110 Quotes & Sayings By Ann Brashares

He wanted to take his love back from her so badly. The old techniques didn’t work anymore. In fact, they’d never worked. How do you stop loving someone? It was one of the world’s more brutal mysteries. The more you tried, the less it worked. Ann Brashares

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. Ann Brashares

Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. Getting to level seven in Dragon Master and knowing there were twenty more levels to go. Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks- the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you go there- and downticks- the itch tag at the back of your collar- that happened to every person in the course of the day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day. maybe it didn't matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn't matter if your friend was possibly dying. Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for. Ann Brashares

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. Ann Brashares

Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it. . Ann Brashares

I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up. Ann Brashares

How sad it was, Carmen thought, that you acted awful when you were desperately sad and hurt and wanted to be loved. How tragic then, the way everyone avoided you and tiptoed around you when you really needed them. Carmen knew this vicious predicament as well as anyone in the world. How bitter it felt when you acted badly to everyone and ended up hating yourself the most. Ann Brashares

It was funny how the old practices always came around again. It was the rhythm of human enterprise to invent and worship some new approach, to fully reject it a generation later, to realize the need for it again a generation or two after that and then hastily reinvent it as new, usually without its original elegance. Scientists hated to look backward for anything. Ann Brashares

You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn't. As long as your heart kept pumping an your blood kept blowing and your lungs kept filling, you didn't. The pang she felt for Tibby carried something like envy. You couldn't stand still for anything short of death, and God knew she had tried. Ann Brashares

Sex could be a blissful communion, . But it could also be a weapon, and its absence, sometimes, was required for the establishment of peace. Ann Brashares

I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go. Ann Brashares

Lena realized that a fundamental layer of their happiness depended on the four of them being close to one another. Their lives were independent and full. Their friendship was only one aspect of their lives, but it seemed to give meaning to all the others. Ann Brashares

Carmen: “I want you to leave me alone, but not ignore me. I want you to miss me when I go away to college, but not be sad. I want you to stay exactly the same, but not be lonely or alone. I want to do the leaving, and not have you ever leave me. Ann Brashares

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? 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. Ann Brashares

You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things Ann Brashares

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. Ann Brashares

She was worried these thoughts would crush her if she let them come, but they didn't. You didn't know how heavy they were until you tried to lift them. You didn't know how strong you were. Ann Brashares

In a way it scared me, having a summer of experiences and feelings that belonged to me alone. What happened in front of my friends felt read. What happened to me by myself felt partly dreamed, partly imagined, definitely shifted and warped by own fears and wants. And who knows? Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens. Ann Brashares

Bridget's anger evaporated and the sadness came back. The anger was easier. She owned and controlled it, whereas the sadness owned her. Ann Brashares

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 ... Ann Brashares

The path of your life can change in an instant. Ann Brashares

We follow our scripts like actors in a very large, very long production. And even with no audience, none of us gives a hint that it isn't real. Ann Brashares

Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it. Ann Brashares

[Carmen] knew a worse friend would have made her feel better. Ann Brashares

We're the Septembers now. The real ones. We are everything to one another. We don't need to say so; it's just true. Sometimes it seems like we're so close we form one single complete person rather than four separate ones. We settle into types- Bridget the athlete, Lena the beauty, Tibby the rebel, and me, Carmen, the..what? The one with the bad temper. But the one who cares the most. The one who cares that we stick together. Ann Brashares

When you remembered to forget, you were remembering. It was when you forgot to forget that you forgot. Ann Brashares

My memory is good for some things and not others. Ann Brashares

She looked up at the stars and gave Tibby thanks. She didn't have to throw her thoughts far to know they reached her. Ann Brashares

She'd cried over a broken heart before. She knew what that felt like, and it didn't feel like this. Her heart felt not so much broken as just ... empty. It felt like she was an outline empty in the middle. The outline cried senselessly for the absent middle. The past cried for the present that was nothing. Ann Brashares

Desire was just the dumbest thing. You wanted what you wanted until it was yours. Then you didn’t want it anymore. You took what you had for granted until it was no longer yours. This, it seemed to her, was one of the crueller paradoxes of human nature. Ann Brashares

This is the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. I you don't have what you want now, you don't have what you want. Ann Brashares

Healing wasn’t always the best thing. Sometimes a hole was better left open. Sometimes it healed too thick and too well and left separate pieces fused and incompetent. And it was harder to reopen after that. Ann Brashares

It was her last breakfast with Bapi, her last morning in Greece. In her frenetic bliss that kept her up till dawn, she’d scripted a whole conversation in Greek for her and Bapi to have as their grand finale of the summer. Now she looked at him contentedly munching on his Rice Krispies, waiting for the right juncture for launchtime. He looked up at her briefly and smiled, and she realized something important. This was how they both liked it. Though most people felt bonded by conversation, Lena and Bapi were two of a kind who didn’t. They bonded by the routine of just eating cereal together. She promptly forgot her script and went back to her cereal. At one point, when she was down to just milk, Bapi reached over and put his hand on hers. ‘You’re my girl, ’ he said. And Lena knew she was. Ann Brashares

