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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)

-Ann Brashares

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People Said Things They

Ann Brashares

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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)

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Falling In Love

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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.

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Life Is Too Short

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I Don't Have The Life Of A Famous Person. But I Do Feel Like I've Been Able To Connect With A Lot Of People.

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Knowing Where She Was In The World, Even If He Never Touched Her, Gave Him A Deep Satisfaction, And He Half Despised Himself For Being Satisfied With So Little.

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Your Problem Isn't The Problem, It's Your Attitude About The Problem.

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She Used To Cry Roughly Three Times A Year. Now She Seemed To Cry Three Times Before Breakfast. Could That Be Considered Progress?

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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.

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Beautiful People

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She Got Tired Of Herself. She Got Tired Of Not Being Able To Say What She Wanted Or Do What She Wanted Or Even Want What She Wanted.

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The Ocean Was The Best Place, Of Course. That Was What She Loved Most. It Was A Feeling Of Freedom Like No Other, And Yet A Feeling Of Communion With All The Other Places And Creatures The Water Touched.

We Aren't In High School. We Aren't Really In Our Families And We Aren't In Our Houses. Those Are The Places We Grew Up And The Times We Spent Together, But They Aren't Us. If Think They Are, Then We're Lost, Because Times End And Places Are Lost. We Aren't Any Place Or Any Time . . . We Are Everywhere.

All The Things She Planned To Feel, The Way She Planned To Look And Seem, The Appropriate Things She Planned To Say. None Of Them Came To Pass.

I Always Interpret Coincidences As Little Clues To Our Destiny

I'm Not Going Anywhere Without You. We're Swimming To China Together. And If The Worst Happens, I'm Dying With You Before I'm Living Without You.

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)

She Had Willed Her Heart To Stay Small And Contained, But It Wouldn’t Be. Oh, Well.

It Was Funny To Hear Her Voice Aloud. Her Thoughts And Perceptions Usually Existed So Deep Inside Her, They Rarely Made It To The Surface Without A Deliberate Effort.

Starting Is Hard So I Really Need To Give Myself Permission To Do A Bad Job. I Always Give Myself Leave To Write Total Nonsense For As Long As I Need To Release The Pressure, Because It's Really Hard To Start If You Feel Like That First Sentence You Write Has To Actually Mean Something.

She Went Around With A Broken Heart, And She Wasn't Sure Who'd Broken It. She Thought It Was Herself, Mostly.

Once Paul Told Her That The Beach Was Like Him Because It Changed Every Day But It Never Made Any Progress. Later She Remembered Thinking That A Normal Person Might Have Begun By Saying That He Was Like The Beach.

You'll Turn Out Ordinary If You're Not Careful.

Women Always Seemed To Bring The Size They Wished They Were To The Fitting Room, Rather Than The Size That Would Actually Fit.

And I Thought About The Color And I Realized What Blue It Was. It Was The Soft And Changeable, Essential Blue Of A Well-worn Pair Of Pants. Pants = Love

I Did The Searching And Remembering, She Did The Disappearing And The Forgetting.

Don't Ask Me Any Questions Right Now. I'm Grumpy And I'll Probablly Make Fun Of You. -effie Kaligaris

There Was Nothing New In Sitting On This Dock, On This Or That Wooden Bench, Watching For His Boat To Come. In Some Ways, She Was Always Waiting For Him.

What Daniel Taketh Away, Daniel Giveth.

Why Does He Have To Be My Boyfriend? Are You Inferior If You Don't Have A Boyfriend? Why Does Everybody Have To Be In Love With Somebody?

Maybe They Would Look At Each Other And Feel Some Odd Yearning, But Neither Of Them Would Know Why. They Would Want To Stop, But They Would Be Embarrassed, And Neither Would Know What To Say. They Would Go Their Separate Ways. Who Knew? Maybe That Happened Every Day To People Who'd Once Loved Each Other.

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.

You Couldn't Erase The Past. You Couldn't Even Change It. But Sometimes Life Offered You The Opportunity To Put It Right.

Maybe The Truth Is, There's A Little Bit Of Loser In All Of Us. Being Happy Isn't Having Everything In Your Life Be Perfect. Maybe It's About Stringing Together All The Little Things.

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.

It Was Their Mothers, Long Ago. Tibby Noted With Joy That All Four Of Them Were Wearing Jeans.

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