Quotes by Ann Brashares

“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.”

“Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even,...”

“There was nothing new in sitting on this dock, on this or that wooden bench, watching for his boat to come. In some ways, she was always waiting for him.”

“She went around with a broken heart, and she wasn't sure who'd broken it. She thought it was herself, mostly.”

“What made you feel that stomach-churning agony for one person and not another? If Bridget were God, she would have made it against the law for you to feel that way about someone without them having...”

“sometimes you need to make a mess.”

“Tibby sat on the outside of a group of kids in the film program. There was a lot of dark clothing and heavy footwear, and quite a few piercings glinting in sunlight. They had invited her to sit wit...”

“She hadn't chosen the brave life. She'd chosen the small, fearful one.”

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

“He wanted to take his love back from her so badly. The old techniques didn’t work anymore. In fact, they’d never worked. How do you stop loving someone? It was one of the world’s more brutal myster...”

“Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you liv...”

“Carmen: “I want you to leave me alone, but not ignore me. I want you to miss me when I go away to college, but not be sad. I want you to stay exactly the same, but not be lonely or alone. I want to...”

“You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things”

“Healing wasn’t always the best thing. Sometimes a hole was better left open. Sometimes it healed too thick and too well and left separate pieces fused and incompetent. And it was harder to reopen a...”

“Honesty was a tough customer... Once you started allowing yourself some honesty, it couldn't easily be contained or limited to one part of your life. It was like poison ivy or a bossy houseguest. O...”

“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 P...”

“It was hard to feel the right emotions at the right times. They didn’t come at all when you set a place for them, and they sacked when you weren’t ready, when you were just innocently flossing your...”

“His distress and pleasure mixed and married, giving birth to several anxious children.”

“How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn’t forget?”

“Alice suspected Paul couldn’t really picture his father, just like she couldn’t picture Paul when he was away. Maybe that was the case with people you wanted more than was good for you.”