“Things are sweeter when they’re lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot. And when I got it it turned to dust in my hands.”
“I am lost without you. I am soulless, a drifter without a home, a solitary bird in a flight to nowhere. I am all these things, and I am nothing at all. This, my darling, is my life without you. I long for you to show me how to live again.”
“The Nothing is spreading,” groaned the first. “It’s growing and growing, there’s more of it every day, if it’s possible to speak of more nothing. All the others fled from Howling Forest in time, but we didn’t want to leave our home. The Nothing caught us in our sleep and this is what it did to us.”
“Is it very painful?” Atreyu asked.
“No,” said the second bark troll, the one with the hole in his chest. “You don’t feel a thing. There’s just something missing. And once it gets hold of you, something more is missing every day. Soon there won’t be anything left of us.”
“Poor gosling. It hurts to be lost. And worse to be home with no kind of homecoming. You’re my good-luck bird, Jok. I’ll be lucky if I can do as well as you when this is all done, just a bit out of breath, a bit bruised and scratched, a bit wiser and sadder for it all.”
“‘When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside - walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It’s the saddest thing I know.’”
“It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires”
“Which of my feelings are real? Which of the mes is me? There is only one me I’ve ever really liked, and he was good and awake as long as he could be.”
“When I was 5, he said, my family forgot & left me at the fair. I wandered around in the bright sounds & smells of hot sawdust & cotton candy for hours. It was already too late by the time my parents found me.
I haven’t been fit for decent society since.”
“That’s the one place in all the lands we’ve ever heard of that we don’t want to see any closer; and that’s the one place we’re trying to get to! And that’s just where we can’t get, nohow.”
“The whole wood seemed running now, running hard, hunting, chasing, closing in round something or—somebody? In panic, he began to run too, aimlessly, he knew not whither.”
″‘Do you understand?’ My father looked at Andrius, hesitant. ‘You can help me find you,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll know it’s you…just like you know Munch. But you must be very careful.‘”
“Sailing lower into the pale green sea, he sought everywhere for the reddish glint of her scales, until the water became dense and dark green and then everything gradually got so black he lost all sight of where he was.”
“The trouble with trying to find a brown-covered book among brown leaves and brown water at the bottom of a ditch of brown earth in the brown, well, grayish light of dawn, was that you couldn’t.”
“We all get lost once in a while, sometimes by choice, sometimes due to forces beyond our control. When we learn what it is our soul needs to learn, the path presents itself.”
“So much of who I was had become lost, diluted, fragmented. I was being pulled and stretched in every which way, dragged in a million directions with the expectations of the world sitting heavy on my center like a concrete paperweight I couldn’t shake off.”
“I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind anymore that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty?”
“One day he lost sight of his retinue in a great forest. These forests are very useful in delivering princes from their courtiers, like a sieve that keeps back the bran. Then the princes get away to follow their fortunes. In this they have the advantage of the princesses, who are forced to marry before they have had a bit of fun. I wish our princesses got lost in a forest sometimes.”
“It’s like many other things in life, Ellie. You keep on the path and all’s well. You get off it and the next thing you know you’re lost if you’re not lucky.”
“But the hawk was the second most precious thing. I was sorry to lose it, and if you make me another one, I promise not to get taken captive by bandits and have to use it to save my life.”
“Everywhere we go and move on and change, something’s lost--something’s left behind. You can’t ever quite repeat anything, and I’ve been so yours, here--”
“‘It’s a bad place for a stranger,’ old Goulven had said: ‘you’d better take a guide;’ and I had replied, ‘I shall not lose myself.’ Now I knew that I had lost myself, as I sat there smoking, with the sea-wind blowing in my face.”
“I hardly knew Hannah Baker. I mean, I wanted to. I wanted to know her more than I had the chance. […] [W]e never had the chance to get closer. And not once did I take her for granted. Not once.”
″‘If you ever find you need help again, you know, if you’re in trouble, need a hand out of a tight corner...’
‘Yeah?’
‘Please don’t hesitate to get lost.’”
“Lost in a spiritual mist, the target will feel light and uninhibited. Deepen the effect of your seduction by making its sexual culmination seem like the spiritual union of two souls.”
