Quotes from Just One Night

Gayle Forman ·  40 pages

Rating: (18.9K votes)


“And the kiss feels like something completely new. But it also feels like something deeply known.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“You win some, you lose some. And sometimes you win and lose at the same time. Life's a bloody cockup.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“That they will find each other during the play, once more, in the words of Shakespeare.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“Allyson meanwhile is remembering. Why this person? All the things she has told herself, or other people have told her - infatuation or Paris or good acting or lust - no longer hold water, because she remembers so viscerally and feels it anew. It's not any of that. It's not even him. Or all him. It's her. The way she can be with him.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“Except Allyson doesn't know about Saba (yet) or about kishkes (officially speaking, though she knows what they are and how to listen to them and she will never ever stop doing this). And she doesn't have the words to tell Willem what she needs to tell him.
So she doesn't use words. She licks her thumb and rubs it against he wrist.
Stained.
Willem grabs her wrist, rubs his own thumb against it. Does the same to his own wrist, just to make it clear.
Stained.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night



“Sickness leading to healing. The truth and its opposite again”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“When Allyson smiles, Willem is reminded of a sunrise. A bit of light, then more of it, then a burst of brightness. A sunrise is something you can see all the time and still marvel at. Maybe that is why her smile feels so familiar. He has seen many sunrises”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“It was so new that day: the liberation of being honest, of being brave, maybe a little stupid.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“But today it feels as though home has come to him.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night



“Saying goodbye is less fraught this time. They have done it now once, like normal people: leave, come back. It builds confidence.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“There is so much to say. It is like shoving all the sand of the world into an hourglass. Or trying to get it out.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“Are you famous in India?" Allyson asks.
"I am Brad Pitt in India" Willem says.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“It isn't a first kiss. It isn't even their first kiss. But it feels like one.
Not because it is fumbling or awkward. Not because she doesn't know where to put her hand, or he doesn't know where to put his nose. None of those. They slot together like puzzle pieces. As Allyson and Willem kiss for the first time in a year, both are thinking the same thing: This feels new.
Though perhaps thinking is not the right term, because with a kiss like this, thinking goes out the window and something more instinctual takes over: inner voices, gut instincts. 'Knowing it in your kishkes' is how Willem's saba would've described it.
In his kishkes, Willem is marveling at how Allyson found him, as Yael found Bram. He doesn't know how it happened, only that it did happen and that it means something.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“(The sight of her bare feet. What this is doing to Willem’s blood pressure. She might as well have taken off all her clothes.)”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night



“Willem has just glanced at the birthmark on Allyson's wrist, giving him an urgent desire to taste it again. Between her feet and her wrist, he is having a hard time getting out the door.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“Backstage, Willem is thinking about accidents again. And things that seemingly don't make sense, except they do. Like right out there in the fifth row. All of them, together. That makes sense.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“This isn’t about her. It was catalyzed by her, and she’s woven up in it, but this is ultimately about him and his life and what he needs to do to make himself whole. He’s stopped drifting, he’s stopped being tossed around by the wind.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“Allyson sees Willem's face, his panic, and she knows he is misreading her. But she is helpless to explain right now. Words have left her. She is emotion only.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


“A veces se gana, otras se pierde. Y a veces se gana y pierde al mismo tiempo. La vida es un jodido desastre”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night



“La verdad y su opuesto son dos caras de una misma moneda.”
― Gayle Forman, quote from Just One Night


About the author

Gayle Forman
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Popular quotes

“I saw thee once - only once - years ago:
I must not say how many - but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared stir, unless on tiptoe -
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death -
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That smiled and died in the parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell upon the upturn'd faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn'd - alas, in sorrow!

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight -
Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,)
That bade me pause before that garden-gate,
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footsteps stirred: the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! - oh, G**!
How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)
Save only thee and me. I paused - I looked -
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind the garden was enchanted!)
The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses' odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All - all expired save thee - save less than thou:
Save only divine light in thine eyes -
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them - they were the world to me.
I saw but them - saw only them for hours -
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a wo! yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition! yet how deep -
How fathomless a capacity for love!
But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.
They would not go - they never yet have gone.
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.
They follow me - they lead me through the years.
They are my ministers - yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle -
My duty, to be saved by their bright fire,
And purified in their electric fire,
And sanctified in their elysian fire.
They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,)
And are far up in Heaven - the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still - two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Raven and Other Poems


“Patriotism is not a matter of the skin’s color. It is a matter of the heart.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii


“قليل من الأشياء, وكثيرٌ من القلب.”
― Nikos Kazantzakis, quote from Zorba the Greek


“Umana cosa è l'aver compassione agli afflitti; e come che a ciascuna persona stea bene, a coloro è massimamente richiesto li quali già hanno di conforto avuto mestiere, e hannol trovato in alcuni: fra' quali, se alcuno mai n'ebbe bisogno, o gli fu caro, o già ne ricevette piacere, io son uno di quegli.”
― Giovanni Boccaccio, quote from The Decameron


“Forgiveness, reader, is, I think, something very much like hope and love - a powerful, wonderful thing.
And a ridiculous thing, too.”
― Kate DiCamillo, quote from The Tale of Despereaux


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