People Left Behind Quotes

That's the brutality of a breakup, isn't it? The people leaving think they did everything possible, the people left behind think what is possible hasn't even been tested yet. ~ Laura Dave

The future of America is not an entitlement. We have been given a treasure chest of gifts and opportunities, but some people are being left behind, and success is not sustainable unless it is shared. ~ Howard Schultz

This way of behaving, this way of feeling, so hysterical, so sad, when someone has died, I don't like at all and would like to avoid. It's not as if the whole thing has not happened before, it's not as if people have not been dying all along and each person left behind is the first person ever left behind in the world. What to make of it? Why can't everybody just get used to it? People are born and they just can't go on and on, but it is so hard, so hard for the people left behind; it's so hard to see them go, as if it had never happened before, and so hard it could not happen to anyone else, no one but you could survive this kind of loss, seeing someone go, seeing them leave you behind; you don't want to go with them, you only don't want them to go. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

I assumed that looking back reminded older guys of what they had shot at and missed, the what-ifs, the good memories, the bad, the people left behind, the people who moved on. ~ Dan Groat

When people died, they took their voices with them. I wondered if they knew how much the people left behind would kill for their sounds one last time. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

I wonder why I thought the only one who would be lonely is the person who leaves, even though the people left behind would surely feel the same. ~ Wataru Watari

When the valley surrounding St. Cloud's was cleared and the second growth (scrub pine and random, unmanaged softwoods) sprang up everywhere, like swamp weed, and when there were no more logs to send downriver, from Three Mile Falls to St. Cloud's
because there were no more trees
that was when the Ramses Paper Company introduced Maine to the twentieth century by closing down the saw mill and the lumberyard along the river at St. Cloud's and moving camp downstream ... There were no Ramses Paper Company people left behind, but there were people ...
Not one of the neglected officers of the Catholic Church of St. Cloud's stayed; there were more souls to save by following the Ramses Paper Company downstream. ~ John Irving

We made no inquiries about India or about the families people had left behind. When our ways of thinking had changed, and we wished to know, it was too late. I know nothing of the people on my father's side; I know only that some of them came from Nepal. ~ V.S. Naipaul

Dead people I could handle. They were usually beyond hysteria. This was the people-left behind part. The hard part. ~ Darynda Jones

My mom says, "Do you know what the AIDS memorial quilt is all about?"
Jump to how much I hate my brother at this moment.
I bought this fabric because I thought it would make a nice panel for Shane," Mom says. "We just ran into some problems with what to sew on it."
Give me amnesia.
Flash.
Give me new parents.
Flash.
Your mother didn't want to step on any toes," Dad says. He twists a drumstick off and starts scraping the meat onto a plate. "With gay stuff you have to be so careful since everything means something in secret code. I mean, we didn't want to give people the wrong idea."
My Mom leans over to scoop yams onto my plate, and says, "Your father wanted a black border, but black on a field of blue would mean Shane was excited by leather sex, you know, bondage and discipline, sado and masochism." She says, "Really, those panels are to help the people left behind."
Strangers are going to see us and see Shane's name," my dad says. "We didn't want them thinking things."
The dishes all start their slow clockwise march around the table. The stuffing. The olives. The cranberry sauce. "I wanted pink triangles but all the panels have pink triangles," my mom says. "It's the Nazi symbol for homosexuals." She says,"Your father suggested black triangles, but that would mean Shane was a lesbian. It looks like female pubic hair. The black triangle does."
My father says, "Then I wanted a green border, but it turns out that would mean ~ Chuck Palahniuk

And a tiny number of people in a few states make these decisions, and we're left with these options that are increasingly not attractive to the American people. ~ Hamilton Jordan

Did I tell you I finally found the perfect page-cutter? It's a pearl-handled fruit knife. My mother left me a dozen of them, I keep one in the pencil cup on my desk. Maybe I go with the wrong kind of people but i'm just not likely to have twelve guests all sitting around simultaneously eating fruit. ~ Helene Hanff

