Ann Brashares · 338 pages
Rating: (65.4K votes)
“When you feel someone else's pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you know you really loved them.”
“When she is happy, she can't stop talking, when she is sad she doesn't say a word.”
“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.”
“You couldn't erase the past. You couldn't even change it. But sometimes life offered you the opportunity to put it right.”
“Live, laugh, love.
When you can feel someone else's pain and joy as if it's your own, thats when you know you really love them - Tina Lowell”
“She thought she was independent and strong, but she got one small taste of love and she was hungrier than anyone. She was ravenous.”
“She was still waiting for him to come back to her, even though he wasn't going to. She was still holding out for something that wasn't going to happen. She was good at waiting. That seemed like a sad thing to be good at.”
“Why does he have to be my boyfriend? Are you inferior if you don't have a boyfriend? Why does everybody have to be in love with somebody?”
“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 to feel it for you right back.”
“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 needed them. Carmen knew this vicious predicament as well as anyone in the world. How bitter it felt when you acted badly to everyone and ended up hating yourself the most.”
“If you ever meet a guy and you fall in love with him, but because of some weird genetic mutation he doesn't seem to return the feeling?... Wear that dress.”
“I sometimes think the stronger you feel about someone, the harder it is to picture their face when you are away from them.”
“There were certain qualities you possessed carelessly. And you couldn't retrieve them when they were gone. The very act of caring made them impossible to regain.”
“Show me a girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground and I'll show you a girl who can't put her pants on.
-Annik Marchand”
“Sex could be a blissful communion,. But it could also be a weapon, and its absence, sometimes, was required for the establishment of peace.”
“Don't ask me any questions right now. I'm grumpy and I'll probablly make fun of you.
-Effie Kaligaris”
“There was one thing Bridget like about guys. They took insults well.”
“What was it about Eric? He was handsome and talented, yeah. But lots of guys were. She had adored Billy Klein back in Alabama the summer before, and she had even felt attracted to him, but it wasn't like this. 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 to feel it for you right back.”
“Don't open, don't climb, don't reach, and you will not fall. 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.”
“It was their mothers, long ago. Tibby noted with joy that all four of them were wearing jeans.”
“Why do we fight the things we fight when giving into them isn't so bad at all?”
“She was back on the ground, looking down at the bugs rather than up at the sky.”
“Sometimes when she thought of Eric, and now more powerfully when she saw him, she felt some achy nostalgia for her old self. For the dauntless, daring soul she used to be. There were certain qualities you possessed carelessly. And you couldn't retrieve them when they were gone.”
“I still think about him sometimes. I dream about him too. I try to remember what he looked like. It's hard to remember, though, either because of time or because of strong feelings. I sometimes think the stronger you feel about someone the harder it is to picture their face when you are away from them.”
“Él no escucharía sus palabras. Dudaba también de que fuera a escuchar su silencio.”
“El la empujaba a autodestruirse. Hacía que ella deseara y luego no le daba ninguna satisfacción.”
“She sat on the dock at the lake and watched the clouds thicken. She wished it would rain hard and long and clear everything away. Rain never came when you asked for it.”
“Your chances of getting hit by lightning go up if you stand under a tree, shake your fist at the sky, and say “Storms suck!” —Johnny carson”
“Patrick: I’m mad. SpongeBob: What’s the matter, Patrick? Patrick: I can’t see my forehead.”
“Sometimes it was hard to express how much you loved someone. You said the words, but you could never quite capture the depth of it. You could never quite hold someone tightly enough.”
“Whilst never actually rebuffing a visitor, he always reared such a wall of reserve that few could think of anything to say to him which would not sound inane.”
“result: every description of events in space involves the use of a rigid body to which such events have to be referred. The resulting relationship takes for granted that the laws of Euclidean geometry hold for ‘distances’, the ‘distance’ being represented physically by means of the convention of two marks on a rigid body.”
“My anxieties as to behavior are futile, ever more so, to infinity. If the other, incidentally or negligently, gives the telephone number of a place where he or she can be reached at certain times, I immediately grow baffled: should I telephone or shouldn't I? (It would do no good to tell me that I can telephone - that is the objective, reasonable meaning of the message - for it is precisely this permission I don't know how to handle.) What is futile is what apparently has and will have no consequence. But for me, an amorous subject, everything which is new, everything which disturbs, is received not as a fact but in the aspect of a sign which must be interpreted. From the lover's point of view, the fact becomes consequential because it is immediately transformed into a sign: it is the sign, not the fact, which is consequential (by its aura). If the other has given me this new telephone number, what was that the sign of? Was it an invitation to telephone right away, for the pleasure of the call, or only should the occasion arise, out of necessity? My answer itself will be a sign, which the other will inevitably interpret, thereby releasing, between us, a tumultuous maneuvering of images. Everything signifies: by this proposition, I entrap myself, I bind myself in calculations, I keep myself from enjoyment.
Sometimes, by dint of deliberating about "nothing" (as the world sees it), I exhaust myself; then I try, in reaction, to return -- like a drowning man who stamps on the floor of the sea -- to a spontaneous decision (spontaneity: the great dream: paradise, power, delight): go on, telephone, since you want to! But such recourse is futile: amorous time does not permit the subject to align impulse and action, to make them coincide: I am not the man of mere "acting out" -- my madness is tempered, it is not seen; it is right away that I fear consequences, any consequence: it is my fear -- my deliberation -- which is "spontaneous.”
“You see . . . God had a plan for you all along.” Elizabeth looked at the other girls. “He always has a plan for us; either to give us a hope and a future here in this world. Or—” she smiled and waited for her emotions to level out—“or in the next.”
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