The Longest Ride Quotes

If we'd never met, I think I would have known my life wasn't complete. And I would have wandered the world in search of you, even if I didn't know who I was looking for.

You made me happy and you made me laugh, and if I could do it all over again, I would not hesitate. Look at our life, at the trips we took, the adventures we had. As your father used to say, we shared the longest ride together, this thing called life, and mine has been filled with joy because of you.

After all, if there is a heaven, we will find each other again, for there is no heaven without you.

Trust people, until they give you a reason not to. And then never turn your back

People plan, God laughs.

Remember me with joy, for this is how I always thought of you. That is what I want, more than anything. I want you to smile when you think of me. And in your smile, I will live forever

I know I'm not going to be able to change the world, but I think it's important to try to make a difference

His voice, even now, follows me everywhere on this longest of rides, this thing called life.

You don't know how strong something is until you actually test it.

The only thing I do know for sure is that if we both want to, we’ll find a way to make it work.

Yet experience has taught me that fate is sometimes cruel and that even a boatload of hope is sometimes not enough.

I think that the point is that people rarely understand that nothing is ever exactly what you think it will be.

Do not worry about tomorrow until you have to.

we shared the longest ride together, this thing called life,

That's the difference between family and friends. Family is always there, no matter what, even when it's not right next door. Which means that you'll find a way to keep the connection alive. Especially since you realize how important it is.

How about we just see where life takes us for awhile?

I wish I had the talent to paint the way I feel about you, for my words always feel inadequate. I imagine using red for your passion and pale blue for your kindness; forest green to reflect the depth of your empathy and bright yellow for your unflagging optimism. And still I wonder: can even an artist’s palette capture the full range of what you mean to me?

I know you miss me terribly. I miss you, too. But we still have each other, for I am - and always have been - part of you. You carry me in your heart, just as I carried you in mine, and nothing can ever change that. I love you, my darling, and you love me. Hold on to that feeling. Hold on to us. And little by little, you will find a way to heal.

It's strange, I think, the way our lives turn out. Moments of circumstance, when later combined with conscious decisions and actions and a boatload of hope, can eventually forge a future that seems predestined.

If it makes you feel better, I promise to forget.

In other words, our opinions and our thoughts and feelings, anything we experience, need not define us forever.

And in your smile, I will live forever

In her eyes and in her touch I felt the echoes of my words.

I'd like to marry you, if you think that would be okay.

It's easy to joke when you don't care any more. I'm not saying it didn't hurt me, because it did.

I have loved you in return, more than you will ever know.

and then you stopped. And looked at me. And I knew then exactly what was going to happen. You kissed me, yes. But it was not just goodnight. Even then, I could feel the promise in it. The promise that you would kiss me just like that, forever.

With you, my life felt indeed like a fantastic adventure - despite our ordinary circumstances, your love imbued everything we did with secret riches.

What I do know is that when I was sitting with you that night, I felt like God was telling me that I was doing the right thing.

I'm going to miss you while you're gone.

You should not complain, it's not attractive.

I love you, you know.

He still didn't think I was good enough for you." "No father thinks any man is good enough for his daughter.

God, with a wisdom I can't claim to understand, called you home a long time ago, and the tears I shed that night have never seemed to dry.

we shared the longest ride together, this thing called life, and mine has been filled with joy because of you.

I understand that love and tragedy go hand in hand, for there can’t be one without the other, but nonetheless I find myself wondering whether the trade-off is fair.

To me, he was saying that our reality is shaped by our perceptions. That something is good or bad only because we- you and I- believe it to be so, based on our own experiences.

You're very perceptive for a guy who can go a whole day without talking,” she said, peering up at him. “That's why I'm perceptive.

If there is a heaven we will find each other again, for there is no heaven without you.

It’s strange, I think, the way our lives turn out. Moments of circumstance, when later combined with conscious decisions and actions and a boatload of hope, can eventually forge a future that seems predestined.

He drew a deep breath, struggling to keep his emotions in check, knowing he didn't love her simply in the here and now but that he would never stop loving her.