The constant struggle to feel accepted and worthy is unrelenting. We put so much of our time and energy into making sure that we meet everyone's expectations and into caring about what other people think of us, that we are often left feeling angry, resentful and fearful. Sometimes we turn these emotions inward and convince ourselves that we are bad and that maybe we deserve the rejection that we so desperately fear. Other times we lash out - we scream at our partners and children for no apparent reason, or we make a cutting comment to a friend or colleague. Either way, in the end, we are left feeling exhausted, overwhelmed and alone. ~ Anonymous

It would be the death of you to come with me, Sam," said Frodo, "and I could not have borne that."
"Not as certain as being left behind," said Sam.
"But I am going to Mordor."
"I know that well enough, Mr. Frodo. Of course you are. And I'm coming with you. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere bills of mortality; there are not three Jarndyces left upon the earth perhaps since old Tom Jarndyce in despair blew his brains out at a coffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Jarndyce and Jarndyce still drags its dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless. ~ Charles Dickens

It's about Will. About Will, and me."
"He loves you," Jem said. "I know he loves you. We spoke of it before he left here." Though the coldness had not returned to his voice, he sounded suddenly almost unnaturally calm.
Tessa was shocked. "I didn't know you had ever talked of it with each other. Will did not say."
"Nor did you ever tell me of his feelings, though you knew for months. We all have our secrets that we keep because we do not want to hurt the people who love us." There was a sort of warning in his voice, or was she imagining it? ~ Cassandra Clare

If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I managed to convince myself that I'd left Bulgaria behind for good. I chose to see emigration and globe-trotting as an escape, not as a loss. Nowhere to call home? No problem, the world is my oyster. Where are you from? they ask. Does it matter? I answer.
But it does. ~ Kapka Kassabova

It amused him that women as a class were so wonderfully vulnerable, as if they believed that the codes of conduct that applied in their safe little hometowns, like Alva, Clinton, and Percy, might actually still apply once they had left behind their dusty, kerosene-scented parlors and set out on their own. ~ Erik Larson

It's called Yes Please because it is the constant struggle and often the right answer. Can we figure out what we want, ask for it, and stop talking? Yes please. Is being vulnerable a power position? Yes please. Am I allowed to take up space? Yes please. Would you like to be left alone? Yes please. I love saying "yes" and I love saying "please." Saying "yes" doesn't mean I don't know how to say no, and saying "please" doesn't mean I am waiting for permission. "Yes please" sounds powerful and concise. It's a response and a request. It is not about being a good girl; it is about being a real woman. It's also a title I can tell my kids. I like when they say "Yes please" because most people are rude and nice manners are the secret keys to the universe. ~ Amy Poehler

Good, bad or indifferent, if you are not investing in new technology, you are going to be left behind. ~ Philip Green

Don't you see?" She addressed the entire room. "We either fight here and win, or die trying, because there won't be anything left if we fail. This is the moment. This is the crucial point where the future of yet unborn generations will be decided either by our action or inaction. For centuries to come, people will look back at this time and rejoice at our courage or curse our weakness." She looked directly at Royce now. "For we have the power. Here. Now. In this place. We have the power to alter the course of history and we will be forever damned should we not so much as try! ~ Michael J. Sullivan

felt great numbers of people on my left side relaxing the cords to such a degree, that I was able to turn upon my right, and to ease myself with making water; which I very plentifully did, to the great astonishment of the people; who, conjecturing by my motion what I was going to do, immediately opened to the right and left on that side, to avoid the torrent, which fell with such noise and violence from ~ Jonathan Swift

I have provided a possible explanation for Antiochus's insane foolhardiness when left in command of the Athenian Fleet, because Thucidides's bald account is so unbelievable (unless one assumes that both Antiochus and Alkibiades were mentally defective) that any explanation seems more likely than none.
Alkibiades himself is an enigma. Even allowing that no man is all black and all white, few men can ever have been more wildly and magnificently piebald. Like another strange and contradictory character Sir Walter Raleigh, he casts a glamour that comes clean down the centuries, a dazzle of personal magnetism that makes it hard to see the man behind it. I have tried to see. I have tried to fit the pieces into a coherent whole; I don't know whether I have been successful or not; but I do not think that I have anywhere falsified the portrait. ~ Rosemary Sutcliff

