Quotes from What's Left of Me

Kat Zhang ·  343 pages

Rating: (14.3K votes)


“But understanding a thing and accepting it are so very different things.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me


“Addie was warm and radiant next to me, making up half of us. But I - I was Eva, Eva, Eva, all the way through.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me


“I was terrified. I was eleven years old, and though I'd been told my entire life that it was entirely natural for the recessive soul to fade away, I didn't want to go. I wanted twenty thousand more sunrises, three thousand more hot summer days at the pool. I wanted to know what it was like to have a first kiss. The other recessives were lucky to have disappeared at four or five. They knew less.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me


“If you're there, Eva...if you're really there..." His fingers tightened around our shoulder, digging into our skin. "I love you, too. Always"

Then he pushed us away.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me


“One second. A snapshot of fear and sweat and blood.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me



“I was caged in our body and caged in his arms and, somehow, the former was the real prison.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me


“(Addie) I said. (If it had been you - if it were you trapped inside. If you were the one who couldn't move, I'd go back. I'd go back in a second.)”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me


“The silence was like an unwelcome child, pulling at our hair, running its fingers over our lips.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me


“There's only so long you can be at the zoo before it gets old.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me


“For years, we'd been the thorn of the neighborhood, the dirty little secret that wasn't so secret. The girls who just wouldn't settle.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me



“We'd been born with our souls' fingers interlocked. What if we'd never let go?”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me


“I focused as hard as I could on our fingers. On curling them. On bending our elbows to prop up our body.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me


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“First I need to do something.’ He pulled me closer towards him until our lips were almost touching.
‘What might that be?’ I managed to stutter, closing my eyes, anticipating the warmth of his lips against mine. But the kiss didn’t come. I opened my eyes. Alex had jumped to his feet.
‘Swim,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Come on.’
‘Swim?’ I pouted, unable to hide my disappointment that he wanted to swim rather than make out with me.
Alex pulled his T-shirt off in one swift move. My eyes fell straightaway to his chest – which was tanned, smooth and ripped with muscle, and which, when you studied it as I had done, in detail, you discovered wasn’t a six-pack but actually a twelve-pack.
My eyes flitted to the shadowed hollows where his hips disappeared into his shorts, causing a flutter in parts of my body that up until three weeks ago had been flutter-dormant. Alex’s hands dropped to his shorts and he started undoing his belt.
I reassessed the swimming option. I could definitely do swimming.
He shrugged off his shorts, but before I could catch an eyeful of anything, he was off, jogging towards the water. I paused for a nanosecond, weighing up my embarrassment at stripping naked over my desire to follow him. With a deep breath, I tore off my dress then kicked off my underwear and started running towards the sea, praying Nate wasn’t doing a fly-by.
The water was warm and flat as a bath. I could see Alex in the distance, his skin gleaming in the now inky moonlight. When I got close to him, his hand snaked under the water, wrapped round my waist and pulled me towards him. I didn’t resist because I’d forgotten in that instant how to swim. And then he kissed me and I prayed silently and fervently that he took my shudder to be the effect of the water.
I tried sticking myself onto him like a barnacle, but eventually Alex managed to pull himself free, holding my wrists in his hand so I couldn’t reattach. His resolve was as solid as a nuclear bunker’s walls. Alex had said there were always chinks. But I couldn’t seem to find the one in his armour. He swam two long strokes away from me. I trod water and stayed where I was, feeling confused, glad that the night was dark enough to hide my expression.
‘I’m just trying to protect your honour,’ he said, guessing it anyway.
I groaned and rolled my eyes. When was he going to understand that I was happy for him to protect every other part of me, just not my honour?”
― Sarah Alderson, quote from Losing Lila


“If anyone on the verge of action should judge himself according to the outcome, he would never begin. Even though the result may gladden the whole world, that cannot help the hero; for he knows the result only when the whole thing is over, and that is not how he became a hero, but by virtue of the fact that he began.”
― Søren Kierkegaard, quote from Fear and Trembling


“The other girl was fifteen, and she was expecting”
― Danielle Steel, quote from The Gift


“Because the world to-day is so constructed that no one can do what he would like to do, and he is forced, instead, to do what others wish him to do. Because the question of money always intrudes—into what we do, into what we are, into what we wish to become, into our work, into our highest aspirations, even into our relations with the people we love!”
― Alberto Moravia, quote from Contempt


“Is there not room in your heart for both? They both spread peace, charity, and goodwill.” “Only Jesus can save your soul from eternal damnation.” A smug smile spread across the reverend’s face. “Can Santa Claus do that? Don’t think so.” Santa let out a sigh. “We all serve God in our way.” Then, almost to himself: “Sometimes whether we wish it or not.”
― Brom, quote from Krampus: The Yule Lord


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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

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