Brashares Quotes & Sayings

Love demands everything, they say, but my love demands only this: that no matter what happens or how long it takes, you'll keep faith in me, you'll remember who we are, and you'll never feel despair. — Ann Brashares

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. — Ann Brashares

Ask me anything, Bailey challenged.
What are you scared of? The question got out of Tibby's mouth before she meant to ask it.
Bailey thought. I'm afriad of time, she answered. She was brave, unflinching in the big Cyclops eye of the camera. There was nothing prissy or self-conscious about Bailey. I mean, I'm afraid of not having enough time, she clarified. Not enough time to understand people, how they really are, or to be understood myself. I'm afraid of the quick judgments and mistakes that eerybody makes. You can't fix them without time. I'm afraid of seeing snapshots instead of movies.
Tibby looked at her in disbelief. She was struck by this new side of Bailey, this philosophical-beyond-her-years Bailey. Did cancer make you wise? Did those chemicals and X rays supercharge her twelve-year-old brain? — Ann Brashares

Alice kept thinking about that passage from one part of life to another. She kept thinking, Is this it? Will I know if it is? Will I be ready?Will I make it across? Will I chicken out? Will I know when I'm saying goodbye? When I look back, will I still be able to see what I've left behind? She thought she would know when it happened.But now, as she looked around, she wondered if it was really like that at all. Maybe it happened in a million different ways, when you were thinking of it and you weren't. Maybe there was no gap, no jump, no chasm. You didn't forget yourself all at once. Maybe you just looked around one time or another and you thought, Hey. And there you were. — Ann Brashares

What you leave behind is the people you loved. You leave yourself in them. — Ann Brashares

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

She wanted him to see all of her and also none of her. She wanted him to be dazzled by the bits and blinded by the whole. She wanted him to see her whole and not in pieces. She had hopes that were hard to satisfy. — Ann Brashares

Can you make yourself love? Can you make yourself loved?
-Lena Kaligaris — Ann Brashares

If you are distant and misanthropic, selfish or cruel, you will find yourself alone in life and death. — Ann Brashares

Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks. The traffic signal that said walk the second you got there, that happened to every person in the course of a day. — Ann Brashares

I'm not going anywhere without you. We're swimming to China together. And if the worst happens, I'm dying with you before I'm living without you. — Ann Brashares

How many times could you give up on someone you loved? — Ann Brashares

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. — Ann Brashares

Shy" was the sympathetic interpretation she got from older people. "Snotty" was the interpretation she got from people her own age. — Ann Brashares

Carmen was bad at loving. She loved too hard. — Ann Brashares

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. — 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 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. — Ann Brashares

He's had a lot of chances to care, and he hasn't. — Ann Brashares

In this present body he hadn't been loved, and he found almost nothing to love about himself. — Ann Brashares

Barbara appraised her with critical eyes. 'Oh my. Well, this is going to need some work.' She went right to Carmen's hips and pulled the unfinished seams open. 'Yes, we'll have to take this way out. I'm not sure I have enough fabric. I'll check when I get back to my office.'
You are a horrible witch, Carmen thought.
She knew she looked absolutely awful in the dress. She was part Bourbon Street whore and part Latina first-communion spectacle. — Ann Brashares

Bridget saw chaos. — Ann Brashares

It was hard to feel the right emotions at the right times. They didn't come at all when you set a place for them, and they sacked when you weren't ready, when you were just innocently flossing your teeth, for example, or eating a bowl of cereal. — Ann Brashares

No matter how far back you cut a willow tree, it will never really die. — Ann Brashares

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

It wasn't meant to work with them, was it? He didn't know if he could try anymore. — Ann Brashares

The world was full of death, full of sadness, full of people, full of people too broken to lean on. — Ann Brashares

People left a lot of things behind when they went in the water. Their clothes, their stuff, their makeup, their fixed-up hair, their voices, their hearing, their sight - at least as the normally experienced them. — Ann Brashares

