If I Stay Quotes

“Dad paused, hesitating before speaking. ‘I just think that funerals are a lot like death itself. You can have your wishes, your plans, but at the end of the day, it’s out of your control.’”

“Years later, shortly after his daughter was born, Henry called our house one night in tears. ‘I get it now,’ he told Dad.”

“The truth was, I could no sooner quit cello cold turkey than I could stop breathing.”

“‘Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you. Does that make any sense?’”

“I shouldn’t have to care. I shouldn’t have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.”

“‘If they wanted to claim their son, why didn’t they respect the life he chose to live? How come they never came to visit? Or supported his music?’”

“There’s something comforting in that. To go down as a family. No one left behind.”

“I didn’t feel like I belonged with my family, and now I didn’t feel like I belonged with Adam, except unlike my family, who was stuck with me, Adam had chosen me, and this I didn’t understand.”

“The funny thing was, I never really bought into Kim’s notion that they were somehow bound together through me - until just now when I saw her half carrying him down the hospital corridor.”

“It took me by surprise how much I wanted to be kissed by him, to realize that I’d thought about it so often that I’d memorized the exact shape of his lips, that I’d imagined running my finger down the cleft of his chin.”

“How am I supposed to decide this? How can I possibly stay without Mom and Dad? How can I leave without Teddy? Or Adam?”

“And I bet she’ll be a stronger person because of what she’s lost today. I have a feeling that once you live through something like this, you become a little bit invincible.”

“Is that what death would feel like? The nicest, warmest, heaviest never-ending nap? If that’s what it’s like, I wouldn’t mind. If that’s what dying is like, I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

“‘You guys seemed, still seem, in love, truly, deeply.’ She sighed. ‘But seventeen is an inconvenient time to be in love.’”

“‘All relationships are tough. Just like with music, sometimes you have harmony and other times you have cacophony.’”

“‘But the you who you are tonight is the same you I was in love with yesterday, the same you I’ll be in love with tomorrow. I love that you’re fragile and tough, quiet and kick-ass. Hell, you’re one of the punkest girls I know, no matter who you listen to or what you wear.’”

“‘I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay.’”

“Mom always said that it was because Teddy saw me first, and because I cut his cord, that somewhere deep down he thought I was is mother.”

“‘Life might take you down different roads. But each of you gets to decide which one to take.’”

“She has acquired a taste for classical music over the years - ‘it’s like learning to appreciate a stinky cheese.’”