Top 100 Marieke Nijkamp Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

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

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

6. “Death is a thief... It slips into our lives and steals what we care about most. It breaks us, and even when we piece ourselves together again, the pain remains.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

7. “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

8. “This is where it ends.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

9. “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

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

11. “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

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

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

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

19. “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

20. “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

21. “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

22. “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

23. “It’s always the same thing. Other things and other people are always more important than me. And if people see me, it’s never for who I am, but only for what I can do for them.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

24. “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

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

26. “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

27. “But what they failed to tell us is that running away and saving your own skin is only noble when you don’t leave anyone behind. If I were in the auditorium, I’d want someone to come for me. I’d want there to be hope.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

28. “The only two people who matter now are in front of me- the boy who broke me and the girl who put me back together.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

29. “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

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

32. “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

33. “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

34. “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

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

36. “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

37. “I can deal with pain. I always have and always will. But that’s familiar pain. It’s the pain I can – to some degree – adapt to and understand. This is too much. Too overwhelming. What’s almost as bad is that I’m bone tired. Tired enough that part of me wants to curl up and stay here, screw the consequences.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

39. “I’ve always thought this the test of a good game. Whether it withstands the stories told about it.”

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

— Marieke Nijkamp

43. “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

44. “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

45. “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

46. “It’s easier to know who I’m not than to know who I am. When.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

47. “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

48. “Stories remind me of heroes and possibilities. Stories remind me that I’m not the only one to deal with this. Stories make me feel less alone.”

— Marieke Nijkamp

49. “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

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

— Marieke Nijkamp