You get use to someone—start to like them, even—and they leave. In the end, everyone leaves.

It's Sanjit. It's a Hindu name. It means 'invincible.'""That's great," Lana said."Invincible. I can't be vinced.""That's not even a word," Lana said."Go ahead: try to vince me," Sanjit said.

They'll say you are bador perhaps you are mador at least you should stay undercover.Your mind must be bareif you would dareto think you can love more than one lover.

What I have learned lately is that people deal with death in all sorts of ways. Some of us fight against it, doing everything we can to make it not true. Some of us lose our selves to grief. Some of us lose ourselves to anger.

In the sky there are always answers and explanations for everything: every pain, every suffering, joy and confusion.

Taken from the dedication in my debut novel Exactly 23 days. To honour all women on International Women's day. For women everywhere: When you know you are finally mended, spread the word, hold out your hand, share some love from your heart and some laughter from your soul and be there for a new member of the sisterhood who needs your help. Let's all help our sisters worldwide to stand tall and know, they can and they will recover, survive and thrive, to live the life they deserve. To all the sisters who reached out and held my hand in whatever way you could, who cried my tears with me, and laughter my laughter too, I thank every one of you. I survived.

No one vinces me, baby

What has happened in the past is gone

Here's to love at first sight, and here's to getting over it the moment you blink.

At first, I was lost in you, but now you're lost on me.

She had never met Caroline's mother, but she knew a thing or two about what happened when someone went far away, how after a time you couldn't see their faces anymore when you closed your eyes or hear exactly how they laughed at a joke, how they seemed less like a real person whom you loved and more like a character in a story. And once that happened, it was easy, too easy, to let them float away like milkweed.

So asking you to take a moonlit walk with me, that would totally not work?""What?" Again that glare. "Go away. Stop being an idiot. I don't even know you.""You're healing my little brother Bowie.""Yeah, that doesn't make us friends, kid.""So no moonlight.""Are you retarded?""Sunrise? I could get up early.""Go away.""Sunset tomorrow?" -Sanjit & Lana

Most people do not mind dying, as long as that does not happen today.

What i like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.

Missing you,I missed a part of meI shared with you that’s now gone.Missing you, when really, it was the way you made me feeland the things you made us do.Missing you I shouldn’t be.But I can’t help missing who I was with you.Missing you,I missed and missed so much of the world and wasn’t even missed in return.

I know an alcoholic is the worse, but sometimes I wonder if it's better to have a drinking father that lives at home, or a drinking father, that never comes around.

Trust isn't just the greatest currency, it's the only currency. Once trust is gone in any form of currency, the value is gone.

At last, you will not be remembered for roaming the earth as a non-entity, but by every word, and every miracle, and every love, and every seed that ever came from the innermost part of your heart.

Be content to love, to dazzle in the light,If only for moments…And then be gone,With gladness in your heart,Before the creeping shadowsClaim too much your sadness at leaving.

My grandpa, unlike Jarod Kintz, was an Elder. Now that he's dead and gone, he's a ghost French wizard. And no one knows what French wizards are good at…

Gone are the summer daysand my mind along with them.No longer will I indulgein hopes of getting you back.It is hope that makes these chains heavierand autumnal nights longer.I will merely serve as a memory to you:the lover that recited love poems.I must go nowand I urge you not to look back.

Come back to me.Where have you gone?And why so long?I miss the star below your lip,the constellation on your chest.I miss your ways,how you net butter-flying words and release themfor others to enjoy.I miss your tenderness,the sweetness of your breathand the song of your voice.I miss howyou worship me.Come back to me once more.Why did you go?And whatever for?The heavens plotted against us.The clouds came andpissed on our lives.The smell of charged particlesstill lingers in the air.What will become of you and I?Come back to us.

What you are trying to let go of...is already gone.

