“ 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 do… Ann Brashares
“ Tibby, on the other hand, had spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with Brian striving for the comfort of not knowing. Ann Brashares
“ Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together. Ann Brashares
“ Lena realized that a fundamental layer of their happiness depended on the four of them being close to one another. Their lives were independent and full. Their friendship was only one aspect of their… Ann Brashares
“ You don't have time, Len. That is the most bitter and the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. If you don't have what you want now, you don't have what you want. Ann Brashares
“ It was like a dream you might have after death in which lost people came back to life, your friends loved you again no matter what you had done, and your failures were unaccountably forgiven. Ann Brashares
“ She didn't open the envelope until she'd gotten to the bus station and needed to pay for her ticket. He hadn't given her the thousand dollars she'd asked for-he'd given her ten thousand. Ann Brashares
“ Sex could be a blissful communion,. But it could also be a weapon, and its absence, sometimes, was required for the establishment of peace. Ann Brashares
“ Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things. Ann Brashares
“ A loving soul was always more beautiful over the long haul, but actual prettiness was fleeting. Ann Brashares
“ You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn't. As long as your heart kept pumping an your blood kept blowing and your lungs kept filling, you didn't. The pang she felt… Ann Brashares
“ It was funny how the old practices always came around again. It was the rhythm of human enterprise to invent and worship some new approach, to fully reject it a generation later, to realize the need f… Ann Brashares
“ How sad it was, Carmen thought, that you acted awful when you were desperately sad and hurt and wanted to be loved. How tragic then, the way everyone avoided you and tiptoed around you when you really… Ann Brashares
“ 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 live m… Ann Brashares
“ Try, reach, want, and you may fall. But even if you do, you might be okay anyway. If you don't try, you save nothing, because you might as well be dead. Ann Brashares
