Born June 5, 1970, Gayle Forman is an award-winning American author best known for her number one New York Times bestseller If I Stay, which has touched millions of readers worldwide and was adapted into a major motion picture. Beginning her career as a journalist for major publications, Forman brings authenticity and emotional depth to her young adult fiction. Her novels explore themes of love, loss, choice, and resilience with remarkable sensitivity. Forman's work demonstrates how storytelling can help us process grief, celebrate love, and understand that even in our darkest moments, we possess the strength to choose our path forward.
"My stomach lurched, an appetizer before the full portion of heartache I had a feeling was going to be served at some point soon."
"So, this is how it's become? This is how I've become? A walking contradiction? I'm surrounded by people and feel alone. I claim to crave a bit of normalcy but now that I have some, it's like I don't know what to do with it, I don't know how to be a normal person anymore."
"We can change in one day. We can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in one day."
"Forward momentum. That's my new motto. No regrets. And no going back."
"I don't really care. I shouldn't have to care. I shouldn't have to work this hard. I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard."
"I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It's okay if you have to leave us. It's okay if you want to stop fighting."
"Don't worry, I plan on living a long time.""Why are you making a bucket list, then?""Because if you wait until you're really dying, it's too late."
"She didn't care that people called her a bitch. 'It's just another word for feminist,' she told me with pride."
"I'd wish you luck, Willem, but I think you need to stop relying on that."
"Being Lulu, it made me realize that all my life I've been living in a small, square room, with no windows and no doors. And I was fine. I was happy, even. I thought. Then someone came along and showed me there was a door in the room. One that I'd never even seen before. Then he opened it for me. Held my hand as I walked through it. And for one perfect day, I was on the other side. I was somewhere else. Someone else. And then he was gone, and I was thrown back into my little room. And now, no matter what I do, I can't seem to find that door."
"That they will find each other during the play, once more, in the words of Shakespeare."
"A journey of 1,000 miles starts with just 10 digits."
"Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out."
"If you could know going in that twenty-five years of love would break you in the end, would you risk it? Because isn't it inevitable? When you make such a large withdrawal of happiness, somewhere you'll have to make an equally large deposit. It all goes back to the universal law of equilibrium."
"I don't hate you. I don't think I ever really did. It was just anger. And once I faced it head-on, once understood it, it dissipated."
"Look I accept Adam because you love him. And I assume he accepts me because you love me...your love binds us.'...The funny thing was, I never really bought into Kim's notion that they were somehow bound together through me- until just now when I saw her half carrying him down the hospital corridor."
"I'll be your mess, you be mineThat was the deal that we had signed."
"Neither sleet nor rain nor a half inch of snow will compel me to dress like a lumberjack."
"Love is not something you protect. It's something you risk."
"It's not that we like sad movies that make us feel like, 'Oh, my God, what a bummer.' We like emotionally moving experiences. It's nothing new. It's catharsis. It goes back to the Greeks."
"You thought too hard. Same with travel. You can't work too much at it, or it feels like work. You have to surrender yourself to the chaos. To the accidents."
"Forgivenesss: It's a miracle drug. It's God's miracle drug."
"Firefly, it is an act of bravery to feel your feelings. Oh, Meg would've loved that. It's an act of bravery to feel your feelings, even if your feelings are telling you to die."
"That happens a lot with Shakespeare. The women go after what they want the men wind up suckered into things."
"I'll keep you here.' He taps his temple. 'Where you can't get lost."
"We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day."
"She said it was because one day I was going to have to go through a metamorphosis like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly and that scared me, so butterflies scared me."
"I clap so that I can hold on to this feeling. I clap because I know what will happen when I stop. It's the same thing that happens when I turn off a really good movie - one that I've lost myself to - which is that I'll be thrown back to my own reality and something hollow will settle in my chest."
"Sometimes fate or life or whatever you want to call it, leaves a door a little open and you walk through it. But sometimes it locks the door and you have to find the key, or pick the lock, or knock the damn thing down. And sometimes, it doesn't even show you the door, and you have to build it yourself."
"I run my finger along the crease of the envelope, feel the weight of history inside. Wherever I'm going next, these are coming with me."