"You can't just make yourself matter and then die, Alaska, because now I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice. You left me Perhapsless, stuck in your goddamned labyrinth. And now I don't even know if you chose the straight and fast way out, if you left me like this on purpose. And so I never knew you, did I? I can't remember, because I never knew."
Alaska quotes
Alaska
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Alaska quotes (page 2 of 11)
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"I am a friend of Adventist people and a lover of truth."
"I'm really not up for answering any questions that start with how, when, where, why or what."
"I could try to pretend that I didn't care anymore, but it could never be true again. You can't just make yourself matter, and then die, Alaska, because now, I am irretrievably different, and I'm sorry I let you go, yes, but you made the choice."
"When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did."
"Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia."
"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth."
"We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions"
"In one line of his poem he said good fences make good neighbors. I'd like to think that Alaska and British Columbia working together can prove that we can be pretty darned good neighbors without fences."
"There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can't know better until knowing better is useless."
"But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail"
"We are greater than the sum of our parts."
"I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens."
"So the lover must struggle for words."
"There comes a time in the seeker's life when he discovers that he is at once the lover and the beloved."
"You can't just make me different, and then leave. Because I was fine before, Alaska. I was just fine with me and last words and school friends, and you can't just make me different and then die."
"And imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present."
"This one's for Alaska Young!"
"To the lover of pure wildness Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world."
"But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska's genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed"