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The Most Haunting Thing Was Not That He Didn't Love Her Anymore. She Could Have Accepted That Eventually. The Most Haunting Thing Was That He Did. He Loved Her From Afar. He Loved Her In A Way That Was Preserved In Time, That Couldn't Be Sullied. And She Tended It In Her Careful, Curatorial Way.

-Ann Brashares

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The Most Haunting Thing

Ann Brashares

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The Most Haunting Thing Was Not That He Didn't Love Her Anymore. She Could Have Accepted That Eventually. The Most Haunting Thing Was That He Did. He Loved Her From Afar. He Loved Her In A Way That Was Preserved In Time, That Couldn't Be Sullied. And She Tended It In Her Careful, Curatorial Way.

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I Love You, I'll Never Stop.

You Are Not Going To Die, I Know I Said I'd Let You, But I Can't.

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I Look Back On My 20s. It's Supposed To Be The Prime Of Your Life, The Most Vital, The Most Beautiful. But You're Making Your Critical Decisions And Sometimes Your Most Critical Mistakes.

Critical Decisions

But Like Everything Else, Love Changed.

You Don't Have Time, Len. That Is The Most Bitter And The Most Beautiful Pieve Of Advice I Can Offer. If You Don't Have What You Want Now, You Don't Have What You Want. -pg276

What You Leave Behind Is The People You Loved. You Leave Yourself In Them.

Wear Them, They Will Make You Brave.

You Have Been With Me From The Very First Life. You Are My First Memory Every Time, The Single Thread In All Of My Lives. It`s You Who Makes Me A Person.

He Could Lose Himself In Her Forever, He Thought.

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Relief Is A Short-lived Emotion, Passive And Thin. The Agony Of Doubt Disappears, Leaving Little Memory Of How It Really Felt. Life Aligns Behind The New Truth.

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.

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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

Love Is Like War; Easy To Begin, Hard To End.

She Wasn't As Destructive As Bee. She Had Never Been As Dramatic. Rather, She'd Slipped Carefully, Stealthily Away From Her Ghosts.

Polly Was Pretty Good At Dieting, All Right, But She Was Beginning To Wonder Whether You Ever Lost The Parts Of Your Self That You Wanted To Lose.

As Much As I'm Drawn To Writing About Teenage Girls, I Like The Idea Of Having The Freedom To Branch Out And Write About Different Ages, For Different Ages.

People Left A Lot Of Things Behind When They Went In The Water. Their Clothes, Their Stuff, Their Makeup, Their Fixed-up Hair, Their Voices, Their Hearing, Their Sight--at Least As They Normally Experienced Them....some People Lost Their Individuality In The Water, But Riley Always Felt Most Herself. Water Was Supposed To Symbolize Renewal, She Knew, But When Riley Swam, Pared Down, Alone, And Unreachable--she Felt A Deeper Sense Of Who She Already Was.

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.

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 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.

When There Is Nothing, There Is The Possibility Of Everything.

Wish For What You Want, Work For What You Need. -carmen's Grandmother

Carmen Was Bad At Loving. She Loved Too Hard.

Shy” Was The Sympathetic Interpretation She Got From Older People. “snotty” Was The Interpretation She Got From People Her Own Age.

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.

I'm Afraid Of Time... I Mean, I'm Afraid Of Not Having Enough Time. Not Enough Time To Understand People, How They Really Are, Or To Be Understood Myself. I'm Afraid Of The Quick Judgements Or Mistakes Everybody Makes. You Can't Fix Them Without Time. I'm Afraid Of Seeing Snapshots, Not Movies.

Life Isn't Just Fair. It's Just Fairer Than Death, That's All. -william Goldman

You Just Have To Let People Love You In The Way They Can

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.

My Household Is, In A Nice Way, Very Busy.

You Know What The Secret Is? It's So Simple. We Love One Another. We're Nice To One Another. Do You Know How Rare That Is? - Carmen

Can You Make Yourself Love? Can You Make Yourself Loved? -lena Kaligaris

No Matter How Far Back You Cut A Willow Tree, It Will Never Really Die.

Alice Suspected Paul Couldn’t Really Picture His Father, Just Like She Couldn’t Picture Paul When He Was Away. Maybe That Was The Case With People You Wanted More Than Was Good For You.

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.

Someday Was The Thing He Had, Because It Was A Lot Harder To Ruin Than Today.

The Path Of Your Life Can Change In An Instant.

Life Can Change In An Instant

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.

Age Is Not So Much A Feature Of Your Character, As The Spot Where You Stand For A Pretty Fleeting Time On The Arc Of Your Life.

Blood May Be Thicker Than Water, But Friendship Is Thicker Than Both.

Maybe It Didn’t Matter If You Were A World-famous Heartthrob Or A Painful Geek. Maybe It Didn’t Matter If You Friend Was Possibly Dying. Maybe You Just Got Through It. Maybe That Was All You Could Ask For.

She Must Have Sensed She Never Really Had Him. That Was A Sadness Of Hers, He Knew.

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?

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

He's Had A Lot Of Chances To Care, And He Hasn't.

Gestating Characters Feels Something Like The Mental Equivalent Of Gestating A Baby. In Both Cases, To Create Them You Lose Yourself. Or At Least You Reshape Yourself To Encompass Them.

Losing Yourself

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.

She Was Supposed To Be Putting Her Life Together Right Now, And All She Could Seem To Do Was Throw Grenades At It.

Lena Knew She Had Spent Too Much Of Her Life In A State Of Passive Dread, Just Waiting For Something Bad To Happen. In A Life Like That, Relief Was As Close As You Got To Happiness.

There Was Love Expressed In The Places You Usually Forget To Look.

Sometimes It Is A Relief To Be Invisible

Something About Giving In Without A Fight Felt Wrong.

You Could Feel Things Or You Could Find A Way To Shut Down. But Once You Were Feeling Things, You Couldn’t Decide Exactly What To Feel. That Was The Trouble With Letting Them In At All. They Made A Mess Of The Place.

What Made You Feel That Stomach-churning Agony For One Person And Not Another? If Bridget Were God, She Would Have Made It Against The Law For You To Feel That Way About Someone Without Them Having To Feel It For You Right Back.

I Agree That A Love Of Reading Is A Great Gift For A Parent To Pass On To His Or Her Child.

There Are Going To Be Moments Of Deep, Deep Doubts, And You Have To Have Faith That Your Initial Idea Was Good And Just Muddle Through.

Tibby's Wish Would Be To Hold On To The Idea Of Love Even In The Face Of Darkest Doubt. Because That Was The Way In Which She Failed. Not Once, But Again And Again.

When Your About To Criticize Someone Walk A Mile In Thier Shoes, That Way When You Criticize Them You're A Mile Away From Them And You Have Their Shoes

What Can I Say? I'm Obsessed. And As We All Know Obsessed Girls Can't Be Held Responsible For Our Actions.

The Phone Was Her Worst Enemy And Her Best Friend But She Never Knew Which Until She Answered It.

Everything I Ever Said To You Was True And Is True.

Daniel?" "yes." "did You Ever Think We Were Meant Not To Be Together?" "no. We Are Meant To Be Together. We Are Just Meant To Want It Very Badly.

You Surround Yourself With Your Pain Or You Avoid It And Let It Find You When You Are Trying To Do Other Things

Surround Yourself

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

Sometimes You Couldn’t Face The Sadness Of Being Forgotten Until You Felt The Comfort Of Being Remembered Again.

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