Adriana Trigiani

“There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who want to know the facts, and those who want to make up a nice story to feel better. I wish I was the kind who made up stories.”

“If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren’t reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don’t have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me. But when the morning comes, I realize that there’s nothing to be done about what has already happened. I can only get up and do my chores and push through the day and find the good in it.”

“All your life you was one thing. And now you can be something else if you want! Somebody completely different. You can actually start yourself over from scratch. Turn yourself into what you have always wanted to be!”

“No one worries about you like your mother, and when she is gone, the world seems unsafe, things that happen unwieldy. You cannot turn to her anymore, and it changes your life forever. There is no one on earth who knew you from the day you were born; who knew why you cried, or when you'd had enough food; who knew exactly what to say when you were hurting; and who encouraged you to grow a good heart. When that layer goes, whatever is left of your childhood goes with her.”

“Moments are history. If you have enough of them, they become a story.”

“He loved his family and he loved beauty. For a true Italian, those are the only two things that matter, because in the end that's what sustains you. Your family gathers around you and shores you up while the beauty uplifts you.”

“When I close my eyes, all I ever see is her face. There is no place or time without her. Where I am doesn't matter when we're apart. All I want is her.”

“For a woman, love is the highest dream, and if a man promises to build a ladder tall enough to reach it, she believes him, hikes up her skirt, and follows him to the stars.”

“Ciro took Enza's face in his hands. "I have loved you all of my life. I was a boy who knew nothing, but when I met you, somehow I understood everything”

“Giacomina had taught her daughter that you must dig constantly for meaning in the sorrow of this life, and that this sorrow must galvanize you, not define you.”

“He sank into the leather seat and held hope in his heart like a hundred stars.”

“Women move through the world never knowing their power.”

“Beware the things of this world that can mean everything or nothing.”

“A practical girl never pines; she takes action.”

“It's the secret to happiness, you know. Only take what you need.”

“When you lose someone, they take a bigger place in your heart, not a smaller one. Every day it grows, because you don't stop loving them. You wish you could talk to them. You need their advice. But life doesn't always give us what we need, and it's difficult.”

“Life, Enza decided, is not about what you get, but what is taken from you. It's in the things we lose that we discover what we most treasure.”

“La famiglia eterna.”

“Mama always said a good family has one heartbeat. No one knows you like the people you live with, and no one will take up your cause to the outside world quite like your blood relatives.”

“A man who needs a mirror is looking for something.”

“The intimacy. The deepest level of love. The knowledge that someone understands you, is rooting for you, is sharing your life.”

“He promised to love me. And for once in my life, I'm going to do the impractical, unwise, ill-advised thing. I'm going to make a decision based upon the feeling I have in my heart, and not what looks good on paper or makes anyone else happy. I'm going to do something for me, and I'll live with whatever Ciro brings into my life and be happy that I did.”

“For Ciro, Enza would sacrifice, fight to put food on the table, worry and fret over babies, and live life in full. She had only one life to share, and one heart to give the man who most deserved it. If she took Ciro on, she was in for a struggle compared to her life with Vito, but the love of all loves was worth it.”

“A cassock does not make a man a priest, any more than a fine dress makes a woman truly beautiful - or good or generous or intelligent. Don't confuse the way someone looks with the way they are.”

“She savored their conversation, and often, when doing her chores, she remembered the words he said to her and how hopeful he was that she might kiss him again. Now she wished she had. because one kiss is not enough.”

“Having a purpose is the little secret of the nonpretties. Something to do always beats something to look at.”

“Do Italians tell you everything they feel without censor?”

“Romy had never done a budget, Marisol had never designed costumes and sets, and Suzanne had never acted, but when I asked them to help, they didn't hesitate”

“This is where men and women are different, we can put aside petty competition for relationships - they can't. It interferes.”

“We hang out, we help one another, we tell one another our worst fears and biggest secrets, and then just like real sisters, we listen and don't judge.”

“But what Mom never told me is that along the way, you find sisters, and they find you. Girls are cool that way.”

“There's nothing an artist needs more - even more than excellent tools and stamina - than a deadline.”

“.. its not so much about the shoes, but the person wearing them”

“Tonight, I am a Perfect Girl, because I had a perfect night. And it ended with three perfect kisses. Three. What a lucky number.”

“This is one of those times when explaining a feeling cannot measure up to actually having the feeling”

“This should tell you everything you need to know about guys. They only go after what they know they can get. We girls, on the other hand, aim really high. We take a leap...”

“Energy has to be fed from a source. If you don't feed the source, it dissipates entirely.Same is true of liking a boy. If you cut off the thoughts, if you stop pinning, you're free to find a boy who is attainable.”

“This is something that I have learned at PA that I would have never learn at home because I have my own room and I'm an only. Nobody has it easy, not even the Great and Tall Blond One”

“I like it when my mother smiles. And I especially like it when I make her smile.”

“I look at my roommates who are so proud of me that it makes me proud.”

“... but that's the beauty of boarding school. I make all my own decisions, small and medium, while the big ones are left up to the Prefect Academy - and as far as boys go, to the only expert I know - Suzanne Santry”

“Really? We are being herded on a bus to drive across town to an all-boy academy where we disembark and join our lonely counterparts on a dance floor. Sounds like a scorecard situation to me.”

“The dance that I wasn't going to attend in about a jillion years just turned into a make-out session with random boys we have never met.”

“If the yellow patent leather flats fit...”

“I don't use a crap camera, I don't eat junk, and I'm not going to a dance where the boys are bores”

“I don't settle in any other area of my life when it comes to excellence, so why should I lower my standards when it comes to boys?”

“The good things that happen to us were meant to happen, and the bad things that happen are lessons meant to teach us to be better.”

“Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved”

“Marriage is like working in a coal mine. You hack away in the dark, day after day, busting rock, and you think you're not getting anywhere, and then all of a sudden, this little sliver of sunlight appears and you say to yourself, "oh, that's what I've been waiting for--just a little light, just a little bit of hope--a sign, maybe, that will get me through. And...it does.”

“Women give men a place to go. A man is a useless piece of equipment whose purpose is lost if it were not for women...It's like this. A man might go out and get a job, but only for someplace to go during the day. And he's only working that job to give the money to his wife. And then, if he does really well...to buy her good jewelry. And only because she asks for it. Diamonds aren't a man's idea. The first woman sent the first man into a hole in the ground, and when he emerged with the first diamond she looked at it and said, 'It's too small. Dig farther." Men are not ambitious outside of their desire to impress women. A woman, in return, gives a man's life shape. A context. A place to go. It's very simple.”