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 — Ann Brashares

I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up. — 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 for it again a generation or two after that and then hastily reinvent it as new, usually without its original elegance. Scientists hated to look backward for anything. — Ann Brashares

But I know this. We're ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together. — Ann Brashares

I think pants have unique qualities, especially in a woman's life. Whatever bodily insecurities we have, we seem to take out on our pants. — Ann Brashares

Bridget's anger evaporated and the sadness came back. The anger was easier. She owned and controlled it, whereas the sadness owned her. — Ann Brashares

She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio. — 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 more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it. — Ann Brashares

This was the part of her weekend where the real dread kicked in. — Ann Brashares

I like that you let yourself be surprised — Ann Brashares

She'd loved him as much as he'd let her. More than he'd let her. — Ann Brashares

She was astonished, and at the same time she knew. There were many things in life like that. You couldn't imagine it, and then it happened and you couldn't really imagine it hadn't. — Ann Brashares

He no longer represented someday a possibility. He represented a road not taken a road that suddenly shot so far into the distance she couldn't see it anymore. — Ann Brashares

For some reason our lives were marked by summers ... Summer was the time when our lives joined completely, when we all had our birthdays, when really important things happened — Ann Brashares

She wasn't sure if he wanted more from her or if he wanted less. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was always both. — Ann Brashares

Finally, she was doing something. She didn't know what, exactly, but action always suited her better than waiting around. — Ann Brashares

She hadn't chosen the brave life. She'd chosen the small, fearful one. — Ann Brashares

It took the real thing to show you the size of your delusions. — Ann Brashares

I wanted to come more than halfway. — Ann Brashares

It seems to me like a failure of language that experience fits into a regular sentence made up of ordinary words. It fits into one word. "Experience. — Ann Brashares

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

You have been my friend," replied Charlotte. "That in itself is a tremendous thing." - E. B. White — Ann Brashares

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. — Ann Brashares

Lena knew she had spent too much of her life in a state of passive dread, just waiting for something bad to happen. In a life like that, relief was as close as you got to happiness. — Ann Brashares

Treasure in such large amounts stopped feeling precious — Ann Brashares

You broke up with him," a combination Effie-Carmen voice in her head reminded her.
"But that didn't mean you were allowed to stop loving me," she felt like saying to him. — Ann Brashares

How is it that a person could be so relieved and so disappointed, both at the same time. — Ann Brashares

Everyone is fragile. Everything beautiful is fragile — Ann Brashares

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. — Ann Brashares

What business had she to try to capture life and light? — Ann Brashares

Rule #1: The customer is always right. Rule #2: If the customer is wrong, please refer to rule #1.
-Duncan Howe — 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

Why do we fight the things we fight when giving into them isn't so bad at all? — Ann Brashares

She wasn't as destructive as Bee. She had never been as dramatic. Rather, she'd slipped carefully, stealthily away from her ghosts. — Ann Brashares

Because the truth wouldn't be comforting and wouldn't bring them closer again. — Ann Brashares

It's wrong, I know, but I play out this dance with him, exquisite and slow. I play it out in my head, because that is the only place it will ever happen. — Ann Brashares

The distinction has blurred between young adult and adult books. Some of the teen books have become more sophisticated. — Ann Brashares

What can I say? I'm obsessed. And as we all know obsessed girls can't be held responsible for our actions. — Ann Brashares

Not everyone got a close family. Not everyone needed one. — Ann Brashares

Someday was the thing he had, because it was a lot harder to ruin than today. — Ann Brashares

Particularly beautiful people were like particularly funny-looking people, though. Once you know them you mostly forgot about it. — Ann Brashares

If you didn't have a choice, you had to make a choice. If you didn't have options, you made some. You couldn't just let this world happen to you ... he didn't see eternity. He saw this girl and this moment and this one slim chance. — Ann Brashares

