Quotes from Ann Brashares

He took her hand and they started walking toward the baggage claim. They didn't say anything to each other. They swung their held hands like little kids, like they believed anything could happen, like they might take off soaring into the air. All the things you wanted to happen could happen. Why not?

Sometimes it is a relief to be invisible

She was supposed to be putting her life together right now, and all she could seem to do was throw grenades at it.

Love is like war; easy to begin, hard to end.

But it was smell that carried memory.

Carmen sat up when she heard a familiar trill from her computer. It was an instant message from Bee. Beezy3: Packing. Do you have my purple sock with the heart on the ankle? Carmabelle: No. Like I'd wear your socks. Carmen looked from her computer screen down to her feet. To her dismay, her socks were two faintly different shades of purple. She rotated her foot to get a view of her anklebone. Carmabelle: Ahem. Might possibly have sock.

She wondered again about her inclination to wish for things that made her so deeply unhappy.

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.

Pain is fear, and I'm not afraid.

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

I hated motorcycles. I said to my mother, 'I'll never get a motorcycle.' And she said, 'You never know what you'll want when you are older.' After that, the thing that scared me was not so much the motorcycle itself, but that I could turn into a person who would want one. I was scared of the idea that I could become an entirely different person, a stranger to myself.

There was one thing Bridget like about guys. They took insults well.

She couldn't hide from everyone for the rest of her life… Well she could. That was the direction things were going. But she knew from long-ago experience that when you were uncertain and if you were courageous enough to let her in a real friend could do a world of good.

Looking back, it was the thing in his life that shamed him the most: the times he was purposefully, calculatingly mean to Alice. It was those moments, and there had been many of them, that indicated to him that he was not a good person. He got mad at her for many things, but it was always really for the same thing: that she possessed his love and he couldn't seem to get it back. She didn't deserve it, which was to say she deserved better

She had never had a boy talk to her like that. There was no cover of bullshit, no flirtation, no added charm, but his look was searing. He was different from anyone she had known.

Tibby was shaking her head. What? Bailey asked. Nothing. Just that you suprise me every day, Tibby said. Bailey smiled at her. I like that you let yourself be suprised.

My butt has specific requirements for pants.

Don't ask me any questions right now. I'm grumpy and I'll probablly make fun of you. -Effie Kaligaris

Shy" was the sympathetic interpretation she got from older people. "Snotty" was the interpretation she got from people her own age.

The path of your life can change in an instant.

If you didn't have a choice, you have to make a choice. If you didn't have options, you made some. You couldn't just let the world happen to you.

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)

Tibby, who was not fond of change, had once told Bridget that the present, no matter what it brought, couldn't change the past. The past was set and sealed.

He'd pushed her. He'd scared her. He'd besieged her. He'd vowed he wouldn't, and he did.