“For the first time in my life, I felt the pain of missing people I had not yet left.”

“When you want to share something with another person more than anything, it is one of the most difficult things to realize that you can never have it. Accepting this realization is even more difficult. Loving someone does mean saying goodbye to them in some cases, though we will fight that until the oftentimes bitter end before doing the right thing.”

“Despite the fact that I have no regrets about how things turned out in my life, I still can’t help wanting to understand my intense relationship with Leo, as well as that turbulent time between adolescence and adulthood when everything feels raw and invigorating and scary-and why those feelings are all coming back to me now.”

“Time travel me back.Let me say good-bye again.A minute more, a moment,a chance to see. . .”

“We have already said more goodbyes than are necessary. Those were goodbyes that brought about the end of partings. We taught each other that no parting is possible.”

“عندما تعلم أن أحدًا مقربًا منك على وشك الموت ، هناك نزعة طبيعية لأن ترغب بقضاء أظول وقت ممكن معه”

“…squeeze his hand. He squeezes back. You stare up at the same sky together, and after a while he says, I have to go, and you say, Good-bye, and he says, Good-bye, Aza, and no one ever says good-bye unless they want to see you again.”

“I sit in my treeI sing like the birdsMy beak is my penMy songs are my poems.”

“a flower knows, when its butterfly will return, and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand;but now it hurts, to watch you leave so soon,when I don’t know, if you will ever come back.”

“When someone you love says goodbye you can stare long and hard at the door they closed and forget to see all the doors God has open in front of you.”

“The end of a relationship is not always a failure. Sometimes all the love in the world is not enough to save something. In these cases, it is not a matter of fault from either person. Some things cannot be, it’s as simple as that.”

“He came up and kissed me on my forehead, and before he stepped away, I closed my eyes and tried hard to memorize this moment. I wanted to remember him exactly as he was right then, how his arms looked brown against his white shirt, the way his hair was cut a little too short in the front. Even the bruise, there because of me.Then he was gone.Just for that moment, the thought that I might never see him again… it felt worse than death. I wanted torun after him. Tell him anything, everything. Just don’t go. Please just never go. Please just always be near me, so I can at least see you.Because it felt final. I always believed that we would find our way back to each other every time. That no matter what, we would be connected—by our history, by this house. But this time, this last time, it felt final. Like I would never see him again, or that when I did, it would be different, there would be a mountain between us.I knew it in my bones. That this time was it. I had finally made my choice, and so had he. He let me go. I was relieved, which I expected. What I didn’t expect was to feel so much grief.Bye bye, Birdie.”

“Your time may come. Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be, and to do.”

“Promise me you’ll never forget me because if I thought you would, I’d never leave.”