“. . .There are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark. . . Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“Because love, love is never finished. It circles and circles, the memories out of order and not always complete.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“the past only had whatever power you gave it; life was what you made it and if you wanted something different from what you had, it was up to you to make it happen.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“Remember that no matter where I am or what I'm doing I've got a special place inside me that's all for you. It's been there since the day we met.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“You were never what I wanted to forget.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“I'm talking about the ones who, for whatever reason, are as much a part of you as your own soul. Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business.
Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“Can it really be love if we don't talk that much, don't see each other? Isn't love something that happens between people who spend time together and know each other's faults and take care of each other?...In the end, I decide that the mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“I had them all fooled into believing I was normal and well-adjusted, a rock of sensibility who could always be counted on to have a positive attitude.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“And he left. I watched him walk out – he didn’t say good-bye, he didn’t even look back. It scared me, how easy it was for him to do that.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“Life needed a fast forward button. Because there were days you just don't want to live through, not again, but they kept coming around and you were powerless to stop time or speed it up or do anything to keep from having to face it.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“I think about how there are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark. I don’t mean the usual faint impression: he was cute, she was nice, they made me laugh, I wish I’d known her better, I remember the time she threw up in class. And I don’t just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you – the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart., the first person who crowned you best friend. It’s the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people. Ethan changed me, for instance, but the longer we are apart the more he sort of recedes into the distance as a real person and in his place is a cardboard cutout that says first boyfriend. I’m talking about the ones who, for whatever reason are a part of you as your own soul. Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. My mom was right about that. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“Other memories stick, no matter how much you wish they wouldn’t. They’re like a song you hate but can’t ever get completely out of your head, and this song becomes the background noise of your entire life, snippets of lyrics and lines of music floating up and then receding, a crazy kind of tide that never stops.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“I lived too much in my head instead of the real world.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“And I don't just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you—the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you best friend. It's the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“we had each other. I never needed anyone else. That’s the difference between you and me. You need all these people around you. Your friends, your boyfriend, everyone. Every single person has to like you. I only ever needed one person. Only ever needed you.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“The importance of our connection, what it meant to find each other again, the way it made what happened to us and between us not be a waste, not be for nothing. He would know, he had to know, that not saying good-bye would be the worst end of all.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“Sitting and waiting for something to happen was the worst kind of torture.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“But as I get older I think – can it really be love if we don’t talk that much, don’t see each other? Isn’t love something that happens between people who spend time together and know each other’s faults and take care of each other? In the end I decide that the mark we’ve left on each other is the color and shape of love. That’s the unfinished business between us. Because love is never finished. It circles and circles the memories always out of order and not always complete. There’s one I always come back to: me and Cameron Quick, laying on the ground in an aspen grove on a golden fall day, the aspen leaves clattering and quaking the way they do. Cameron turning to me, reaching out a small and dirty hand, which I take and do not let go.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“Ethan and I are done," I said finally.
"I'm sorry."
"He was my first boyfriend."
"I know."
"The only real boyfriend I've had. I'm a senior in high school and he was my only real boyfriend."
"I know."
"And I won't find another one at Jones Hall. That is guaranteed."
"Okay."
"This is all very sad and tragic," I said.
Alan unwrapped a sleeve of Smarties. "Yet, oddly, you don't seem that upset."
"I know.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“I looked at my hand resting on the shelf of the prop cabinet, thinking of the scars that were there whether anyone could see them or not.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“What brings two people together anyway?”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“I don’t want these memories to become slippery, to just disappear into the thin air of life the way most things seem to. I want them to stick – even the bad ones – so I repeat them often.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“the mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love. That's the unfinished business between us. because love, love is never finished.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“I understand that you can never have the whole picture; inevitably, there’s stuff you don’t know, can’t know. But when it comes to Cameron I always want more than I have, would like to be able to take hold of at least one or two more pieces, if only because I’m convinced there are parts of myself inside them.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“The one thing that could never die or be buried was my loyalty to Cameron for everything he’d done for me and what we’d been through together, even if that loyalty was a ghost.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“This was a memory I wanted to keep, whole, and recall again and again. When I was fifty years old I wanted to remember this moment on the porch, holding hands with Cameron while he shared himself with me. I didn’t want it to be something on the fringes of my memory like so many other things about Cameron and myself.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“Ethan couldn’t possibly understand it, what Cameron and I meant to each other and how different it was from anything like a romance or a crush.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
“I tried his cell over and over but he never answered. Then I’d call just to hear his voice on the outgoing message, until eventually that was gone too.”
