Top 100 Marieke Nijkamp Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “One step after another after another. It doesn’t matter what comes next as long as I keep moving forward.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

2. “This is where it ends.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

3. “The world is a messed up and scary place. It’s lonely to go through it on your own. So, you have to find your family. You have to find people who will stand by you and make you laugh until you cry, and who will hold you while you cry until you laugh again.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

4. “Love me or hate me if you want, I don’t care. But do it for all that I am, with all that I am.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

5. “You can’t always keep your loved ones with you. You can’t always settle your life in one place. The world was made to change. But as long as you cherish the memories and make new ones along on the way, no matter where you are, you’ll always be at home.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

6. “It’s easier to know who I’m not than to know who I am. When everyone expects me to fail, it’s easier to give up than to try.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

7. “Grief is one big, gaping hole, isn’t it? It’s everywhere and all consuming. Some days you think you can’t go on because the only thing waiting for you is more despair. Some days you don’t want to go on because it’s easier to give up than to get hurt again.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

8. “We’re more than our mistakes. We’re more than what people expect of us.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

9. “Everyone has a reason to fear the boy with the gun.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

10. “Together we could be so strong, but the gun has made us individuals.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

11. “You’re my best friend. I love you endless days and endless nights. You’re stuck with me.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

12. “We are not better because we survived. We are not brighter or more deserving. We are not stronger. But we are here. We are here, and this day will never leave us. Nor should it. We will remember the wounded. We will remember the lost.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

13. “We’re not just fighting for survival – we’re fighting for hope and a thousand tomorrows.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

14. “It doesn’t have to be a happily ever after or a happily always. Just a happily once. A happily sometimes. Hope. That’d make our pain worth it.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

15. “And I know the auditorium may be big enough to hold a thousand students, but it’s too small to hide just one.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

16. “Fear and survival are two sides of the same coin.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

17. “I try to focus, but there’s a disconnect between my body and my mind, like nothing about it fits anymore. I don’t feel like I belong in this body, I don’t know how to interact with this world. It feels like I’m observing through a veil, and I don’t know how to move. Panic is a type of pain too.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

18. “Death brings life; life brings death.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

19. “I never realized that courage was so terrifying.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

20. “It’s not giving up. It’s standing together, not alone. It’s facing whatever comes next. Because you believe in a cause, perhaps, but most of all, you believe in one another.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

21. “I didn’t need to die for him to kill me.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

22. “She saw a future that none of us could see yet. She believed in a future, and for that, we believed in her.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

23. “There are no words in that fleeting moment between hope and the knowledge. There is no way to express how a heart can burst and break at the same time, how the sun can cut through the darkness but will case shadows everywhere.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

24. “So we run. Not just in circles around the track. We run toward all that is waiting for us. We run together while we still can.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

25. “The only things that give us purpose are the stories that tie us together. We.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

26. “Not being able to do everything on your own doesn’t mean you’re weak. It means you’re as human as we all are, and we’re stronger together. We survived because we were together. Asking for help isn’t failure, it’s strength. It means you trust yourself enough to be flawed and to learn. Because here’s the secret: You don’t have to be infallible. You don’t have to know it all. No one is and no one does.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

27. “We’ll watch the stars fade and the moon disappear. We’ll watch the sun set fire to the horizon. And we’ll talk about the future one last time before it’s actually upon us.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

28. “Dad always told me there are more stories in the universe than stars in the sky. And in every story, there’s the light of hope. That’s why the seniors sent lanterns up to the sky-to make sure the darkness is never absolute.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

29. “By the third day, everyone... had passed her at least half a dozen times, and they seemed to have forgotten about her entirely. “It gives me a chance to look... from a different perspective... “.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

30. “Because no matter who we are, we all dream.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

31. “It was the truest thing she said that night, as we both lied to each other.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

32. “We’ll build a bridge. A bridge between us.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

33. “You can do far more than you ever imagined. If you don’t believe that, at least believe me.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

34. “This is how I will remember her. And with every corner I turn, I will still expect to see her. With every constellation I observe, I’ll wonder about stories as well as science. I’ll build a bridge to her. I’ll look for falling stars.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

35. “He spends way too much time in his own head, but he seems to like it there, so who are we to tell him otherwise? It’s not like the real world is necessarily a better place to be.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

36. “None of my doctors told me about how pain wears you down until you sometimes don’t know where physical pain stops and mental pain begins. They didn’t tell me about the anger and the fear and the helplessness. Finn told me and then, when I finally let him, held me while I let it all sink in.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

37. “But together we held our darkness up to the light, and it became easier to carry because we were not alone.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

38. “But as much as the town believed in her, they still didn’t value her enough to save her. And I lost myself to the world outside the town’s borders. I forgot about her too.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

39. “Before the accident – BTA – I didn’t know anger and pain could feel the same. I didn’t think physical pain and emotional pain could simply be extensions of each other. Now, I could hardly separate the two. And I wanted to crash my fist into a kitchen cabinet or my knee into a chair. Find a more harmful way to stim. Either make the pain worse or make it go away.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

40. “You can do far more than you ever imagined.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

41. “But I want my life to have meaning because I give it meaning, not because someone else says that it does. I want my life to mean something because I create. Because I love. Because I make the world a better place.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

42. “I can’t shake the feeling that with every day that passes, she slips away like starlight at dawn. At.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

43. “And at some point, you discover if you’re going to be afraid anyway, you may as well do the things that scare you.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

44. “Relief and sorrow follow each other rapidly, because with the names of those who live comes the void of those who have not. Death brings life; life brings death.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

45. “I don’t feel panic or shock. There’s just a sense of defeat. This is it.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

46. “This is what our world is now: the dead, the lost, the wounded. Could I have done anything about it? Could I have prevented this by speaking up?”

— Marieke Nijkamp

47. “Dad once told me that even a hopeless situation doesn’t always stop him. Not because he believes there’ll be a miracle, but because giving up feels too final.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

48. “It’d be easy to get lost here, in the spaces where I feel like a ghost. A spirit who couldn’t touch, or be touched. It’d be easy, so easy, to drown. But I keep swimming back towards the shore.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

49. “The lantern gently tugs upward. It’s warm enough, ready to be released. I hold on for one more moment. Then, around me, other lanterns are released. They float over our heads into the darkness, toward the promise of a new day. I take a deep breath and caress the rice paper between thumb and finger. And I let go.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

50. “I want to be safe. And here isn’t safe anymore.”

— Marieke Nijkamp