Ann Brashares

“She was still waiting for him to come back to her, even though he wasn't going to. She was still holding out for something that wasn't going to happen. She was good at waiting. That seemed like a sad thing to be good at.”

“It was endlessly tricky being in the know. It was a state Carmen had a achieved with a certain bravado, but she found it difficult to maintain. Without Jones, she could easily slip out of the know, relapse into her natural eagerness, and probably never get hired for another part in her life.”

“Not even you can reach me here, Carmen thought.”

“You Could Only See As Far As Your Headlights, But You Can Make Your Whole Trip That Way :)”

“But I know this. We're ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.”

“she looked up at the stars and gave Tibby thanks. She didn't have to throw her thoughts far to know they reached her.”

“It was like a dream you might have after death in which lost people came back to life, your friends loved you again no matter what you had done, and your failures were unaccountably forgiven.”

“This is the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. I you don't have what you want now, you don't have what you want.”

“At least I tried.”

“How terrible would it be to just wait there pathetically alone for him never to show up?"Eudoxia's expression grew more serious. "That's what you're doing anyway, my dear.”

“She felt like parts of her soul were missing, had left her body long ago. It had happened not in Greece three months ago, but long before that. It was in Greece that she'd realized those parts had left her and were not coming back.”

“Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn't get to have.”

“Lena felt like a child. Worse than a child and less valuable. She felt like a mouse. No, smaller than a mouse and less alive. Her life seemed so small and crumpled you could shoot it through a straw like a spitball.”

“Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good about yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could flip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct ad had nothing at all to give.”

“What you leave behind is the people you loved. You leave yourself in them.”

“You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn't. As long as your heart kept pumping an your blood kept blowing and your lungs kept filling, you didn't. The pang she felt for Tibby carried something like envy. You couldn't stand still for anything short of death, and God knew she had tried.”

“You just have to let people love you in the way they can”

“She went around with a broken heart, and she wasn't sure who'd broken it. She thought it was herself, mostly.”

“If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.”

“Everything good requires sacrifices.”

“There was love expressed in the places you usually forget to look.”

“Time was moving backward, it seemed, and the future was mostly forgotten.”

“i don't want to be the only good thing in the world.”

“She discarded whole chunks of life that obsessed other people. She didn't torture people she loved, nor did she hunger for them. She kept it simple.”

“She didn't deserve it, which was to say she deserved better.”

“But like everything else, love changed.”

“How is it that a person could be so relieved and so disappointed, both at the same time.”

“Exactly! We run or we lose ourselves in something, somebody, anything to try and ease our pain.”

“Skinny girls have skinny minds”

“Something about giving in without a fight felt wrong.”

“She wondered again about her inclination to wish for things that made her so deeply unhappy.”

“Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever.”

“Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it.”

“She hadn't chosen the brave life. She'd chosen the small, fearful one.”

“A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand.”

“She'd cried over a broken heart before. She knew what that felt like, and it didn't feel like this. Her heart felt not so much broken as just ... empty. It felt like she was an outline empty in the middle. The outline cried senselessly for the absent middle. The past cried for the present that was nothing.”

“There were those emotions down there, and though she couldn't quite feel them, they were strong and she feared them. It was like watching a thunderhead from high up in a plane, and though you weren't under it, you knew how it would feel if you were. You knew you'd have to land eventually.”

“Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn't get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn't escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison.”

“Tibby, who was not fond of change, had once told Bridget that the present, no matter what it brought, couldn't change the past. The past was set and sealed.”

“Lena realized that a fundamental layer of their happiness depended on the four of them being close to one another. Their lives were independent and full. Their friendship was only one aspect of their lives, but it seemed to give meaning to all the others.”

“Lena always described how she dreaded and mourned things before they even happened. Carmen was beginning to suspect that she was permitting herself to mourn this long separation only now that it was over.”

“She existed in her friends; there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.”

“I picture you four girls back when you were small. I hardly knew where you ended and the other ones started.”

“She knew that when she got old it would be more fun to look back on a life of romance and adventure than a life of quiet habits. But looking back was easy. It was the doing that was painful. There were plenty of things she would like to look back on but wasn't willing to risk ...”

“She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.”

“For the first time she saw that the nurse's name was Tabitha.”

“But will he come I just want to know what you think the odds are. Tell me what you really think." "I think Tibby was a wise girl. I think she loved you.”

“It was probably good you couldn't flip the love switch because sometimes it was what you needed even if you didn't want it.”

“He took her in his arms right away. "I'm so sorry," he murmured in her ear. He rocked her, saying it over and over.But no matter how many times he said it, no matter how much she knew he meant it, the words stirred around in her ear but didn't get into her brain. Sometimes he could comfort her. Sometimes he said what she needed, but today he couldn't reach her. Nothing could.”

“I'm writing this down, because it is going to be hard for me to say it. Because this is probably our last time just us. See, I can write that down, but I don't think I can say it. I'm not doing this to say goodbye, though I know that has to be part of it. I'm doing it to thank you for all we have had and done and been for one another, to say I love you for making this life of mine what it is. Leaving you is the hardest thing I have to do. But the thing is, the best parts of me are in you, all three of you. You are who I am, and what I cherish in myself stays on in you.”