who belongs to nobody.

That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.

It doesn't matter that I can't remember the details any longer: death happened to her. Death happens to all of us.

There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one's.