Her hands are warm and soft. Hands I knew better then my own.

I understand, Ira.

A truth emerges in any long marriage, and the truth is this: Our spouses sometimes know us better than we even know ourselves.

And that was our beginning. It's not a thrilling tale of adventure or the kind of fairy-tale romance portrayed in movies, but it felt like divine intervention.

It went on, this lifetime in a box, one letter after another.

but unlike me, she has a hard time saying such things. She loved me with a passion, but I felt it in her expressions, in her touch, in the tender brush of her lips. And, when I needed it most, she loved me with the written word as well.

We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.

Love requires sacrifice, but it's worth it

One of my father’s Rules for Life was to marry a woman who was smarter than you. “I did this,” he would say to me, “and you should do it, too. I say, why do all the thinking?

She would tell me that it was a sign that your heart was pure, that you formed deep attachments, and that once you loved something—or someone—you would never stop.

He believed that most people, when given the choice, would do what was right, even when it was hard, and he believed that good almost always triumphed over evil. He wasn’t naive, though. “Trust people,” he would tell me, “until they give you a reason not to. And then never turn your back.

One of my father's Rules for Life was to marry a woman who was smarter than you.

You kissed me yes, But it was not just goodnight even then I could feel the promise in it. The promise that you could kiss me like that forever.

For it is one thing to declare one's love for someone and quite another to accept that loving that person requires sacrificing one's dreams.

Ruth Levinson Third grade teacher. She believes in me and I can be anything I want when I grow up. I can even change the world.

Everyone’s entitled to a bad day.

The day my life changed forever...The day I first saw you.

The ups and downs, the dreams and struggles, had all been part of the journey, she realized—a journey that led to a cattle ranch near a town called King, where she had fallen in love with a cowboy named Luke.

It wasn’t a question of if a bull rider got injured, but rather when and how badly.

Here and now she cannot exist without me.

I love you, Sophia.

and in those moments, it was your expression, more than your words, that always filled my heart with joy. With you, my life felt indeed like a fantastic adventure—despite

I think,” she said, “that the point is that people rarely understand that nothing is ever exactly what you think it will be.

She loved me with a passion, but I felt it in her expressions, in her touch, in the tender brush of her lips. And, when I needed it most, she loved me with the written word as well.

But Ruth has not read all the letters I’ve written to her. She couldn’t. Though I wrote them for her, I also wrote them for me, after all, and after she passed away, I placed another box beside the original. In this box are letters written with a shaking hand, letters marked only by my tears, not hers. They are letters written on what would have been yet another anniversary. Sometimes I think about reading them, just as she used to, but it hurts me to think that she never had the chance.

more time she’d spent with him, the more convinced she became that he was by far the sexiest guy she’d ever met. Who else did she know who could work with his hands the way he did? Who could make her laugh? Who was smart and charming, self-reliant and tender?

While she was exceptional, I was average, a man whose major accomplishment in life was to love her without reservation, and that will never change.

any time I spent with Ruth should be regarded as precious. War, after all, was everywhere.

And I'd be struck a new by the finality of Ruth's absence.

Trust people,” he would tell me, “until they give you a reason not to. And then never turn your back.

Hell, if they wanted to act like idiots, why try to stop them?

if he hadn’t been following her, she doubted she’d be thinking about him at all. Yet he was still able to ruin her night, and that bothered her. Because she was allowing it to happen. Because she was giving him that power over her.

No," I mumble. I try to shake my head but can't, the agony making it impossible. "I want to stay awake. I want to be with you." "Do not worry. I will be here when you wake." "But you were gone before." "I was not gone. I was here and I will always be here." "How can you be so sure?" She kissed me again before answering. "Because," she says, her voice tender, "I am always with you, Ira.

I love you, Luke.

And yet, in truth it is in the quiet details of our life together where I have found the most meaning.

I am always with you, Ira.

You know my last name, but I didn’t catch yours.” “Danko,” she said. Then, anticipating his next question: “My dad is from Slovakia.” “That’s near Kansas, right?