“I had a dream about you. You were lost in a daydream, when I walked in and you began screaming. But I know that could never actually happen. In real life I only enter people’s nightmares.”
“That is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, “we have never lived anywhere except in heaven,’ and the Lost, “We were always in Hell.” And both will speak truly.”
“Dear Die-ary, there’s nothing terribly wrong with feeling lost, so long as that feeling precedes some plan on your part to actually do something about it. Too often a person grows complacent with their disillusionment, perpetually wearing their ‘discomfort’ like a favorite shirt. I can’t say I’m very pleased with where my life is just now... but I can’t help but look forward to where it’s going.”
“One thing is absolutely definite: not everything that enters our ears penetrates our consciousness. Anything too far out of tune with our attitude is lost, either in the ears themselves or somewhere beyond, but it is lost.”
“I will never forget that face as long as I live. Does everybody look that way when they have lost something? I don’t mean like losing a flashlight. I mean do people look like that when they have lost?”
″‘Never mind girl,’ she said to baby Kahu. ‘Your birth cord is here. No matter where you may go, you will always return. You will never be lost to us.‘”
“The man said, ‘Dinosaurs? Yes we have found some dinosaurs. But how do you know if they are your dinosaurs?’
Harry said, ‘I will close my eyes and call their names. Then you will know.‘”
“Soon the whole woods could hear the voice bawl, ‘How did you get to be tiny and small? You’re too small to huddle and cuddle,’ it said, ‘and you’ll only get lost in my giant-sized bed!’ ”
“So, are you lost or not?” The dog hesitated, then nodded and gave a pathetic whimper.
“You poor thing,” said Lotta with a sigh. “I know what it’s like when you’re lost. There you are, all alone, afraid, cold, hungry. And at night when it gets dark in the woods you start to cry. That’s when the ghosts come out screaming and rustling and rattling and haunting.” “How do you know all that?” asked the dog. “That’s what the carrier pigeon told me last year,” replied Lotta. “She got lost and forgot where she belonged. Getting lost is just like getting lost.” The dog nodded.
People who’ve lost precious loved ones or places, and who’ve privately decided to “struggle and fight,” even so. People who believe that they’re sure to find something someday, even though it hasn’t happened yet, and who keep reaching out for it. I felt that those feelings needed to be related with an immediacy that differed from the glamour of the movie, and I think that’s why I wrote this book.”
“I’d lost myself while trying to convince someone else that I was what he wanted. I’d forgotten who I was because I’d let someone else take over the definition.”
“I think she got so worried about so many things, about money and us, about what she could do to take care of us, about not being able to do anything to make things better—I think it all piled up inside her so that she just quit. She felt so sad and sorry then, and lost—remember how she’d go out and not come back for hours? I think she got lost outside those times, the way she was lost inside.”
“A last the storm disappeared over the horizon. The tired horses slowed and then stopped and rested. Stars came out and the moon shone over hills the girl had never seen before. She knew they were lost.”
″‘How could she get lost?’ Sammy asked. ‘She knew where we were.’
‘Not lost from us,’ Maybeth said.
‘Lost from who?’ Sammy asked.
‘Not lost from anyone,’ Maybeth said. ‘Just lost.‘”
“She felt so lost and lonely. One last chile in walnut sauce left on the platter after a fancy dinner couldn’t feel any worse than she did. How many times had she eaten one of those treats, standing by herself in the kitchen, rather than let it be thrown away.”
“I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.”
“They sat down on the grass, and opened all their parcels. They had some lovely presents, but Katy did not seem pleased with them. ‘What’s up with Katy?’ asked Pat. ‘She’s wrong side out today,’ said Mrs. Pottage, ‘She’s lost Sarah-Ann’. “
“The Matheson twins. You haven’t heard? They wandered away from their father into the bush. Only three they are. Rachel and Theo Matheson. They’ll freeze to death, the poor little lambs.”
“Pat drove down the steep and winding road, and along the valley to Ted Glenn’s cottage. Jess kept a sharp lookout for the lost doll. ‘What day!’ said Pat.’ We’ve found a glove and a knife, but no Sarah-Ann. I wonder if we will find her – I do hope so’. Jess twitched his whiskers hopefully.”
