Quotes from Jenny Han

I release you. I evict you from my heart. Because if I don't do it now, I never will.' I was the one to look away first.

I'm talking about the mission. You have to get Conrad to want you back, and then you have to rebuff him. Brutally.

Love it scary; it changes; it can go away.

Mairi and Hadley and that kind of girl decide you're not good enough, you never will be. You just won't. And the sooner you realize that, the better. Sherilyn has never figured it out. She's so eager to please and imitate that she ends up going overboard. Like the way her clothes never look right. Mrs. Tallini still picks her school

our favorite part of the day. We're eating Popsicles, cherry ones. My shirt is sticking to my back, and my hands feel sugary and warm, but my lips are cool. The sun is turning that fiery pink I love, and I turn to Mark the way I always do. I look at him, really look

Moments, when lost, can't be found again. They're just gone.

How did the holiday party go? Did your sisters like the fruitcake cookies Peter baked? Honestly, I can't stand them." Surprised, I look over at Peter, who is suddenly busy scrolling on his phone. "I thought you said your mom made them." His mom smiles a proud kind of smile. "Oh no, he did it all by himself. He was very determined." "They tasted like garbage!" Owen yells from the kitchen.

Have you ever noticed that only boys ever take stairs two at a time?

Best friends are important. They're the closest thing to a sister you'll ever have," she told me. "Don't squander it.

Conrad had always been neat. He was the exact opposite of Jeremiah in that way. Jeremiah never changed the roll of toilet paper. It would never occur to him to buy paper towels or to soak a greasy pan in hot water and dishwashing soap.

People come in and out of your life. For a time they are your world; they are everything. And then one day they're not.

think it was because they cost sixty dollars, but Mama would never admit that there was something we couldn't afford. She's a good one for making excuses when it comes to spending money.) Sherilyn's bustling around the food table in a zebra-print tankini. The boys—Kyle, Jack, Tommy, and Hugh Sasser—are in

Peter is my cocoa in a cup, my red mittens, my Christmas morning feeling.

Is she really old enough to have crushes on boys? I feel like she's too young for all that.

Before Elaine, Sherilyn was my closest girl friend. I still like Sherilyn, but after so many years of knowing each other, the little things started to pile up and bug me. She cares way too much about what Mairi and Hadley think. It's embarrassing. Even when we were little, she was rushing to impress them, rushing to anything them, and she just never measured

Eight was just eight. Hot dogs and peanut butter, mosquito bites and splinters, bikes and boogie boards. Tangled hair, sunburned shoulders,

I felt like bad for snapping at him.

But that's just inescapable, right? When you lose someone and it still hurts, that's when you know the love was real.

They made me wish I had someone to whisper to in the backseat.

Are we together now?" is what I'm wondering, but I don't ask, because he puts his arm around me and tilts my head up to his, and I'm nervous again. "Don't be nervous," he says.

but for now it feels like I am standing on top of a lighthouse, waiting for my love's ship to come in. For a romantic kind of person, it's not an altogether unpleasant feeling, not for now, anyway. It'll be different when it's not so novel anymore, when not seeing him every day is the new normal, but for now, just for now, longing is its own kind of perverse delight.

Thing feels good and normal and the same, which is a comfort.

I must be cool and breezy and nonchalant now. Tears would ruin that.

I want to see the young people dance!