In college, there aren't many guys like that, and why would there be? When girls just give it away for nothing? I mean, I can understand why you'd sleep with someone if you love them, but if you barely know them? What's the point? It just cheapens it.

was often told what I should do. He expected honesty and integrity in all aspects of life, but I was also told to hold doors for women and children, to shake hands with a firm grip, to remember people’s names, and to always give the customer a little more than expected.

Because he believed in honesty and integrity, my father believed that others did as well. He believed in human decency and assumed others were just like him. He believed that most people, when given the choice, would do what was right, even when it was hard, and he believed that good almost always triumphed over evil. He wasn't naive, though.

Yes, I would become upset when you forgot to take out the garbage, but that is not a real argument. That is nothing. It passes like a leaf blown by the window. It is over and done and it is forgotten quickly.

Maybe I'll show you one day. Take you horseback riding and everything.

I've got a lot of stuff in the bed of my truck.

After all, you don’t know how strong something is until you actually test it.” She winked. “I read that in a fortune cookie once.” “Fortune cookie?

I spent much of that year trying to imagine a future distorted by war.

AS your father used to say, we shared the longest ride together, this thing called life, and mine has been filled with joy because of you.

I was told that I should never lie or cheat or steal, for instance, but my father—a sometimes Jew, he called himself back then—was far more likely to focus on the practical. Never go out in the rain without a hat, he would tell me. Never touch a stove burner, on the off chance it still might be hot. I was warned that I should never count the money in my wallet in public, or buy jewelry from a man on the street,

And though she didn’t know it then, whenever her thoughts drifted back toward the past, she would always remember that this was how it all began.

I wanted never to disappoint my father. His voice, even now, follows me everywhere on this longest of rides, this thing called life

It's not a thrilling tale of adventure or the kind of fairy-tale romance portrayed in movies, but it felt like divine intervention.

We of the Plains believe that our dead travel with us, ride along beside us, unseen and unknown, but knowing and seeing... Until the longest night. On that night, we mourn our dead, who are released to journey to the stars.

My mother laughed and told me she was only doing what mothers have always done for their sons. Then she told me that it was my job to prove that she hadn’t been lying, because that’s what sons were supposed to do for their mothers.

Instead, he reflected on what she’d said earlier, about their similarities, thinking she was right and hoping that it was enough to keep her coming back to the ranch. After a while their conversation lapsed into a peaceful lull, and he realized he had no

Longest. Elevator. Ride. Of. His. Life. As Trez stood next to Selena in a glass-walled torture chamber, he was resolutely facing the closed doors—and praying for some kind of Dr. Who time warp thingy that had him stepping out of the goddamn thing rightfuckingnow. Eyeballs locked on the glowing line of numbers above the chrome doors, he wanted to vomit. L . . . 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50. “44” had yet to light up because they were in the screaming-fast, liver-in-your-loafer, express part of the joyride. “Oh, you should look out here,” Selena said, pivoting toward the all-access pass to vertigo. “This is so much fun!” A quick glance over his shoulder and he nearly hurled. His beautiful queen had not just gone over to the glass, but put her palms on it and leaned into the ever-higher view. Trez snapped back around. “Almost there. We’re almost at the top.” “Can we go down and come up again? I wonder what the descent is like!” Actually, maybe they should head back to the lobby. He was fairly sure he’d left his manhood there when this rocket ride had ignited.

Einstein didn’t frame his questions as: “what happens to light if …” but instead as “what would I see if I were to ride a light beam?” or “what would I feel if I were in free fall, in a box out in space, far away from any gravitational field?” Einstein cast himself as the protagonist of the story. That’s exactly what we do when we read fiction! I had never noticed the parallel before.