Her gaze shifted away. "I don't remember my dreams anymore." It was like she was confessing a dirty secret. And maybe it was, because even though he hated the dreams, each time he had them, he was with his parents again. Hearing their laughter. Watching them live. But when he woke up they were really gone.

Don't grieve over the past, It's all gone!Don't worry about the future, It may never come! Live in the present, And enjoy every moment

I never even heard her voice."And after a while:"It is a strange grief."Softly:"To die of nostalgia for something you never lived.

Another name for destiny is opportunity, once you miss it, your destiny is gone.

It takes your knowing to decide on your going. If you know where you are going, you will keep going because you have already seen yourself gone

(...) But Gaia had absorbed the new information. "I won't need to kill billions, Diana. When Nemesis is gone, there will be no other like me. Just me alone. I will grow and spread, one body and then another, and soon there will be so many of me that it will be impossible to eradicate me. Eventually all will be me, and I will be all.""Won't that be boring?" Diana asked. "You'd be dating yourself. You'll have no one to discuss your evil plans with. (...)

Say it. But...""But what?" he asked.She whispered it, sounding too vulnerable. "But only if its the truth, Caine. Only. If.""I love you," he said.

Caine tried to roll to his feet, but something was jabbing him in the crouch. He shook off the stars and saw Edilio standing over him. Edilio had the business end of his automatic rifle in a very sensitive place. "If you move, Caine, I will shoot your balls off," Edilio said. "Toto?" "He will," Toto said, "Although he's not sure it will be just your balls.

Come live with us, Diana. Don't argue. Just say yes."Diana looked at the ground to hide her emotions. Then she said, "Would I have to be hearing you two going at it night and day?

Hello, Darkness," Caine said.Gaia's face fell. Her bloody, feral grin faded to be replaced by lips drawn right with fear. Her killer blue eyes widened as she looked at Caine who was no longer Caine."Nemesis," Gaia said.

I kiss her ghost, and sleep with the dust on her photograph, next to my bedside.

I sometimes go and sit there. it is my museum of broken things.

You’re innocent until proven guilty,” Mandy exclaimed, unable to hide her gleeful smile. She missed the way people used to have normal conversations, used to be more caring for each other than themselves, back in the Seventies and Eighties. These days, she realized, neighbors kept to themselves, their kids kept to themselves, nobody talked to each other anymore. They went to work, went shopping and shut themselves up at home in front of glowing computer screens and cellphones… but maybe the nostalgic, better times in her life would stay buried, maybe the world would never be what it was. In the 21st century music was bad, movies were bad, society was failing and there were very few intelligent people left who missed the way things used to be… maybe though, Mandy could change things. Thinking back to the old home movies in her basement, she recalled what Alecto had told her. “We wanted more than anything else in the world to be normal, but we failed.” The 1960’s and 1970’s were very strange times, but Mandy missed it all, she missed the days when Super-8 was the popular film type, when music had lyrics that made you think, when movies had powerful meanings instead of bad comedy and when people would just walk to a friend’s house for the afternoon instead of texting in bed all day. She missed soda fountains and department stores and non-biodegradable plastic grocery bags, she wished cellphones, bad pop music and LED lights didn’t exist… she hated how everything had a diagnosis or pill now, how people who didn’t fit in with modern, lazy society were just prescribed medications without a second thought… she hated how old, reliable cars were replaced with cheap hybrid vehicles… she hated how everything could be done online, so that people could just ignore each other… the world was becoming much more convenient, but at the same time, less human, and her teenage life was considered nostalgic history now.Hanging her head low, avoiding the slightly confused stare of the cab driver through the rear view mirror, she started crying uncontrollably, her tears soaking the collar of her coat as the sun blared through the windows in a warm light.

