Sarah Addison Allen

“It was like the way you wanted sunshine on Saturdays, or pancakes for breakfast. They just made you feel good.”

“The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy.”

“She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.”

“Мъжете, които действат необмислено, винаги се изненадват от последствията.”

“She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina. She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm.”

“The area was encompassed in a bubble of warm, fragrant steam from the funnel cake deep fryers. It smelled like sweet vanilla cake batter you licked off a spoon.”

“Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.”

“She sometimes thought she was going crazy. Her first thought when she woke up was always how to get him out of her thoughts. And she would keep watch, hoping to see him next door, while plotting ways to never have to see him again. ”

“Embarrassment felt a lot like eating chili peppers. It burned in the back of your throat and there was nothing you could do to make it go away. You just had to take it, suffer from it, until it eased off.”

“Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.”

“Safe is just another word for scared.”

“It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me.”

“Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.”

“He had a smug smile on his lips like he knew, even in his sleep, that women all around him were dying from love because he'd taken their hearts and hidden them where they'd never find them.”

“To this day she could make tap water boil just by kissing him.”

“She accepted it from then on. Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.”

“Girls like us, when we love, it takes everything we have.”

“He was the only person in the world she was tongue-tied around, and yet the only person she really wanted to talk to.”

“So you stay, you don't tell anyone, is that it?""Sure," Della Lee said easily."That's blackmail.""Add it to my list of sins.""I don't think there's room left on that list," Josey said as she took a dress from its hanger. Then she closed the closet door on Della Lee.”

“Even at seventy-four, with a limp from a hip replacement, Margaret could still enter a room and fill it like perfume.”

“There was a certain power beautiful mothers held over their less beautiful daughters.”

“He used to believe good things happened in this kind of weather.”

“She'd fallen into the best part of her past.”

“When people believe you have something to give, something no one else has, they'll go to great lengths and pay a lot of money for it.”

“Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.”

“I'm homesick all the time," she said, still not looking at him "I just don't know where home is. There's this promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it's like chasing the moon - just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon. I grieve and try to move on, but then the damn thing comes back the next night, giving me hope of catching it all over again.”

“Some men you know are Southern before they ever say a word," Julia said as she and Emily watched Sawyer's progress, helpless, almost as if they couldn't look away. "They remind you of something good--picnics or carrying sparklers around at night. 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.”

“I spent so much time telling myself that this wasn't home that I started to believe it,” she said carefully. “Belonging has always been tough for me.”“I can be your home,” he said quietly. “Belong to me.”

“When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over.”

“She'd always known he didn't love her. But it was easier to bear when he didn't know she loved him. That way they were even. Now he knew he had all the power.”

“Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.”

“You'd be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you'd do, when you take self-respect out of the equation.”

“It feels like he's taken your heart, doesn't it?....Like he's reached in and pulled it out from you. And I bet he smiles like he doesn't know, like he doesn't know he's holding your heart in his hand and you're dying from him.”

“Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse.”

“Always make your needs and expectations known,she used to say. That way no one gets hurt.”

“She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi.”

“Men of thoughtless actions are always surprised by consequences.”

“Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.”

“He might be tall enough to see into tomorrow, but he hadn’t looked there in a long, long time.He’d forgotten how bright it was.So bright he could hardly stand it. ”

“When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief.”

“It was natural, she supposed, to be tense around him. 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.”

“...é como tentar agarrar a Lua, quando penso que a vou apanhar, ela desaparece no horizonte. Fico desgostosa e tento seguir em frente, mas depois a malvada regressa na noite seguinte, dando-me de novo esperança de a conseguir agarrar.”

“...a sad sort of vulnerability was wafting from her, making the night smell like maple syrup.”

“The words were strung in the air like garland. She could almost see them.”

“Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails.”

“Living down your own past was hard enough. You shouldn't have to live down someone else's.”

“I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.”

“To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story.”