After the September 11th tragedy in New York City, people began to tell others what their loved ones, who had been trapped in the twin towers in New York, had said to them in frantic telephone conversations or email messages. Those who received calls from mobile phones from the doomed planes also told their stories. Some re-listened to messages left on answerphones. And as they shared their experiences, it was immediately evident that the same three words kept coming up time and time again. Those words did not refer to size of salary or bonuses, nor to the type of car recently purchased or expensive holidays taken. No. Lovers said them to lovers, husbands to wives, friends to friends and parents to kids: 'I love you.' 'Tell Suzanne, I love her. ~ Rob Parsons

Ethan's voice was choked. "I realize now, what my father felt. When I left home. He must have felt as if everything was ending. That everything he knew was finishing. I wasn't even aware of what he was going through, how it felt for him. I was so caught up in the excitement of moving out and having a job that would buy me a car. I was so eager to leave. His heart was breaking, and I totally missed it. I was completely unaware that his whole world was changing too. But for him it wasn't gaining, it was losing. He was losing part of himself. The part of his life that had focused on me and my mother for seventeen years was ending, and I never even noticed."

For a moment, Leo thought Ethan was about to ask him to stay. If he does, I will, Leo thought.

Ethan took a deep breath. "But hard as it is. It can't be stopped. Can't be sidestepped. No matter how much we want to or how fearful the future looks, we can't stay frozen in place. You can go forward or you can try to hold on. I've seen people that were afraid to let go, that never committed to their life. You can feel the desperate regret emanate from them. They know they missed something, but instead of jumping on the next train, they keep looking back for the one they missed. ~ Tom Deaderick

Desert Storm was seen by the military establishment and by some politicians as avenging Vietnam, but it left behind dangerous illusions. The victory was so decisive, and information about it so carefully managed, that the American public was never clearly informed that it was purchased at the price of approximately 100,000 Iraqi lives. ~ Michael Ignatieff

The dead could only speak through the mouths of those left behind, and through the signs they left scattered behind them. ~ Robert Galbraith

Charlie was quiet until we pulled up to the front of CHS. He stopped me when I tried to hop out of the Jeep. "If you want people to treat you normal, you have to act normal." A few of the other students being dropped off cast stealthy glances in my direction. Space Boy was back for their amusement. "I never asked to be treated normal, Charlie. I just want to be left alone. ~ Shaun David Hutchinson

Grief is a solitary journey. No one but you knows how great the hurt is. No one but you can know the gaping hole left in your life when someone you know has died. And no one but you can mourn the silence that was once filled with laughter and song. It is the nature of love and of death to touch every person in a totally unique way. Comfort comes from knowing that people have made the same journey. And solace comes from understanding how others have learned to sing again. ~ Helen Steiner Rice

Some people look as if they have lost their eagerness and passion. Their aspiration seems to be exhausted and fresh inspiration has abandoned their weary mind. Life has boundlessly given them material welfare, which has fully spoiled them in the end. No energy for longing has been left, as they have reached a twilight zone. The twilight of desire. ( "Twilight of desire" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

Every night, the dreams pour down and engulf me. An hour, or a day, or even a whole week from my past spills out from the dark, wrapping up my mind in a cocoon of old sensations I thought I'd left behind. Like there's a time machine in my head, I'll be catapulted backward, uncomfortably squeezed into my younger skins like shoes that I've outgrown. ~ S. Harrison

Today Congress operates not as the Framers intended, but in the shadows, where it dreams up its most notorious and oppressive laws, coming into the light only to trumpet the genius and earnestness of its goings-on and to enable members to cast their votes. The people are left lamebrained and dumbfounded about their "representatives'" supposed good deeds, which usually take the form of omnibus bills numbering in hundreds if not thousands of pages, and utterly clueless about the effects these laws have on their lives. Of course, that is the point. The public is not to be informed but indoctrinated, manipulated and misled. ~ Mark R. Levin