― Sara Zarr, quote from Sweethearts
Sara Zarr
Born place: The United States
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“I burned to defend myself, but fortunately I had a bright idea. I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I began to speak up for myself I should lose my peace of soul; I knew too that I was not virtuous enough to let myself be accused without saying a word, my only hope of safety was to run away. No sooner thought than done: I fled … but my heart beat so violently that I could not go far and I sat down on the stairs to enjoy in peace the fruits of my victory. It was undoubtedly a queer kind of courage, but I think it is better not to fight when defeat is certain.”
― Thérèse de Lisieux, quote from Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux
“When you have lived your individual life in your own adventurous way and then look back upon its course, you will find that you have lived a model human life, after all.”
― Joseph Campbell, quote from Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
“But from within the carton, Morty's American flag - which I know is folded there, at the very bottom, in the official way - tells me, "It's against some Jewish law," and so, on into the car he went with the carton, and then he drove it down to the beach, to the boardwalk, which was no longer there. The boardwalk was gone. Good-bye, boardwalk. The ocean had finally carried it away. The Atlantic is a powerful ocean. Death is a terrible thing. That's a doctor I never heard of. Remarkable. Yes, that's the word for it. It was all remarkable. Good-bye, remarkable. Egypt and Greece good-bye, and good-bye, Rome!”
― Philip Roth, quote from Sabbath's Theater
“Will you never grow up?"
"I doubt it, and I certainly hope not.”
― David Eddings, quote from The Seeress of Kell
“But still she was motionless, like a curled up, oblivious creature. His heart beat with strange throes of pain. Then, by a motion under his hand, he knew she was crying, holding herself hard so that her tears should not be known. He waited. The tension continued—perhaps she was not crying—then suddenly relapsed with a sharp catch of a sob. His heart flamed with love and suffering for her. Kneeling carefully on the bed, so that his earthy boots should not touch it, he took her in his arms to comfort her. The sobs gathered in her, she was sobbing bitterly. But not to him. She was still away from him. He held her against his breast, whilst she sobbed, withheld from him, and all his body vibrated against her. "Don't cry—don't cry," he said, with an odd simplicity. His heart was calm and numb with a sort of innocence of love, now. She still sobbed, ignoring him, ignoring that he held her. His lips were dry. "Don't cry, my love," he said, in the same abstract way. In his breast his heart burned like a torch, with suffering. He could not bear the desolateness of her crying. He would have soothed her with his blood. He heard the church clock chime, as if it touched him, and he waited in suspense for it to have gone by. It was quiet again. "My love," he said to her, bending to touch her wet face with his mouth. He was afraid to touch her. How wet her face was! His body trembled as he held her. He loved her till he felt his heart and all his veins would burst and flood her with his hot, healing blood. He knew his blood would heal and restore her. She was becoming quieter. He thanked the God of mercy that at last she was becoming quieter. His head felt so strange and blazed. Still he held her close, with trembling arms. His blood seemed very strong, enveloping her. And at last she began to draw near to him, she nestled to him. His limbs, his body, took fire and beat up in flames. She clung to him, she cleaved to his body. The flames swept him, he held her in sinews of fire. If she would kiss him! He bent his mouth down. And her mouth, soft and moist, received him. He felt his veins would burst with anguish of thankfulness, his heart was mad with gratefulness, he could pour himself out upon her for ever. When they came to themselves, the night was very dark. Two hours had gone by. They lay still and warm and weak, like the new-born, together. And there was a silence almost of the unborn. Only his heart was weeping happily, after the pain. He did not understand, he had yielded, given way. There was no understanding. There could be only acquiescence and submission, and tremulous wonder of consummation. The”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from The Rainbow
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