But if you’re two guys like us, riding the Bronx tracks, you better make sure you hide any sign of affection if you want to fly under the radar. I’ve known this for the longest—I just hoped it wouldn’t matter. Someone whistles at us and I instantly knew I was wrong. These two guys who were competing in a pull-up contest a few minutes ago walk up to us. The taller one with his jeans leg rolled up asks, “Yo. You two homos faggots?” We both tell him no. His friend, who smells like straight-up armpits, presses his middle finger between Collin’s eyes. He sucks his teeth. “They lying. I bet their little dicks are getting hard right now.” Collin smacks the dude’s hand, which is just as big a mistake as my mom trying to save me from being thrown out the house last night. “Fuck you.” Nightmare after nightmare. One slams my head into the railing, and the other hammers Collin with punches. I try punching the first guy in his nose, but I’m too dizzy and miss. I have no idea how many times he punches me or at what point I end up on the sticky floor with Collin trying to shield me before he’s kicked to the side. Collin turns to me, crying these involuntary tears from shock and pain. His kind brown eyes roll back when he’s kicked in the head. I cry out for help but no one fucking breaks up the fight. No one fucking does the right thing. The train stops and the doors open but there’s no chance for escape. For us, at least.

How long does it last?" Said the other customer, a man wearing a tan shirt with little straps that buttoned on top of the shoulders. He looked as if he were comparing all the pros and cons before shelling out $.99. You could see he thought he was pretty shrewd. "It lasts for as long as you live," the manager said slowly. There was a second of silence while we all thought about that. The man in the tan shirt drew his head back, tucking his chin into his neck. His mind was working like a house on fire "What about other people?" He asked. "The wife? The kids?" "They can use your membership as long as you're alive," the manager said, making the distinction clear. "Then what?" The man asked, louder. He was the type who said things like "you get what you pay for" and "there's one born every minute" and was considering every angle. He didn't want to get taken for a ride by his own death. "That's all," the manager said, waving his hands, palms down, like a football referee ruling an extra point no good. "Then they'd have to join for themselves or forfeit the privileges." "Well then, it makes sense," the man said, on top of the situation now, "for the youngest one to join. The one that's likely to live the longest." "I can't argue with that," said the manager. The man chewed his lip while he mentally reviewed his family. Who would go first. Who would survive the longest. He cast his eyes around to all the cassettes as if he'd see one that would answer his question. The woman had not gone away. She had brought along her signed agreement, the one that she paid $25 for. "What is this accident waiver clause?" She asked the manager. "Look," he said, now exhibiting his hands to show they were empty, nothing up his sleeve, "I live in the real world. I'm a small businessman, right? I have to protect my investment, don't I? What would happen if, and I'm not suggesting you'd do this, all right, but some people might, what would happen if you decided to watch one of my movies in the bathtub and a VCR you rented from me fell into the water?" The woman retreated a step. This thought had clearly not occurred to her before.