Oh, it's you, sir," she exclaimed.
She drew the door right back. A look of highly pleasurable excitement spread over her face.
"Come in, sir, if you please, sir."
We entered the hall. From beneath the door on the left, loud snuffling sounds proceeded, interspersed with growls. Bob was endeavoring to "place" us correctly.
"You can let him out", I suggested.
"I will, sir. He's quite all right, really, but he makes such a noise and rushes at people so it frightens them. He's a splendid watchdog though."
She opened the morning room door, and Bob shot through like a suddenly projected cannonball.
"Who is it? Where are they? Oh, there you are. Dear me, don't I seem to remember -" sniff- sniff- sniff- prolonged snort. "Of course! We have met!"
"Hullo, old man," I said. "How goes it?"
Bob wagged his tail perfunctorily.
"Nicely, thank you. Let me just see -" he resumed his researches. "Been talking to a spaniel lately, I smell. Foolish dogs, I think. What's this? A cat? That is interesting. Wish we had her here. We'd have rare sport. H'm - not a bad bull terrier."
Having correctly diagnosed a visit I had paid recently to some doggy friends, he transferred his attention to Poirot, inhaled a noseful of benzine and walked away reproachfully.
"Bob", I called.
He threw me a look over his shoulder.
"It's all right. I know what I am doing. I'll be back in a jiffy. ~ Agatha Christie

I've often wondered what alliances and affinities might arise without those badges of right and left. For example, the recent American militia movements were patriarchal, nostalgic, nationalist, gun-happy, and full of weird fantasies about the UN, but they had something in common with us: they prized the local and feared its erasure by the transnational. The guys drilling with guns might've been too weird to be our allies, but they were just the frothy foam on a big wave of alienation, suspicion and fear from people watching their livelihoods and their communities go down the tubes. ~ Rebecca Solnit

No one knows where we are going, the aim of life has been forgotten, the end has been left behind. Man has set out at tremendous speed- to go nowhere. ~ Jacques Ellul

He wasn't the sort of person you interacted with and fluttered away from; he was the type of man you fell for. People got hurt when they got attached to other people, because people always left or were taken away. Falling in love, therefore, was just a set-up for inevitable failure.

She knew all this. But logic is fallacy when it spars with instinct. So she fell anyway. ~ Angela Panayotopulos

Unbidden, a memory stirred in the back of Aeduan's mind. Another child, another basket, another lifetime, and a monk named Evrane, who had saved him from it all.
Evrane's mistake. She should have left Aeduan behind. ~ Susan Dennard

Whatever your supposed politics are - left, right - if you put it in a human connection, most people will rise to the occasion and feel the human pain in a way that they might not if it was presented in a more conceptual way. ~ George Saunders

I need to talk to one of the Zuulaman Blood," Andulvar said.
"They are gone," Draca replied.
"From Terreille, yes. But there must be some who are demon-dead. You could arrange this."
"They are gone," she repeated. "The Dark Realm wass purged of Zuulaman Blood."
Andulvar grabbed one of the chairs that surrounded the table to keep himself upright. "You purged Hell ?"
"No."
"Then... ?"
"The Prince of the Darknesss. The High Lord of Hell." Draca stared at him. "Grief wass the hammer they ussed to break hiss control. Rage wass the forge in which he sshaped hiss power into a weapon."
"So there's no one left."
"There's no one left," Geoffrey agreed. He looked at Draca. "If Saetan did what we think he did, there isn't a shard of pottery, a scrap of cloth, or a line from a poem, story, or song left that came from the Zuulaman people. There isn't any trace of them in any of the Realms."
Including the islands they came from, Andulvar thought, feeling sick.
"It's as if they never existed," Geoffrey said. ~ Anne Bishop

The problem was, of course, that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded of this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them and they would call that the right thing. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

When part of this ecosystem was lacking, such as for John Atanasoff at Iowa State or Charles Babbage in the shed behind his London home, great concepts ended up being consigned to history's basement. And when great teams lacked passionate visionaries, such as Penn after Mauchly and Eckert left, Princeton after von Neumann, or Bell Labs after Shockley, innovation slowly withered. ~ Walter Isaacson

The body is not a permanent dwelling, but a sort of inn which is to be left behind when one perceives that one is a burden to the host. ~ Seneca The Younger

Everyone has ghosts that follow them throughout their lives. Ghosts of the past they wish they'd left behind, ghosts of love they once turned down, ghosts of regret and ghosts of loss. Ghosts of guilt. We all have them. I do. ~ Karina Halle

