Quotes from Ann Brashares

Lena felt that all pretty faces were all alike—straight, even, regular. It was the ugliness, the sadness that set them apart. Lena couldn't find that much objective ugliness in hers. But the sadness was apparent.

Lena remembered the old adage about knowing whether you'd chosen the right career by how you felt on Sunday night.

can you make yourself love? can you make yourself be loved?

It seems to me like a failure of language that experience fits into a regular sentence made up of ordinary words. It fits into one word. Experience.

The gap between what we say and what we feel is so big and dark that sometimes I think I'll fall into it and just keep falling

I guess I was better at loving then, too, and also better at being loved. The two go together.

There was a burst of enthusiasm for recycling every so often, but it usually didn't extend to the heart or the mind. It was limited to tires or bottles... What if people knew they were recycled? Would that change anything?

but my soul was hardly situated before I moved along.

They hadn't quite considered that by trusting one part of your life, you could undermine all the others. By siding with an early version of yourself, preemptively, you would doubt all future selves that conflicted with it.

Remember: Pants=Love. Love your pals. Love yourself.

Finalement, ce n'est peut-être pas la corruption ni l'avidité qui rend lâche. Peut-être n'est-ce ni la faiblesse ni la souffrance ni même la peur. Peut-être est-ce simplement l'amour

The ocean was the best place. That was what she loved most. It was a feeling of freedom like no other, a feeling of communion with all the other places and creatures the water touched

no one really believes in the future, do they? It's like believing in your own death. You can't do it.

A lot of irrational behavior would look more rational if you could see it in the context of your whole long life.

If you ran out of ways to please and you had no family money, you went to law school.

I agreed sincerely and ardently

The idea of love was always easier than the practice of it.

How staunchly people rationalized the things they had, even (especially) if they didn't choose them.

Why was it there were some things you could have multiples of, like daughters and sisters, and other things you didn't, like fathers and husbands?

Together or apart, no matter ow far apart, we live in one anther. We go n together.

As she began to draw the outer edge of her cheek, she realized she had the look of a person who was waiting. Not impatient, not tortured, not frustrated. Just waiting. What was she waiting for? (...) She was still holding out for something that wasn't going to happen. She was good at waiting. That seemed like a sad thing to be good at.

Wish for what you want work for what you need

Remind me, she needed to ask. I don't seem to know how to be.

If you want to be taken seriously, be serious. Take yourself seriously.