Why was it that her temper and her thinking never happened at the same time? Her temper behaved like a glutton sitting in an expensive restaurant ordering a hundred dishes, only to disappear when the bill came due. It left her lucid mind to do dishes. Ann Brashares

When she made her way to the big picture window that framed the dining room table she froze. She stopped breathing. The anger was growing again. It grew up into her throat, where she could taste it, coppery like blood, in the back of her mouth. It grew down into her stomach, where it knotted her intestines. It made her arms stiffen and her shoulders lock. It pushed against her ribs until she felt they would snap like sticks. . Ann Brashares

A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand. Ann Brashares

Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn't get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn't escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison. Ann Brashares

But it was smell that carried memory. Ann Brashares

Honesty was a tough customer... Once you started allowing yourself some honesty, it couldn't easily be contained or limited to one part of your life. It was like poison ivy or a bossy houseguest. Once it was there, you couldn't tell it what to do. You had to really fight to keep it from taking over. Ann Brashares

My mother says it can't stay like this, but I believe it will. The Pants are like an omen. They stand for the promise we made to one another, that no matter what happens, we stick together. But they stand for a challenge too. It's not enough to stay in Bethesda, Maryland, and hunker down in air-conditioned houses. We promise one another that someday we'd get out in the world and figure some stuff out. Ann Brashares

There were those emotions down there, and though she couldn't quite feel them, they were strong and she feared them. It was like watching a thunderhead from high up in a plane, and though you weren't under it, you knew how it would feel if you were. You knew you'd have to land eventually. Ann Brashares

Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good about yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could flip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct ad had nothing at all to give. Ann Brashares

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. (Riley to her sister Alice about Paul) Ann Brashares

Not even you can reach me here, Carmen thought. Ann Brashares

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. Ann Brashares

She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time Ann Brashares

People sometimes talk about the power of first impressions, and believe me, there is truth to it. Ann Brashares

How terrible would it be to just wait there pathetically alone for him never to show up?" Eudoxia's expression grew more serious. "That's what you're doing anyway, my dear. Ann Brashares

She kept walking. The very small, brave part of her brain knew that this would be her one chance. If she turned around, she would lose it. Ann Brashares

Lena, listen to me, okay? We don't have much more time here. You are in love. I've never seen anything like this before. You have to be brave, okay? You have to go and tell Kostos how you feel. I swear to God if you don't, you will regret it for the rest of your cowardly life.'' What if he doesn't like me back?'' That's what I mean about being brave. Ann Brashares

Bridget cried for the leavers and the left. For the people, like herself, grimly forsaking what few precious gifts they would ever get. She cried for Bailey, for Tibby, for the resolute clump of cells making headway in her uterus, and for Marly, her poor, sad mother, who'd missed everything. Ann Brashares

Someday when you're twenty, maybe, I'll see you again. You'll be this hot soccer star at some great school, with a million guys more interesting than I am chasing you down. And you know what? I'll see you and I'll pray you want me still. Ann Brashares

It was hard to feel the right emotions at the right times. They didn’t come at all when you set a place for them, and they sacked when you weren’t ready, when you were just innocently flossing your teeth, for example, or eating a bowl of cereal. Ann Brashares

I did the searching and remembering, she did the disappearing and the forgetting. Ann Brashares

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 Marchand Ann Brashares

I picture you four girls back when you were small. I hardly knew where you ended and the other ones started. Ann Brashares

Lena studied the faces of the girls on the sidelines. She could tell that Kostos owned the lust of what few local teenage girls there were in Oia, but instead he chose to dance with all the grandmothers, all the women who had raised him, who had poured into him the love they couldn't spend on their own absent children and grandchildren. Ann Brashares

His distress and pleasure mixed and married, giving birth to several anxious children. Ann Brashares

How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn’t forget? Ann Brashares

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. Ann Brashares

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 the normally experienced them. Ann Brashares

Lena felt like a child. Worse than a child and less valuable. She felt like a mouse. No, smaller than a mouse and less alive. Her life seemed so small and crumpled you could shoot it through a straw like a spitball. Ann Brashares

The weather turned. Her skin seemed to grow a million extra pores, and all of them opened to take in the warmth and tenderness of the air. The sun on her face made her want to cry. Into all those millions of open pores came the sunshine, and other feelings as well. In and out. She was porous. Ann Brashares

I feel like I should love them right away. But how do you do that? You can't make yourself love someone, can you? Ann Brashares

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. Ann Brashares

Her need was as big as the stars, and he was down there on the beach, so quiet she could hardly hear him. Ann Brashares

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. Ann Brashares

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not. Ann Brashares

Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever. Ann Brashares