Quotes from Adriana Trigiani

You'll always be my girl. You were from the first moment I saw you. You were sitting in church with your brothers. You were eight years old, and I was twelve, and I thought, I hope she waits for me. Lucia, I'll wait forever if I have to.

Life, Enza decided, is not about what you get, but what is taken from you. It's in the things we lose that we discover what we most treasure.

The intimacy. The deepest level of love. The knowledge that someone understands you, is rooting for you, is sharing your life.

May God bless you and give you what you need because what you want will get you in trouble." Figliolo blessed himself. "The Cabrellis have always been fighters. You'll be all right.

If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens, you will end up disappointed. Sometimes there aren't reasons behind the terrible things that go on. I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help?

Nobody ever told me that motherhood was temporary. You think you have years and years with them, but the truth is, you don't.

Enza studied the photograph of her parents on their wedding day as if it were a map. In a sense it was, as they were creating a destination, a life together.

Whatever it is that you're feeling, whatever it is you have a question about, whatever it is that you long to know, there is some book, somewhere, with the key. You just have to search for it.

Life is a mystery to lived, not a problem to be solved.

Let whoever longs to attain eternal life in heaven heed these warnings: When considering the past, contemplate these things: The evil done The good left undone The time wasted

For young fellows like them, the war was a chance to become men, to see the world and save it and return home as American citizens. It didn't occur to either of them that lives would be lost, that the world they were to defend would shift under their feet and never be the same again. They only dreamed of the adventure.

a dozen...chocolate chip cookies...a pot of coffee, and a good book are all I will need for the rainy weekend rolling in.

If the yellow patent leather flats fit...

The dance that I wasn't going to attend in about a jillion years just turned into a make-out session with random boys we have never met.

Really? We are being herded on a bus to drive across town to an all-boy academy where we disembark and join our lonely counterparts on a dance floor. Sounds like a scorecard situation to me.

but that's the beauty of boarding school. I make all my own decisions, small and medium, while the big ones are left up to the Prefect Academy - and as far as boys go, to the only expert I know - Suzanne Santry

Tonight, I am a Perfect Girl, because I had a perfect night. And it ended with three perfect kisses. Three. What a lucky number.

I think it's important to be able to make something, whether it's shoes or sausage. Food, clothing, and shelter are the basic needs of all people. If you master a trade that serves one of those needs, you will work for a lifetime.

The distance between the haves and the have-nots is a train ride.

I learned that I wasn't happy. It's a terrifying thing to admit. It puts everyone around you in a state of paralysis because they think that they are somehow responsible for your sadness and can fix it. Of course they cannot. I know happiness exists somewhere and if I knew where, I would go to it and claim it. I realize I have spent my life reacting to things and not initiating them.

What I wouldn't give to have known my father with my mother in love-together, you know, just the two of them, in the kitchen laughing, making a sandwich, or holding hands on the street, seeing my father open a car door for my other. The absence of those things are what makes you an orphan-it's the ordinary everyday expressions of love you miss.

If only men came made to order. It's so hard to find a decent fellow.

This is my Italy, she thought. The power and beauty of the antiquities, the detailed frescos, the imposing statuaries carved of milk white granite, Don Martinelli's hammered gold chalice, the glorious tones of the music, the Italy of Puccini and Verdi, Caruso and Toscanini, not the Italy of the shattered spirits in Hoboken and the drunken, desperate Anna Buffa. This was the Italy that fed her soul, where hope was restored and broken hearts were mended in the hands of great artists.

When you fall in love (...) it has to be from a place of strength. It has to be because you want to build something, not because you need to cling to someone to shore you up or save you.