Ann Brashares
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.Collection: Long Ago
Please believe him. Keep your heart open to him. He can make you happy. He has always loved you, and you once loved him with all your heart.Collection: Believe
You are not going to die, I know I said I'd let you, but I can't.Collection: Said
I told him, though, that he better be good to you. When you came along, I said I'd share you, but I told him to remember that you're my sister. I loved you first.Collection: Firsts
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 KaligarisCollection: Self
Show me a girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground and I'll show you a girl who can't put her pants on. -Annik MarchandCollection: Girl
Everything I ever said to you was true and is true.Collection: Said
Marnie hated to see her spend so much of herself on someone who didn't care.Collection: Care
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.Collection: Sorry
Don't ask me any questions right now. I'm grumpy and I'll probablly make fun of you. -Effie KaligarisCollection: Fun
It wasn't just that Lucy wanted to help him. She wasn't as selfless as that. She was madly attracted to him. She was attracted to all of the normal things and the weird things, too, like the back of his neck and his thumbs on the edge of his desk and the way his hair stuck out on one side like a little wing over his ear. She caught his smell once, and it made her dizzy. She couldn't fall asleep that night.Collection: Fall
I sometimes think the stronger you feel about someone, the harder it is to picture their face when you are away from them.Collection: Thinking
As the three of them walked home from the trees, nobody needed to say it, but Ama knew. They had questioned their friendship. They had searched and wondered, looking for a sign. And all along they'd had their trees. You couldn't wear them. You couldn't pass them around. They offered no fashion advantage. But they had roots. They lived.Collection: Fashion
The phone was her worst enemy and her best friend but she never knew which until she answered it.Collection: Phones
I’m sorry you asked me out, otherwise maybe I could have liked you.Collection: Sorry
He just wanted to look at her and know her life was marching along under the same arch of time and space as he is.Collection: Space
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.Collection: Moving
He loved her for being so beautiful, and he hated her for it. He loved how she put shiny stuff on her lips for him, and he also reviled her for it. He wanted her to walk home alone, and he wanted to run after her and grab her up before she could take another step.Collection: Beautiful
You hold on to old experiences: injuries, injustices, and great love affairs, too. And you hold them in your joints and your organs, and wear them on your skin.Collection: Great Love
This body is breaking down, but I am not.Collection: Body
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.Collection: Goodbye
Someday was the thing he had, because it was a lot harder to ruin than today.Collection: Today
Pain is fear, and I'm not afraid.Collection: Pain
You should find him because he loves you.Collection: Love You
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.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Long
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.Collection: Fun
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.Collection: Memories
The present no matter what I brought couldn’t change the past. The Past was set and sealed.Collection: Past
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.Collection: Distance
Carmen was bad at loving. She loved too hard.Collection: Hard
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)Collection: Self
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)Collection: Believe
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?Collection: Kids
But then she hadn’t just learned to love this summer – she had also learned how to need.Collection: Summer
She perched on her windowsill, gazing at the lurid sun soaking into the Caldera, trying to appreciate it even though she couldn’t have it. Why did she always feel she had to do something in the face of beauty?Collection: Appreciate
Sometimes it is a relief to be invisibleCollection: Relief
Shy” was the sympathetic interpretation she got from older people. “Snotty” was the interpretation she got from people her own age.Collection: People
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.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Long
She had to have faith not just in trying but in failing. Was she strong enough to fail Was she strong enough not toCollection: Strong
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.Collection: Waiting
You just have to let people love you in the way they canCollection: Love You
For the first time she saw that the nurse's name was Tabitha.Collection: Names
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.Collection: Girl
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.Collection: Want
They needed to grieve alone was what Tibby's dad said. Lena wondered if really there was any choice in that. Everyone grieved alone.Collection: Dad
Their friendship was only one aspect of their lives but it seemed to give meaning to all the others.Collection: Giving