…I’m afraid of what the digital age will do to the world, to the things we think are important… it’s almost like people want to believe in some illusion that they’re robots and forget altogether that they’re real, living people… but everything these days is disposable, even people themselves, and that’s why I’m afraid for the world,” Mandy confessed, looking depressed and worried.“So am I… but I’ll still watch all of it as the world dooms itself, because I want to see how it ends, and whether or not they’ll be intelligent enough to forget all of this digital illusion afterwards,” Alecto explained. “I’m sure that they’ll be able to realize how wrong it all is… even though the idiots outnumber most people these days, there are still enough intelligent people to fight against it.

She released her grievances like handfuls of birdseed: They are there, and they are gone.

Gone. and it was completely. Everyone I'd every known, every place I'd ever been. My Mother. My father. Rebecca. Out of site. Out of mind.

Because it isn’t a loss; just a little piece of their haven had broken off. People can patch things; it still may hurt, but that’s life.

When Cash woke up, he knew immediately something was wrong. Even without looking, he knew; Harper was gone, and the space she’d left in the bed ached like a missing limb.

I can’t sleep alone anymoreand I get used tocompanytoo quickly. You’re always gone too soon.

If I don't see the reason of someone being my friend, chances are, we are just floating and I need a ship to set sail.

People can still see you even if you enter the next door. Even if you are dead and gone, they can still see you. What is necessary is whether they see you for the good, bad or ugly reason.

My mother is my doctorCaring for me when am illI will love her forever tillWe are gone to our creator!

Gone are the days when success depends on how you use your muscle tissues. In this 21st century, your brain cells must work more than your muscle tissues!

A man of vision cannot question his potentials. He does not doubt his capabilities. He keeps going because he had seen himself gone already in his visions.

You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back

i felt her absence. it was like waking up one day with no teeth in your mouth. you wouldn't need to run to the mirror to know they were gone

There's not a day that goes by, without me thinking of you, dying, in someone else's arms.

I've never been able to grow an organ back," Lana said. "Last time I tried... Let's just hope you don't end up with whip eyes.

Because even this --being so close to her --was no longer the same. That light he'd felt when he first saw her --he understood now that it was only a lightbulb. It was quick and easy, full of electricity, but there was something artificial about it. What he wanted was fire: heat and spark and flame.

I was recently inside a hospital that had gone wireless and it was a forest of microwave antennas! It is sad that the medical profession is in the process of becoming expert on microwave radiation sickness due to willfully inducing it into their own staff!

She loves him sobut he didn't stay.The wind can't blowthis storm away.

You can't be gone. I need you here, with me. What am I going to do without you?

I looked at sky this morning and realized summer is almost gone which really made me sad because it doesn't seem as though its been here at all.

We are somebody’s memories when we are gone,

In a very tragic kind of way, sometimes things have to be gone before I fully realize that they were ever there.

If God gives you a Quiznos, can I have a bite? No way. You have to pray for your own food.

It did occur to him that perhaps he’d gone to the wrong Academy – the guys in the Space Fleet always had more interesting stories to tell at the spaceport bars. You know, tales about the dude who got vaporized in a plasma accident in the engineering section, or the fella who got turned into a blob of weird space jelly by some alien virus – or the time someone flew a starship into an astor-field at warp four by mistake (they were still trying to find the black box on that one). The Imperial Space Fleet’s recruiting office sure didn’t go around advertising ‘Join up, see the universe, meet interesting aliens and die screaming’, but it was known there were risks involved. It was part of the job after all, and yet somehow, they still got recruits signing up in droves. Yes, indeedy – the stories were far more interesting than his – took a load of ore to Gorda, took a load of mining equipment back to Tordrazil. Took a load of Florpavian Flame-birds to a zoo on Deanna, took a load of machinery to Salus. Picked up and dropped off a few passengers on the way. Still, Florpavian Flame-birds were a risky cargo… and damned tricky to transport – which is probably the only reason he’d had any entertainment at all on the last trip.