“ ‘She’s sure to turn up somewhere,’ said Pat. ‘I’ll look out for her. You never know. I might spot Sarah-Ann on my travels. I’m good at finding things. Poor Katy – she does look sad. I’ll do my best. Don’t worry now! Cheerio!’ “
“ ‘Poor Katy,’ said Pat, ‘and on her birthday, too. I’ll buy her a box of chocolates to cheer her up, as we haven’t found Sarah-Ann’. Pat took a box of chocolates from the shelf of the mobile shop.”
“They did not find Sarah-Ann, but Ted found a watch that he’d mended then forgotten about. ‘That’s Miss Hubbard’s,’ he said. ‘She brought it to be fettled, last Christmas. Could you take it along for her, Pat? She’ll be needing it.’ “
“They searched among the pews, looking under the seats, lifting hassocks, moving piles of hymn-books, creeping about and popping up in unexpected places. Reverend Timms did find something, but it was not Sarah-Ann. It was a lady’s glove.”
“They searched everywhere. They lifted cushions, they looked under chairs and behind chairs, they peered behind the television set and amongst the coats that hung on the back of the door, they even moved the sideboard out from the wall to see if Sarah-Ann had slipped down the back. It was no good, they didn’t find Katy’s doll but Mrs. Thompson did find a knife down the side of the chair.”
“But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems lost; we have knocked at every door and they open on nothing until, at last, we stumble unconsciously against the only one through which we can enter the kingdom we have sought in vain a hundred years - and it opens.”
“What would have happened if she had never lost those jewels? Who knows? Who knows? How strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed to ruin or to save!”
“She had made a vow—a vow to free Eyllwe. So in between moments of despair and rage and grief, in between thoughts of Chaol and the Wyrdkeys and all she’d left behind and lost, Celaena had decided on one plan to follow when she reached these shores.”
“I must bring them all up to be useful- to depend upon themselves; there is not a moment to be lost, and not a moment shall be lost; I will do my best and trust to God”
‘The best thing that I can do, is to decide upon taking some straight line, and continue on it: I must get out of the forest at last, even if I walk right across it.”
“The boy was crying now. Not that there was any new or sudden sorrow. There just seemed to be nothing else to fill up the vast lostness of the moment.”
“Sounder might come home again. But you must learn to lose, child. The Lord teaches the old to lose. The young don’t know how to learn it. Some people is born to keep. Some is born to lose. We was born to lose, I reckon….”
“Lying awake in the dark that night, unable to sleep, he thought he would have given anything to feel the heavy thud on the bed that used to announce the old dog’s arrival.”
“He had lost the Minnow to her rightful and unpleasant owner; he would have to go ashore and fight the owner for calling him a thief, and, as he was the smaller boy, he would probably be beaten.”
“So to use their treasure they gathered up all the lost, unhappy, and abandoned children they could find. They bought a beautiful castle where all of them could live. Dressed in red caps and capes, the children moved into their new house.”
“Fasten one end of it, and unroll the others, so as not to get lost. You could feel your way out with it even if a bat had knocked your candle out and you hadn’t any more matches.”
″ ‘What a mercy that was not a pike!’ said Mr. Jeremy Fisher. ‘I have lost my rod and basket; but it does not much matter, for I am sure I should never have dared to go fishing again!’ ”
“I have nothing to forgive her, Ellen. You may call at Wuthering Heights this afternoon, if you like, and say that I am not angry, but I’m sorry to have lost her; especially as I can never think she’ll be happy. It is out of the question my going to see her, however: we are eternally divided; and should she really wish to oblige me, let her persuade the villain she has married to leave the country.”
“Becky’ s frail limbs refused to carry her farther. She sat down. Tom rested with her, and they talked of home, and the friends there, and the comfortable beds and, above all, the light! Becky cried, and Tom tried to think of some way of comforting her, but all his encouragements were grown thread-bare with use, and sounded like sarcasms.”
″‘Earnest, Huck—just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go in there with me and help get it out?’
‘I bet I will! I will if it’s where we can blaze our way to it and not get lost’.”