Quotes from Lisa Graff

And when thoughts wiggle their way in, sometimes it can be very difficult for them to wiggle out again.

Sometimes memories hit like a wallop, all of a sudden, and hard. Other times, for no reason that anyone can explain, memories take much longer to sink in. They seem to meander a bit before choosing which mind to settle into.

When you do choose to speak," she told me, "speak truths.

brother died.

You can't get where you're going without being where you've been.

She stuck her tongue in her cheek, thinking.

Trying hard and being a good person didn't always mean good things would happen to you. But it did mean that others might try on your behalf.

There was a hint of something lingering in her mind. A memory, perhaps, although Jo could only catch the flavor of a few remaining tendrils.

Well, that's the thing about knots, isn't it? If you don't know the trick, it's a muddled predicament. But in fact each loop of every knot is carefully placed, one end twisting into the other in a way you might not have expected. I find them rather beautiful, really.

And every one of these days, from dawn to dusk, has been more or less the same. Far from grand but not too horrible, either, like a pebble underneath your sock that's not quite large enough to bother removing.

I wished there was a way to keep that in a bottle, that one moment of wonderful perfect, so I could open it up whenever I needed to get a good whiff.

Just remember this. It's the way we deal with what Fate hands us that defines who we are.

I don't know why I'm always screwing up at everything, even when I try so hard, all the time, not to. I'd do better if I could, I really would. But I don't know how. There are a lot of things I don't know.

I wondered what getting an A would feel like. The best feeling in the world, probably. Like going to a Yankees game with your dad and eating three hot dogs with extra everything.

Maybe it only took one person to open an umbrella and stick it up in the air to block out the rain, but it took a whole lot of people to close it. And even though I was pretty sure I still had a few more inches to go, I knew that once my umbrella was all the way closed, I was going to keep it like that for a long time.

Why the hell not?

they flew He had to spew…

I think the hard thing for you Abbie is not going to be getting what you want in life but figuring out what that is. Once you know what you want - really truly- I know you'll get it.

Find something you want to keep doing forever even if you stink at it. And then if you're lucky with lost of practice, then one day you won't stink so much.

At least I wasn't Major Disaster. That was Tommy's mom.