I don't want to be kept safe! I don't want to have someone constantly trying to keep me from tripping on my own incompetence. I want to live in a world where I know the rules, where people are just people. Not one where they keep trying to eat me. That's the reason I left the city in the first place. I don't want to be kept, not by anyone. ~ Meagan Spooner

Buttercup," I say. Thousands of people are dead, but he has survived and even looks well fed. On what? He can get in and out of the house through a window we always left ajar in the pantry. He must have been eating field mice. I refuse to consider the alternative. I ~ Suzanne Collins

March 6, 1961

I remembered a party in a house outside of Ann Arbor. There was a jazz band -- piano, bass, drums, and sax -- playing in one of the large rooms. A heavy odor of marijuana hung in the air. The host appeared now and then looking pleased, as if he liked seeing strangers in every room, the party out of his control. It wasn't wild, but with a constant flow of people, who knows what they're doing. It became late and I was a little drunk, wandering from one part of the house to another. I entered a long hall and was surprised by the silence, as if I had entered another house. A girl at the other end of the hall was walking toward me. I saw large blue eyes and very black hair. She was about average height, doll-like features delicate as cut glass, extremely pretty, maybe the prettiest girl I'd ever seen. When she came up to me I took her in my arms and kissed her. She let it happen. We were like creatures in a dream. Holding her hand, I drew her with me and we passed through rooms where people stood about, and then left the house. As we drove away, she said her name was Margo. She was a freshman at the university, from a town in northern Michigan. I took her home. It was obvious she'd never gone home with a man. She didn't seem fearful, only uncertain, the question in her eyes: "What happens next?" What happened next was nothing much. We fell asleep in our clothes. I wasn't the one to make her no different from everyone. ~ Leonard Michaels

One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind. ~ Charles Dickens

Dinah and I were raised to believe money taints ordinary people, obstructs virtue, and makes a fool out of you. So, the inheritance was like a tiger somebody'd left on the doorstep of my house, and I had to figure out something to do with it. Having never seen a tiger up close, I perceived it as strange, frightful, and yet it pricked my curiosity enough to warrant a peek at its big body. But what to do with it? ~ Vicki Covington

Then your good people blast their light on it, shining truth and love and compassion and understanding, and it withers even more. With every I am here and I've been there and You aren't alone and God has this, your scary truth gets less terrifying, less overwhelming, less paralyzing. It becomes fully exposed with no secrets left to threaten you. You are 2 Corinthians 4, because although this darkness pressed you so hard, it did not crush you. Perhaps it struck you down, but look at you: You are not destroyed. You see that in the light. You are still standing. If you are still breathing, there is still hope. ~ Jen Hatmaker

yet when she first left me i thought i had blood poisoning ,i couldn't forget her,now she seemed to have forgotten everything .it made me want to shake her ,to pull all my clothes in the middle of the street and yell "remember this body" time is a great deadener ,people forget, get bored, grow old , go away. she said that not much had happened between us anyway, historically speaking ~ Jeanette Winterson

She knew that he would stop her. Perhaps he would be cunning about it. Maybe he would go to the steward behind her back, tell him of the theft and challenge, and ask to be brought before the judge and Irex. If that plan didn't suit Arin, he would find another.
He was going to be a problem.
"You're right," she told him.
Arin blinked, then narrowed his eyes.
"In fact," she continued, "if you had let me explain, I would have told you that I had already decided to call off the duel."
"You have."
She showed him the two letters. The one addressed to her father was on top. She let the mere edge of the other letter show. "One is for my father, telling him what has happened. The other is for Irex, making my apologies and inviting him to collect his five hundred gold pieces whenever he likes."
Arin still looked skeptical.
"He'll also collect you, of course. Knowing him, he'll have you whipped until you're unconscious and even after that. I'm sure that when you wake up, you'll be very glad that I decided to do exactly as you wanted."
Arin snorted.
"If you doubt me, you're welcome to walk with me to the barracks to watch as I give my father's letter to a soldier, with orders for its swift delivery."
"I think I will." He opened the library door.
They left the house and crossed the hard ground. Kestrel shivered. She hadn't stopped to fetch a cloak. She couldn't risk that Arin would change his mind.
When they entered the barra ~ Marie Rutkoski