“ 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 te… Ann Brashares
“ Someday when you're twenty, maybe, I'll see you again. You'll be this hot soccer star at some great school, with a million guys more interesting than I am chasing you down. And you know what? I'll see… Ann Brashares
“ People sometimes talk about the power of first impressions, and believe me, there is truth to it. Ann Brashares
“ 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… Ann Brashares
“ 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. Once… Ann Brashares
“ A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she co… Ann Brashares
“ When she made her way to the big picture window that framed the dining room table she froze. She stopped breathing. The anger was growing again.It grew up into her throat, where she could taste it, co… Ann Brashares
“ Why was it that her temper and her thinking never happened at the same time? Her temper behaved like a glutton sitting in an expensive restaurant ordering a hundred dishes, only to disappear when the… Ann Brashares
“ 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 afte… Ann Brashares
“ Desire was just the dumbest thing. You wanted what you wanted until it was yours. Then you didn’t want it anymore. You took what you had for granted until it was no longer yours. This, it seemed to he… Ann Brashares
“ When you remembered to forget, you were remembering. It was when you forgot to forget that you forgot. Ann Brashares
“ Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it. Ann Brashares
“ She knew that when she got old it would be more fun to look back on a life of romance and adventure than a life of quiet habits. But looking back was easy. It was the doing that was painful. There wer… Ann Brashares
“ You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things Ann Brashares
“ She felt like parts of her soul were missing, had left her body long ago. It had happened not in Greece three months ago, but long before that. It was in Greece that she'd realized those parts had lef… Ann Brashares
“ She perched on her windowsill, gazing at the lurid sun soaking into the Caldera, trying to appreciate it even though she couldn’t have it. Why did she always feel she had to do something in the face o… Ann Brashares
