Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood

Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it.

some people fall in love over and over again while some people can only do it once.

When you remembered to forget, you were remembering. It was when you forgot to forget that you forgot.

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

She knew whose love she doubted. It wasn't her parents' and it wasn't her friends: It was her own.

She realized all at once the deeper thing that bothered her, the thing that made him not just irritating but intolerable: how he kept loving her blindly when she deserved it so little.

We aren't in high school. We aren't really in our families and we aren't in our houses. Those are the places we grew up and the times we spent together, but they aren't us. If think they are, then we're lost, because times end and places are lost. We aren't any place or any time . . . We are everywhere.

Ruins stood for what was lost, and yet there were beautiful-peaceful, historic, intellectual. Not tragic or regrettable. Lena tried to keep hers that way too, and she succeeded to some extent. Why not celebrate what you had rather than spend your time mourning its passing? There could be joy in things that ended.

She had willed her heart to stay small and contained, but it wouldn’t be. Oh, well.

Tibby cried into her soup when it finally came. "I'm scared... ," she told it. The carrots and peas made no reply, but she felt better for having told them.

And I thought about the color and I realized what blue it was. It was the soft and changeable, essential blue of a well-worn pair of pants. Pants = Love

One must have a good memory to keep the promises one has made.

The happiness at getting what you want is not usually commensurate with the worry leading up to it.

One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead.

During intermission she peeked out at the theater, watching it refill. When it was almost full and the lights blinked on and off, she saw three people file in through the center door and her breath caught. Time lapsed as they walked down the center aisle: three teenage girls all in a row. They were so big, so bright, so beautiful, so magnificent to Carmen’s eyes that she thought she was imagining them. They were like goddesses, like Titans. She was so proud of them! They were benevolent and they were righteous. Now, these were friends.

Relief is a short-lived emotion, passive and thin. The agony of doubt disappears, leaving little memory of how it really felt. Life aligns behind the new truth.

Tibby's wish would be to hold on to the idea of love even in the face of darkest doubt. Because that was the way in which she failed. Not once, but again and again.

There are some people who fall in love over and over.

The most haunting thing was not that he didn't love her anymore. She could have accepted that eventually. The most haunting thing was that he did. He loved her from afar. He loved her in a way that was preserved in time, that couldn't be sullied. And she tended it in her careful, curatorial way.

Not everyone got a close family. Not everyone needed one.

She was becoming the person she'd be for her whole life. Each thing she chose contributed to that person. She didn't want to be like this.

Carma, Here are the Pants and a little sketch I made of Leo. From memory, not from life. (And no, I'm not thinging of him day and night. God.) Funny hair, huh? He did not realize I was in his class. I think I'm making a big impression around here. Love you, Len

When you belonged nowhere, you sort of belonged everywhere.

Where there is nothing, there is the possibility for everything. When you live nowhere, you live everywhere.

You couldn`t always know what would matter to you.

Where there is nothing, there is the possibility of everything.

You have to be like a turtle, she thought; you have to figure out how to bring your home along with you.

Yeah. You know what I think?" What?" So intense was Tibby, she had practically shoved the phone into her ear cavity. She has big boobies.

Why not celebrate what you had had rather than spend your time mourning its passing? There could be joy in things that ended.