The dark sky.A hundred million stars.More stars than I’ve ever seen before. My eyes let me see farther, but they don’t show me the one thing I want to see. I would trade all the stars in the universe if I could just have him back again.Wind whistles through the trees nearby. Birdsong weaves in and out of the sound.The hybrids emerge from the communication building, heads tilted to the sky.And then we see the end.Godspeed’s engine was nuclear; who knows what fueled the biological weapons. But they explode together. In space, they don’t make the familiar mushroom cloud. They don’t make the boom! of an exploding bomb.There is, against the dark sky, a brief flash of light. It is filled with colors, like a nebula or the aurora borealis, bursting like a popped bubble.Nothing else—no sound of an explosion, no tremors in the earth, no smell of smoke. Not here, on the surface of the planet.Nothing else to signify Elder’s death.Just light.And then it’s gone.And then he’s gone.

What am I supposed to do when the best part of me was always you?And what am I supposed to say when I'm all choked up and you're ok?

That wouldn't be a bad way to die...giving off light for millions of years after you're gone.

God knew our lives would be really bad sometimes. Like maybe we'd be turned into a monster and then our best friend would get killed. So he made up this story about hell, so we could always say, 'Well it could be worse. It could be hell.' And then we'd keep going.

It takes time, or does time take it?

May be you are gone,but that doesn’t make me come back

The serious people have gone, I build my team again and again I just the un-sirious people if this is sirious let's see a bus which can be handled in the air by the weakest person on the Earth.

So when I watch trains, it makes me think about how much movement there is in the world. How every train has dozens of cars and every car has hundreds of parts, and all those parts and cars work day after day. And then there are all these other motions. People are born and die. Seasons change. Rivers flow to the sea. Earth circles the sun and the moon circles Earth. Everything whirring and spinning toward something. And I get to be part of it for a little while, the way I get to watch a train for a minute or two, and then it's gone.

me ... no me .. gone is gone , and i'm gone .. alone is alone .. it's so bad to feel alone , but i'm alone .. me , no more .. no more exist , but i don't exist , not anymore ! Good morning

The wisdom of age is bitter when those you have failed have gone.

And in this moment of pale dawn in the hours before we leave California, I finally realize what has been the hardest thing for me about Matt’s death. It isn’t that I lost a brother, like Frankie, or a son, like Aunt Jayne and Uncle Red. The hardest thing is that I’ll never know exactly what I lost, how much it should hurt, how long I should keep thinking about him. He took that mystery with him when he died, and a hundred thousand one-sided letters in my journal wouldn’t have brought me any closer to the truth than I was the night I pressed my fingers to the sea glass he wore around his neck and kissed him back. For over a year, the letters were my only connection to him; the only evidence that I didn’t imagine our brief time as other. When I first saw my journal helplessly floating on the waves, I felt a loss so immediate and overwhelming it was like being back in the hospital lobby when the doctor told us they couldn’t fix him. One minute, the journal was in my hands, soft and familiar and real; the next minute, it was gone. Just like Matt. And just like Matt, I need to let it go.

But I am tired of everyone being gone, and I am tired of everything that has tired me out for the last five years of my life.

Obviously the raven with the unquenchable itch was at it again, playing tricks on the world and its creatures. Once by air, he thought, and now by water.

Hunter woke suddenly. A noise.It was a noise unlike anything he’d ever heard before. Close! Very close.Like it was on him. Like it was . . .Just in one ear.He twisted his head. It was full night. Black as black in the woods far from the starlight.He couldn’t see anything.But with his hands he could feel. The thing on his shoulder.His ear . . . gone!A terrible fear wrung a cry of horror from Hunter.He couldn’t feel it, his ear, or his shoulder, couldn’t feel with anything but his fingers and he felt, reached beneath his shirt, felt the flesh of his belly pulse and heave.Like something inside him.No, no, no, it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair!He was Hunter. The hunter. He was doing his best.He cried. Tears rolled down his cheeks.Who would bring meat for all the kids?It wasn’t fair.The sound of munching, crunching started again. Just in one ear.Hunter had only one weapon: the heat-causing power in his hands. He had used it many, many times to take the life of prey.He had fed the kids with that power. And in a moment of fear and rage he had accidentally taken the life of his friend, Harry.Maybe he could kill the thing that was eating his ear.But it was too late for that to help.Could he kill himself?He saw Old Lion’s head, eyes closed, hanging where he’d hung him for skinning. If Old Lion could die, so could Hunter.Maybe they would meet again, up in the sky.Hunter pressed both palms against his head.

