Sarah Addison Allen

“Southern men will hold doors open for you, they'll hold you after you yell at them, and they'll hold on to their pride no matter what. Be careful what they tell you, though. They have a way of making you believe anything, because they say it that way.”

“It had always fascinated him that she'd consumed so many words, that her head was full of stories, told a thousand different ways.”

“Some of the best people i know are fools', Evanelle said. 'The strongest people I know.”

“Memories, even hard memories, grew soft like peaches as they grow older.”

“Everything was quiet, a strange sort of quiet that felt like an unfinished sentence.”

“It took me a long time to realize this: We get to choose what defines us.”

“It was like she was MADE of cake, light and pretty and decorated on the outside-with her sweet laugh and pink streak to her hair-but it was anyone's guess what was on the inside.”

“Your peers when you're a teenager will always be the keepers of your embarrassment and regret. It was one of life's great injustices, that you can move on and be accomplished and happy, but the moment you see someone from high school you immediately become the person you were then, not the person you are now.”

“That, they knew, was true friendship. And they knew, if you're lucky enough to find it, you hold on to it.”

“When you're a teenager, your friends are your life. When you grow up, friendships seem to get pushed further and further back, until it seems like a luxury, a frivolity, like a bubble bath.”

“She never thought she was good at making friends. But maybe she was just trying to be friends with the wrong people.”

“Her grandmother used to tell her that a pink sky meant someone in the distance had just fallen in love . . . .”

“People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted.”

“I've never seen you hide from anyone before. He must do something crazy to you.”

“But one thing she [Rachel] did believe in was love. She believed that you could smell it, that you could taste it, that it could change the entire course of your life.”

“The trick is not to make eye contact. They don't charge if you don't make eye contact.”

“Because he knew the best way to get what he wanted was to break down what made us strongest. And our friendships were what made us strong.”

“Her friendship . . . still existed, as if it was a living, breathing thing, something that came to life the moment it happened and didn't just go away because they no longer acknowledged it.”

“When someone needs help, you help. Right?”

“Right now everyone is drinking bad wine made of sour grapes and hysteria. Let them drink it, and let them regret it in the morning.”

“Wasn't that the point to being married? That you had a partner, someone you trusted, to help with important decisions.”

“Her life was monotonous, but it kept her out of trouble. . . . This, her father would say, was called being an adult.”

“If anyone had been paying attention to the signs, they would have realized that air turns white when things are about to change, that paper cuts mean there's more to what's written on the page than meets the eye, and that birds are always out to protect you from things you don't see.”

“That's the fairy tale. You meet, you fall in love, you kiss, and neither of you is revolted by it. You get married and have kids and live happily ever after.”

“We're connected, as women. It's like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there's trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we're just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don't help each other, who will?”

“It felt as though they were the only people in the world, two young women about to bury the symbol of their helplessness, as if that's all it would take to make them whole again.”

“He didn't think he belonged here, so she was making him face some uncomfortable facts. People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted.”

“But that would leave Paxton to fend for herself, and the last thing any woman wanted in this kind of situation was to look around and see all the people who could help her doing nothing.”

“There was a strange but universal understanding among women. On some level all women knew, they all understood, the fear of being outnumbered, of being helpless. It throbbed in their chests when they thought about the times they left stores and were followed. The knocks on their car windows as they were sitting alone at red lights, and strangers asking for rides. Having too much to drink and losing their ability to be forceful enough to just say no. Smiling at strange men coming on to them, not wanting to hurt their feelings, not wanting to make a scene. All women remembered these things, even if they had never happened to them personally. It was a part of their collective unconscious.”

“Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss.”

“Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen.”

“If they just carried on like always, everything would be ok.”

“Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.”

“Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.”

“Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.”

“Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map.”

“I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.”

“Nothing is really broke, so it's not like I can fix it. I just have to keep trying to find what I'm looking for.”

“People always say life is too short for regrets. But the truth is, it's too long.”

“We decided to become a society of women, a club to make sure women were protected. The club was something important back then. Not like it is today.”

“He claimed the waters must have, indeed, been healing, because look how hard his journey was on him to get there, and how easy it was on him to get home.”

“Stability was overrated. Crises and adventures, on the other hand, could actually teach you something.”

“Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too.”

“After awhile, all the men wanted his opinion, and all the girls were in love with him. He made certain of it. Because he knew the best way to get what he wanted was to break down what made us strongest. And our friendships were what made us strong. He changed all that.”

“But a man like that deserved to never be thought of again. Why couldn't he have just stayed buried? No good had come of this.”

“If a man has so much heat he burns your skin when he touches you, he's the devil. Run away”

“He fell in love with a skinny stray cat that would skulk around the dining hall during meals. Every day, Jake would offer it sausage or egg from breakfast and pepperoni or hamburger from lunch. Every day, it ran away from him. But Jake didn’t give up. Even when he had the stomach flu, he snuck out of the infirmary to try to feed it. He was not going to let it down. He would watch it from classroom windows. He even made up a poem about it that he sent home to his mother in a letter. Three months later, the little cat was finally hungry enough to trust him. It never occurred to Jake that the cat...”

“Most locals knew who Della Lee was. She waitressed at a greasy spoon called Eat and Run, which was tucked far enough outside the town limits that the ski-crowd tourists didn’t see it. She haunted bars at night. She was probably in her late thirties, maybe ten years older than Josey, and she was rough and flashy and did whatever she wanted—no reasonable explanation required. “Della Lee Baker, what are you doing in my closet?” “You shouldn’t leave your window unlocked. Who knows who could get in?” Della Lee said, single-handedly debunking the long-held belief that if you dotted your...”

“Josey?” She heard her mother’s voice in the hall, then the thud of her cane as she came closer. “Please don’t tell her I’m here,” the woman in the closet said, with a strange sort of desperation. Despite the cold outside, she was wearing a cropped white shirt and tight dark blue jeans that sat low, revealing a tattoo of a broken heart on her hip. Her hair was bleached white-blond with about an inch of silver-sprinkled dark roots showing. Her mascara had run and there were black streaks on her cheeks. She looked drip-dried, like she’d been walking in the rain, though there hadn’t...”

“When she looked in the mirror these days, she saw someone she didn't recognize...She saw an old woman trying to be beautiful, her skin dry and her wrinkles like cracks. She looked like a very well-dressed winter apple.”