Ann Brashares · 294 pages
Rating: (557.6K votes)
“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, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Maybe, sometimes, it's easier to be mad at the people you trust because you know they'll always love you, no matter what.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. Getting to level seven in Dragon Master and knowing there were twenty more levels to go.
Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks- the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you go there- and downticks- the itch tag at the back of your collar- that happened to every person in the course of the day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day.
maybe it didn't matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn't matter if your friend was possibly dying.
Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Don't talk to me. I'm tired and grumpy and I'll probably make fun of you.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“You know what the secret is? It's so simple. We love one another. We're nice to one another. Do you know how rare that is? - Carmen”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Time is what keeps things from happening all at once.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Wish for what you want, work for what you need.
-Carmen's grandmother”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“I love you, I'll never stop.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Particularly beautiful people were like particularly funny-looking people, though. Once you know them you mostly forgot about it.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“She was sad about what happened to Kostos. And someplace under that, she was sad that people like Bee and Kostos, who had lost everything, were still open to love, and she, who'd lost nothing, was not.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“It’s more that I’m afraid of time. And not having enough of it. Time to figure out who I’m supposed to be… to find my place in the world before I have to leave it. I’m afraid of what I’ll miss.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Lena was an introvert. She knew she had trouble connecting with people. She always felt like her looks were fake bait, seeming to offer a bridge to people, which she couldn't easily cross.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“It was her last breakfast with Bapi, her last morning in Greece. In her frenetic bliss that kept her up till dawn, she’d scripted a whole conversation in Greek for her and Bapi to have as their grand finale of the summer. Now she looked at him contentedly munching on his Rice Krispies, waiting for the right juncture for launchtime.
He looked up at her briefly and smiled, and she realized something important. This was how they both liked it. Though most people felt bonded by conversation, Lena and Bapi were two of a kind who didn’t. They bonded by the routine of just eating cereal together.
She promptly forgot her script and went back to her cereal.
At one point, when she was down to just milk, Bapi reached over and put his hand on hers. ‘You’re my girl,’ he said.
And Lena knew she was.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Dad,
Please accept this money to fix the broken window. I’m sure it’s already fixed, considering Lydia’s house pride and her phobia about unconditioned air, but
Dear Al,
I can’t begin to explain my actions at Lydia’s – I mean yours and Lydia’s house. When I get to Charleston, I never imagined that you would have
Dear Dad and Lydia,
I apologize to both of you for my irrational behavior. I know it’s all my fault, but if you would have listened to ONE THING I had to say, I might not have
Dear Dad’s new family,
I hope you’ll all be very happy being blond together. May people speak only in inside voices for the rest of your lives.
P.S. Lydia, you wedding dress makes your arms look fat.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Lena was suspicious of many things. But she had earned her suspicions about boys. Lena knew boys. They never looked beyond your looks. They pretended to be your friend to get you to trust them, and as soon as you trusted them, they went in for the grope. They pretended to want to work on a history project or volunteer on your blood drive committee to get your attention. But as soon as they got it through their skulls that you didn't want to go out with them, they suddenly weren't interested in time lines or dire blood shortages. Worst of all, on occasion they even went out with one of your best friends to get close to you, and broke that same best friend's heart when the truth came out. Lean preferred plain guys to cute ones, but even the plain ones disappointed her.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“She wanted him to notice her so much.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: If the customer is wrong, please refer to rule #1.
-Duncan Howe”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Sometimes you need to make a mess.
-Loretta, the Rollinses' hosekeeper”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“I always interpret coincidences as little clues to our destiny”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“I'm afraid of time. I mean, I'm afraid of not having enough time. Not enough time to understand people, how they really are, or to be understood myself.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Wear them, they will make you brave.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Maybe the truth is there's a little bit of loser in all of us you know, being happy isn't having everything in your life being perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things. Making those count more then the bad stuff. Maybe we just get through it and that's all we can ask for.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“Can you make yourself love? Can you make yourself loved?
-Lena Kaligaris”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“She was alive, and they were dead. She had to try to make her life big. As big as she could. She promised Bailey she would keep playing.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“It was funny to hear her voice aloud. Her thoughts and perceptions usually existed so deep inside her, they rarely made it to the surface without a deliberate effort.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“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 of beauty?”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Got that? -Coach Brevin”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
“But Diablo had been built on a breakneck schedule during the energy scare of the seventies. The welders worked double and”
― Christopher Moore, quote from The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove
“What's wrong?" His voice was loud, so sharp that he sounded angry.
I knew I should be careful, keep the secret, but I was too far gone to talk around it. My chest was working in huge spasms and I could barely breathe. "I kissed her."
"And then you went into anaphylactic shock?"
I closed my eyes and let the rain patter against my face through the open window "She has her tongue pierced.”
― Brenna Yovanoff, quote from The Replacement
“When you got a condition, it's bad to forget your medicine.”
― Frank Miller, quote from Sin City, Vol. 1: The Hard Goodbye
“Yet to define genes by the diseases they cause is about as absurd as defining organs of the body by the diseases they get: livers are there to cause cirrhosis, hearts to cause heart attacks and brains to cause strokes. It is a measure, not of our knowledge but of our ignorance that this is the way the genome catalogues read. It is literally true that the only thing we know about some genes is that their malfunction causes a particular disease. This is a pitifully small thing to know about a gene, and a terribly misleading one. It leads to the dangerous shorthand that runs as follows: ‘X has got the Wolf-Hirschhorn gene.’ Wrong. We all have the Wolf-Hirschhorn gene, except, ironically, people who have Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome. Their sickness is caused by the fact that the gene is missing altogether. In the rest of us, the gene is a positive, not a negative force. The sufferers have the mutation, not the gene.”
― Matt Ridley, quote from Genome: the Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters
“Not one day in anyone’s life is an uneventful day, no day without profound meaning, no matter how dull and boring it might seem, no matter whether you are a seamstress or a queen, a shoeshine boy, or a movie star, a renowned philosopher or a Down’s-syndrome child. Because in every day of your life, there are opportunities to perform little kindnesses for others, both by conscious acts of will and unconscious example. Each smallest act of kindness—even just words of hope when they are needed, the remembrance of a birthday, a compliment that engenders a smile—reverberates across great distances and spans of time, affecting lives unknown to the one whose generous spirit was the source of this good echo, because kindness is passed on and grows each time it’s passed, until a simple courtesy becomes an act of selfless courage years later and far away. Likewise, each small meanness, each thoughtless expression of hatred, each envious and bitter act, regardless of how petty, can inspire others, and is therefore the seed that ultimately produces evil fruit, poisoning people whom you have never met and never will. All human lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined—those dead, those living, those generations yet to come—that the fate of all is the fate of each, and the hope of humanity rests in every heart and in every pair of hands. Therefore, after every failure, we are obliged to strive again for success, and when faced with the end of one thing, we must build something new and better in the ashes, just as from pain and grief, we must weave hope, for each of us is a thread critical to the strength—to the very survival of the human tapestry. Every hour in every life contains such often-unrecognized potential to affect the world that the great days and thrilling possibilities are combined always in this momentous day.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from From the Corner of His Eye
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