Tibby, who was not fond of change, had once told Bridget that the present, no matter what it brought, couldn't change the past. The past was set and sealed. — Ann Brashares

He'd pushed her. He'd scared her. He'd besieged her. He'd vowed he wouldn't, and he did. — Ann Brashares

When you open yourself to somebody, when you feel these thing that you feel, well, what do you do? You can try to ignore it, maybe you can try to forget about it, but you can't undo it and you can't give it back. — Ann Brashares

We will go. Nowhere we know. We don't have to talk at all. — Ann Brashares

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

So far, she'd been her usual lame self: solitary and routine-loving, carefully avoiding any path that might lead to spontaneous human interaction.
Lena Kaligaris — Ann Brashares

In a flash of wonderment she saw firm, continuous ground under her feet, stretching from back then to right now and on and on as far as her eyes could take her. — Ann Brashares

How terrible would it be to just wait there pathetically alone for him never to show up?"
Eudoxia's expression grew more serious. "That's what you're doing anyway, my dear. — Ann Brashares

She wanted him to notice her so much. — Ann Brashares

As a writer, you live in such isolation. It's hard to imagine your book has a life beyond you. — Ann Brashares

Love didn't necessarily look the way you expected it to. — Ann Brashares

She'd cried over a broken heart before. She knew what that felt like, and it didn't feel like this. Her heart felt not so much broken as just ... empty. It felt like she was an outline empty in the middle. The outline cried senselessly for the absent middle. The past cried for the present that was nothing. — Ann Brashares

She was worried these thoughts would crush her if she let them come, but they didn't. You didn't know how heavy they were until you tried to lift them. You didn't know how strong you were. — Ann Brashares

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 the leaving, and not have you ever leave me. — Ann Brashares

If you didn't have a choice, you have to make a choice. If you didn't have options, you made some. You couldn't just let the world happen to you. — Ann Brashares

Grandma kept turning around in the front seat of their old Fiat saying, "Look at you girls! On, Lena, you are a beauty!"
Lena seriously wished she would stop saying that, because it was irritating, and besides, how was cranky Effie supposed to feel? — Ann Brashares

I told him that he better be good to you. When you came along, I said I'd share you, but I told him to remember that you're my sister. I loved you first. — Ann Brashares

I dont really write with the idea of trying to teach any lessons. I want to tell a story as truthfully and engagingly as I can, and then let the chips fall where they may. — 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

He tricked himself into thinking that she would look into his eyes and remember, that love would conquer all. — Ann Brashares

I confess I've relived it so many times, I hardly remember it anymore. My feelings are strong enough to refract and distort the truth of that journey. But then ... my feelings are the truth of that journey — Ann Brashares

The dreams weren't as pleasing when they had no chance of coming true — Ann Brashares

There are going to be moments of deep, deep doubts, and you have to have faith that your initial idea was good and just muddle through. — Ann Brashares

Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever. — Ann Brashares

We follow our scripts like actors in a very large, very long production. And even with no audience, none of us gives a hint that it isn't real. — Ann Brashares

Like why Lena always thought of Ritz crackers when she shaved her legs. Who knew why? And did it even matter? — Ann Brashares

The memories are so close I feel your presence everywhere. And I see forward so clearly and sadly to a time when the memories will be distant. I won't be able to picture your painting things scattered on a flat rock in Ammoudi or your bare feet soaking up the sunshine on Valia's garden wall. Now I see them. Long after that I will remember them. — Ann Brashares

Once Paul told her that the beach was like him because it changed every day but it never made any progress. Later she remembered thinking that a normal person might have begun by saying that he was like the beach. — Ann Brashares

She cared about him too much, and he was a dangerous person to love. He wouldn't love her back. — Ann Brashares

Bouncing is for balls.

-Tibby Rollins — Ann Brashares

They were absolutely lovely, and in their presence, so was she. — Ann Brashares