Guilt was a fascinating thing: it seemed not to weaken over time. If anything it grew stronger as the circumstances faded from memory, as the fear and the necessity became abstract. And only her own actions stood out with crystal clarity.

He just can't let her goit's not the sound of her laughor the softness of her skinthat he misses the mostit's the way she loved himlike no one ever hasthe way she held himwhen he was hurting herthe way she felt his painlike it was her ownand he just wasn't readyto let all of that goyet this morninghe opened his eyesand she was gone

I see my father. I see him gone away. My world is a little bit colder.

No," Lana said, "I'm not going to heal your scratch.""Good," Sanjit said."Good? Why good?""Because when you hold my hand, I don't want it to be work for you.

In the cool dark basement, she whispers, "It's not Ralph, is it?"Cabel's quiet for a moment, as if he's thinking, "You mean like Forever Ralph? Uh, no.""You've read Forever?" Janie is incredulous. "There wasn't much else to chose from on the hospital library cart, and Deenie was always checked out," Cable says sarcastically. "Did you like it?"Cabel laughs softly, "Um...well, it wasn't the wisest thing to read for a fourteen-year-old guy with fresh skin grafts in the general area down there, if you know what I mean.

There's just something obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.

You're staring," Lana said."Yes. I am. I'm a teenage boy. Beautiful girls in wet underwear have a tendency to cause staring in teenage boys.

Isn't it weird? The way you remember things when it's gone.

Listen, Sam, and everyone, you need to know something so it won’t freak you out: Pack Leader can speak. I mean, human words. Like Smart-Girl Barbie there was saying, he’s some kind of mutant or whatever. I know you think I’m probably crazy.”She had Hermit Jim’s tin cup now and used it to scoop up another helping of wonderful, wonderful pudding. Blondie—Astrid—was opening a can of fruit cocktail.“What do you know about the FAYZ?” Astrid asked.Lana stopped eating and stared at her. “The what?”Astrid shrugged and looked embarrassed. “That’s what people are calling it. The Fallout Alley Youth Zone. FAYZ.”“What does that mean?”“Have you seen the barrier?”She nodded. “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen the barrier. I touched the barrier, which, by the way, is not a good idea.”Sam said, “As far as we can tell, it goes clear around in a big circle. Or maybe a sphere. We think the center is the power plant. It seems like a ten-mile radius from there, you know, twenty miles across.”“Circumference of 62.83 miles, with an area of 314.159 square miles,” Astrid said.“Point 159,” Quinn echoed from his corner. “That’s important.”“It’s basically pi,” Astrid said. “You know, 3.14159265…. Okay, I’ll stop.”Lana hadn’t stopped being hungry. She took a scoop of the fruit cocktail. “Sam, you think the power plant caused it?”Sam shrugged, and then he hesitated, surprised. Lana guessed that he felt no pain in his shoulder. “No one knows. All of a sudden every single person over the age of fourteen disappears and there’s this barrier and people…animals…”Lana slowly absorbed this new information. “You mean all the adults? They’re gone?”“Poof,” Quinn said. “They ditched. They blinked out. They vacated. They took the off-ramp. They cut a hole. They emigrated. Adults and teenagers. Nothing left but kids.”“I’ve done all I can to strengthen the door,” Edilio announced. “But all I have is nails. Someone can break it in eventually.”“Maybe they didn’t all ditch,” Lana said. “Maybe we did.”Astrid said, “That’s definitely one of the possibilities, not that it makes any real difference. It’s effectively the same thing.