Best Quotes

‘If I Stay‘ quotes centers on emotion and the will to act. Throughout the book, Gayle Forman speaks to the reader through the voice of the pained characters.

Desperation

If you stay, I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll quit the band, go with you to New York. But if you need me to go away, I’ll do that, too. I was talking to Liz and she said maybe coming back to your old life would be too painful, that maybe it’d be easier for you to erase us. And that would suck, but I’d do it. I can lose you like that if I don’t lose you today. I’ll let you go. If you stay.

Throughout the book, desperation was rampant in Mia’s family. However, no one felt more desperate than Adam. He felt desperate to talk to Mia about her staying. Adam wanted Mia to make her dreams come true; he wanted her to have a life. Adam’s desperation was so strong that he finally convinced Mia to stay.

Love

And that’s just it, isn’t it? That’s how we manage to survive the loss. Because love, it never dies, it never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it.

Here Mia talks about the one thing that rescues people from pain and hardship, Love. Though the love she felt was cut short by her parents and brother’s demise, Mia still felt that there was still love in the world.

Love, it never dies. It never goes away, it never fades, so long as you hang on to it. Love can make you immortal

This quote defines love as an entity and not just an emotion. Here Mia talks about how love is probably the only thing that makes one hang on to life even in the face of overwhelming pain and suffering.

Letting Go

‘It’s okay,’ he tells me. ‘If you want to go. Everyone wants you to stay. I want you to stay more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.’ His voice cracks with emotion.

Here Mia’s grandfather tells her that letting go is not a sign of weakness but a sign of humanity. Throughout her stay at the hospital, Mia felt that everyone wanted her to stay, and no one understood what she felt but with her grandfather’s statement, she found relief and knew he understood her plight.

Choice

Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.

Choice is the theme ‘If I Stay’ centers on. With Mia having to make only one choice between staying or leaving everything becomes weird for her. Soon Mia discovers that choice isn’t made all the time, she discovered that sometimes things happening to us force a choice on us without us knowing.

I’m not choosing, but I’m running out of fight.

Here Mia finds herself getting weaker and weaker, and then she knew the inevitable was coming for her. She knew that life was drawing far away from her.

Pain

Adam is crying and somewhere inside of me I am crying, too, because I’m feeling things at last. I’m feeling not just the physical pain, but all that I have lost, and it is profound and catastrophic and will leave a crater in me that nothing will ever fill.

Pain is the feeling that dominates the entire novel. Mia felt so much pain that she knew it was better to leave. Mia realized it was better to be with her family in a safe place than for her to stay in the world and face the pain of losing them. However, Mia also realized that everyone around her felt pained too, and Adam, who was madly in love with her felt pain seeing her in the state she was, and then Mia knew that her pain was the pain of everyone around her too.

“Please Mia,” he implores. “Don’t make me write a song.”

In the novel, Adam felt pain beyond comprehension as the thought of losing Mia ate away at his sanity. He knew that she had to be listening to him, and so he begged her not to go because he wanted her to stay and just be alive.

I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.

Here Mia realizes that staying was worse than leaving, and she knew that staying would be the most difficult choice she makes.

FAQs