Violet’s not getting out of our sight,” Arion adds. There’s a moment of just staring…like everyone is trying to silently argue. “No one naked in my car,” Mom states when I just stand in my spot, waiting on them to hurry through the push and pull. You really can tell how thick the air is when too many alphas are in the room at one time, but weirdly it never feels this way when it’s just the four of them. Unless punches are thrown. Then it gets a little heavier than normal. Arion pulls on his clothes, and threads whir in the air as I quickly fashion Emit a lopsided toga that lands on his body. Everyone’s gaze swings to him like it’s weird for him and normal for me to be in a toga. Awesome. Damien muffles a sound, Emit arches an eyebrow at me, and Arion remains rigid, staying close to me but never touching me. All of us squeezing into a car together while most of them hate each other…should be fun. The storm finally stops before we board the elevator, and it’s one of those super awkward elevator moments where no one is looking at anyone or saying anything, and everyone is trying to stay in-the-moment serious. We stop on the floor just under us, after the longest thirty-five seconds ever. The doors open, and two men glance around at Emit and I in our matching togas, even though his is the fitted sheet and riding up in some funny places. He looks like a caveman who accidentally bleached and shrank his wardrobe. I palm my face, embarrassed for him. The next couple of floors are super awkward with the addition of the two new, notably uncomfortable men. Worst seventy-nine seconds ever. Math doesn’t add up? Yeah. I’m upset about those extra nine seconds as well. Poor Emit has to duck out of the unusually small elevator, and the bottom of his ass cheek plays peek-a-boo on one side. Damien finally snorts, and even Mom struggles to keep a straight face. That really pisses her off. “You’re seeing him on an off day,” I tell the two guys, who stare at my red boots for a second. I feel the need to defend Emit a little, especially since I now know he overheard all that gibberish Tiara was saying… I can’t remember all I said, and it’s worrying me now that my mind has gone off on this stupid tangent. I trip over the hem of my toga, and Arion snags me before I hit the floor, righting me and showing his hands to my mother with a quick grin. “Can’t just let her fall,” he says unapologetically. “You’re going to have to learn to deal with that,” she bites out. She has a very good point. I don’t trip very often, but things and people usually knock me around a good bit of my life. The two guys look like they want to run, so I hurry to fix this. “Really, it’s a long story, but I swear Emit—the tallest one in the fitted-sheet-toga—generally wears pants…er…I guess you guys call them trousers over here. Anyway, we had some plane problems,” I carry on, and then realize I have to account for the fact we’re both missing clothing. “Then there was a fire that miraculously only burned our clothes, because Emit put all my flames out by smothering me with his body,” I state like that’s exactly what happened. Why do they look so scared? I’m not telling a scary lie. At this point, I’ve just made it worse, and fortunately Damien takes mercy, clamping his hand over my mouth as he starts steering me toward the door before I can make it…whatever comes after worse but before the worst. “Thank you,” sounds more like “Mmdi ooooo,” against his hand, but he gets the gist, as he grins. Mom makes a frustrated sound. “Another minute, and she’d be bragging about his penis size in quest to save his dignity. Did you really want to hear that?” Damien asks her, forcing me to groan against his hand.

After loud overtures from his daughters, Anthony finally left the house and went up the winding path to the “museum,” to the mobile home where he and his parents had lived from 1949 to 1958. It has been left untouched. The furniture, tables, the paint on the walls, the ’50s cabinets, the dressers, the closets, are all unchanged, remaining as they once were. And in her closet in the bedroom, past the nurse’s uniform, far away in the right-hand corner on the top shelf, lies the black backpack that contains Tatiana’s soul. Every once in a while when she can stand it—or when she can’t stand it—she looks through it. Alexander never looks through it. Tatiana knows what Anthony is about to see. Two cans of Spam in the pack. A bottle of vodka. The nurse’s uniform she escaped from the Soviet Union in that hangs in plastic in the museum closet, next to the PMH nurse’s uniform she nearly lost her marriage in. The Hero of the Soviet Union medal in the pack, in a hidden pocket. The letters she received from Alexander—including the last one from Kontum, which, when she heard about his injuries, she thought would be the last one. That plane ride to Saigon in December 1970 was the longest twelve hours of Tatiana’s life. Francesca and her daughter Emily took care of Tatiana’s kids. Vikki, her good and forgiven friend, came with her, to bring back the body of Tom Richter, to bring back Anthony. In the backpack lies an old yellowed book, The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems. The pages are so old, they splinter if you turn them. You cannot leaf, you can only lift. And between the fracturing pages, photographs are slotted like fragile parchment leaves. Anthony is supposed to find two of these photographs and bring them back. It should take him only a few minutes. Cracked leaves of Tania before she was Alexander’s. Here she is at a few months old, held by her mother, Tania in one arm, Pasha in the other. Here she is, a toddler in the River Luga, bobbing with Pasha. And here a few years older, lying in the hammock with Dasha. A beaming, pretty, dark-haired Dasha is about fourteen. Here is Tania, around ten, with two dangling little braids, doing a fantastic one-armed handstand on top of a tree stump. Here are Tania and Pasha in the boat together, Pasha threateningly raising the oar over her head. Here is the whole family. The parents, side by side, unsmiling, Deda holding Tania’s hand. Babushka holding Pasha’s, Dasha smiling merrily in front.