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We all die someday. Maybe the only thing that makes that fact bearable is the idea that death is the only way we can return to the stars.
Beth Revis -
I can think of nothing but the stars. It is like a piece of my soul had been lost, empty, and it is now filled with the light of a million stars. They are all that I have ever dreamed of; they are nothing that I ever expected... I will never, never be the same. I have seen stars. Real stars.
Beth Revis
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This journey... it's long. He says this as if he's felt all 250 years of travel.
Beth Revis -
FAILURE IS INEVITABLE. I will fail. We all will. And having failed, and gotten back up, and failed again, taught me that I can survive failure. This is a downfall in most modern stories: the hero always wins. Because while this story is inspiring, it’s also false. In reality, not everyone wins. It’s 100% true that no one wills all the time, and we expect that—every hero must fall at least once. But it’s also 100% true that some people never win at all, and that’s the thing we try so hard to ignore behind the pretty stories. I could spend the rest of my life trying to be a prima ballerina, and it would not happen. I would fail at that for the rest of my life. FAILURE TEACHES US WHO WE ARE. Because even though I know I would fail forever at being a prima ballerina, I also know that I am not someone who should be a prima ballerina. It’s not who I am, it’s not what I want. Of course I would fail at it.
Beth Revis -
I learned that life is so, so fragile. I learned that you can know someone for just days and never forget the impression he left on you. I learned that art can be beautiful and sad at the same time. I learned that if someone loves you, he'll wait for you to love him back. I learned that how much you want something doesn't determine whether you get it or not, that "no" might not be enough, that life isn't fair, that my parents can't save me, that maybe no one can.
Beth Revis -
God, did they know? A year made the world of difference! This was one more year I could be with Jason, one more year I could live! I signed up for three hundred years. . . not three hundred and one!
Beth Revis -
Old people die. It's what they do.
Beth Revis -
And in her smile I see something more beautiful than the stars.
Beth Revis
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If I can only see him in madness, is it worth trying to hold onto sanity?
Beth Revis -
I am as silent as death. Do this: Go to your bedroom. Your nice, safe, warm bedroom that is not a glass coffin behind a morgue door. Lie down on your bed not made of ice. Stick your fingers in your ears. Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. Because what if I am dead? How can someone without a beating heart, without breathing lungs live like I do? I must be dead. And this is my greatest fear: After 301 years, when they pull my glass coffin from this morgue, and they let my body thaw like chicken meat on the kitchen counter, I will be just like I am now. I will spend all of eternity trapped in my dead body. There is nothing beyond this. I will be locked within myself forever. And I want to scream. I want to throw open my eyes wake up and not be alone with myself anymore, but I can't. I can't.
Beth Revis -
Remember that time I punched you in front of my father’s grave?” I ask in a sentimental voice.
Beth Revis -
It is like a piece of my soul had been lost, empty, and it is now filled with the light of a million stars.
Beth Revis -
There is only him and me and this thing between us that I cannot name, not out loud, but that my heart knows is love.
Beth Revis -
For a moment, he looks back at me, and his farewell is in his smile. Then he turns to the stars. And he is gone.
Beth Revis
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And I try to remember if this happened before, because this is a memory I would want to keep. But there is no echo of it in my mind.
Beth Revis -
But death doesn't work like that. It doesn't care if someone loves you, doesn't want you to go. It just takes. It takes and it takes until eventually you have nothing left.
Beth Revis -
You could drop me anywhere in the universe, blindfolded, and I'd know this was his room just from the smell.
Beth Revis -
More than the sound of my own beating heart, I miss the sound of a ticking clock. Time passes, it must pass, but I have no more assurance of moving through time than I have that I am moving through space. In a way, I’m glad: this means perhaps 300 years and 364 days have passed, and tomorrow I will wake up. Sometimes after a cross-country meet or a long day at school, I’d fall into bed with all my clothes on and be out before I knew it. When I’d finally open my eyes, it would feel like I’d just shut them for a minute, but really, the whole rest of the day and half the night was gone. But. There were other times when I’d collapse onto my mattress, shut my eyes and dream, and it felt like I’d lived a whole lifetime in that dream, but when I woke up, it had only been a few minutes. What if only a year has gone by? What if we haven’t even left yet? That is my greatest fear.
Beth Revis -
I'm running as if the force of the wind whipping around my body will be enough to keep all the pieces of me from crumbling.
Beth Revis -
I told Victria that love is a choice, and I told myself that I didn't have to choose Elder, but I can't forget the way my heart stopped when his did.
Beth Revis
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Emotion courses through my veins, choking me. I feel so insignificant, a tiny speck surrounded by a million stars. A million suns.
Beth Revis -
A few months ago, I would have thrown this book down in disgust and walked away—maybe even returned home, where the only books I knew reminded me of my father. But now… My fingers wrapped around the spine of the book. Now I was willing to try anything.
Beth Revis -
Words are powerful things. They can start—or end—wars. People believe in words. They are the fundamental expression of ourselves, the division between human and not, the means by which we learn. And while people use words to teach, to express art, to proclaim truths, at the most basic level, people use words to simply say: I am here.
Beth Revis -
I feel hollow inside, as if there’s a black hole where my heart was, as if I am caving in around myself.
Beth Revis