We asked members of the BuzzFeed Community to tell us the saddest literary quote they've ever read. Here are some of their tear-jerking replies.
1. "For Beatrice, when we first met, I was lonely, and you were pretty. Now I am pretty lonely."
—Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Slippery Slope
2. "So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."
—Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
3. "Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold."
—S. E. Hinton, The Outsiders
4. "Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart."
—E. B. White, Charlotte's Web
5. "I know so many last words. But I will never know hers."
—John Green, Looking for Alaska
6. "You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart…I'll always be with you."
—A. A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
7. "I buried Little Ann by the side of Old Dan. I knew that was where she wanted to be. I also buried part of my life along with my dog."
—Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows
8. "All I could do now was offer him comfort, the assurance that as he left this life he was not alone but rather was tended by the dog who loved him more than anything in the whole world."
—W. Bruce Cameron, A Dog's Purpose
9. "I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog."
—John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
10. "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
—J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
11. "If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?"
—Jodi Picoult, 19 Minutes
12. "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
—Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
13. "The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person."
—Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
14. "You can love someone so much...But you can never love people as much as you can miss them."
—John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
15. "I was too young to know how to love her."
—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
16. "There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone."
—Mark Lawrence, King of Thorns
17. "With his other hand he aimed his pistol, and the bird plummeted to the ground beside its screaming mother, and the officer shot the mother, too. But it was not a bird."
—Irene Gut Opdyke, In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer
18. "Rudy, please, wake up, Goddamn it, wake up, I love you. Come on, Rudy, come on, Jesse Owens, don't you know I love you, wake up, wake up, wake up..."
—Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
19. "You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same."
―Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
20. "And Percy was shaking his brother, and Ron was kneeling beside them, and Fred's eyes stared without seeing, the ghost of his last laugh still etched upon his face."
—J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
21. "Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died."
—Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife
22. "I will love you forever; whatever happens. Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again..."
— Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
23. "The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke it's back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one."
—Toni Morrison, Beloved
24. "The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains."
—Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
25. "A sound of cornered animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed a coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care about anything, but himself and his dying."
—Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
26. "When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time — the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers."
—John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
27. "He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave."
—Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
28. "You have been in every way all that anyone could be... If anybody could have saved me it would have been you."
—Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places
29. "I take no joy in mead nor meat, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart once was."
—George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire
30. "Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."
—William Golding, Lord of the Flies
31. "I wish every day could be Halloween. We could all wear masks all the time. Then we could walk around and get to know each other before we got to see what we looked like under the masks."
—R.J. Palacio, Wonder
32. "Aaron wrenches his arms and there's a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever."
—Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go
33. "If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?"
—Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
34. "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."
—Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
35. "Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living."
—Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
36. "And I hope she'll be a fool. That's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
37. "I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and they did it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it — seems that only children weep. Good night."
—Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
38. "There are a lot of children in Afghanistan, but little childhood."
—Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
