Ann Brashares

“They needed to grieve alone was what Tibby's dad said. Lena wondered if really there was any choice in that. Everyone grieved alone.”

“Their friendship was only one aspect of their lives but it seemed to give meaning to all the others.”

“She got under the covers and put her arms around the bag. She could smell Tibby. It used to be she couldn't smell Tibby's smell in the way you couldn't smell your own; it was too familiar. But tonight she could. This was some living part of Tibby still here and she held on to it. There was more of Tibby with her here and now than in what she had seen in the cold basement room that day.”

“What's the occasion?" she asked.He kissed her ear. "I've got a gorgeous woman who's going to be my bride."She laughed. "You have that every night.""That's why I want to celebrate.”

“She loved her mother and depended on her mother, and yet every single word her mother said annoyed her.”

“It’s natural to overlook and even sacrifice the things that belong to us most easily most gracefully. So here’s me asking you to please not make that mistake.”

“She wondered if maybe tragedy was what it took to make your heart capable of admitting a new member.”

“She had to have faith not just in trying but in failing. Was she strong enough to fail Was she strong enough not to”

“You get older and you learn there is one sentence just four worlds long and if you can say it to yourself it offers more comfort than almost any other. It goes like this… Ready ” “Ready.” “At least I tried.”

“She couldn’t hide from everyone for the rest of her life… Well she could. That was the direction things were going. But she knew from long-ago experience that when you were uncertain and if you were courageous enough to let her in a real friend could do a world of good.”

“It was a blessing and also a curse of handwritten letters that unlike email you couldn’t obsessively reread what you’d written after you’d sent it. You couldn’t attempt to un-send it. Once you’d sent it it was gone. It was an object that no longer belonged to you but belonged to your recipient to do with what he would. You tended to remember the feeling of what you’d said more than the words. You gave to object away and left yourself with the memory. That was what it was to give.”

“The present no matter what I brought couldn’t change the past. The Past was set and sealed.”

“He no longer represented someday a possibility. He represented a road not taken a road that suddenly shot so far into the distance she couldn’t see it anymore.”

“They were the sisterhood: their mothers at a younger age.”

“Carmen was bad at loving. She loved too hard.”

“The phone was her worst enemy and her best friend but she never knew which until she answered it.”

“It was frustrating when people loved you and took an interest in you and sometimes worried about you and personally cared what you did with yourself. Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good bout yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could clip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct and had nothing at all to give." (Lena, 194)”

“People said things they didn't mean all the time. Everybody else in the world seemed able to factor it in. But not Lena. Why did she believe the things people said? Why did she cling to them so literally? Why did she think she knew people when she clearly didn't? Why did she imagine that the world didn't change, when it did? Maybe she didn't change. She believed what people said and she stayed the same." (Lena, 211)”

“A loving soul was always more beautiful over the long haul, but actual prettiness was fleeting.”

“Hey," he said. "It's someday." He said the last word in Greek.”

“He took her hand and they started walking toward the baggage claim. They didn't say anything to each other. They swung their held hands like little kids, like they believed anything could happen, like they might take off soaring into the air. All the things you wanted to happen could happen. Why not?”

“He tricked himself into thinking that she would look into his eyes and remember, that love would conquer all.”

“Sometimes he felt like the only one on earth. He was different. He always was. His attempts at living in the regular world seemed stupid and false.”

“I love her. I need her. I gave away everything I had for her. I just wanted her to know me.”

“He'd pushed her. He'd scared her. He'd besieged her. He'd vowed he wouldn't, and he did.”

“She remembered me.' This was his worst weakness, his most toxic drug.”

“She cared about him too much, and he was a dangerous person to love. He wouldn't love her back.”

“She had never had a boy talk to her like that. There was no cover of bullshit, no flirtation, no added charm, but his look was searing. He was different from anyone she had known.”

“Do you have any idea how much I've loved you?”

“He's had a lot of chances to care, and he hasn't.”

“I always search for her; I always remember her. I carry the hope that someday she will remember me.”

“Bridget's anger evaporated and the sadness came back. The anger was easier. She owned and controlled it, whereas the sadness owned her.”

“But she knew from long-ago experience that when you were uncertain and if you were courageous enough to let her in, a real friend could do a world of good.”

“Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.”

“He didn't seem to realize that three excuses was as good as no excuse.”

“But then she hadn’t just learned to love this summer – she had also learned how to need.”

“The bottom had arrived. She crashed against it, but it brought no sense of closure or understanding. She just lay there at the bottom looking up. She knew there must be a very tiny circle of light up there somewhere, but just now she couldn’t see it.”

“By day she studied and touched her mother’s things, and by night, she dreamed about them. The dreams gave her as fragmented a vision of Marley as the boxes in the attic did. There were a thousand dramatic episodes, but very little sense of the person linking them together”

“Treasure in such large amounts stopped feeling precious”

“She wasn’t comfortable with the term boyfriend even when she did have one, and she hated everybody knowing her private business.”

“The dreams weren’t as pleasing when they had no chance of coming true”

“Sometimes it is a relief to be invisible”

“I always interpret coincidences as little clues to our destiny”

“She was alive, and they were dead. She had to try to make her life big. As big as she could. She promised Bailey she would keep playing.”

“There was a mysterious chasm between this island and the greater world, just like there was between old and young, ancient and new.”

“Shy” was the sympathetic interpretation she got from older people. “Snotty” was the interpretation she got from people her own age.”

“I like that you let yourself be surprised”

“So far, she’d been her usual lame self: solitary and routine-loving, carefully avoiding any path that might lead to spontaneous human interaction.Lena Kaligaris”

“I’m sorry you asked me out, otherwise maybe I could have liked you.”

“Love is like war; easy to begin, hard to end.”