Ockler Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes I think I'm an alien that accidentally fell off the mother ship, destined to wander among clueless earthling parents for all eternity. — Sarah Ockler

They say true genius often strikes in the pale moments between awake and asleep. — Sarah Ockler

I accept the hard reality that I maybe might possibly be just the slightest tiniest littlest bit kinda sorta interested in him. — Sarah Ockler

Not so long ago I'd been convinced that losing my voice was the worst thing that could ever happen to me, the worst tragedy. But since then I'd been losing my whole self, everything I stood for, believed in, felt. Everything I ever wanted to be. Everything I ever was. — Sarah Ockler

I'd send them both letters wishing them safe travels. Maybe they'd send me a postcard. Maybe they'd call when they got back, or when they settled in at college. Maybe they wouldn't, and they'd end up in the book. It was uncertain, like life.
I was starting to be okay with that. — Sarah Ockler

Sometimes life's most important moments are quiet, a decision made quick and calm. — Sarah Ockler

Every morning, I wake up and forget just for a second that it happened. But once my eyes open, it buries me like a landslide of sharp, sad rocks. Once my eyes open, I'm heavy, like there's to much gravity on my heart. — Sarah Ockler

It was just over a year ago. Twelve months, nine days and six hours ago, actually. But thirteen months ago everything was ... perfect. — Sarah Ockler

It takes forty muscles to frown, and only twelve to jam a cupcake in your mouth and get over it. — Sarah Ockler

No one knows me here. No one knows that they're supposed to feel sorry for
me. — Sarah Ockler

Because maybe Watonka was only ever supposed to be a temporary stopover, and maybe I will chase that train over the hill, and maybe we're all destined to leave this place, for sure, for real, together or alone. But for right now, we're here. — Sarah Ockler

When it's like this, I don't notice the cold. I don't hear the wind howling through the empty spaces. I don't feel like a small, broken-winged bird trapped in a rusty cage. — Sarah Ockler

Mat - Red and Jayne's Matt, Frankie's Matt, my Matt - died of a broken heart. — Sarah Ockler

I was, but then I realized that I was holding on to something that didn't exist anymore. That the person I missed didn't exist anymore. People change. The things we like and dislike change. And we can wish they couldn't all day long but that never works. — Sarah Ockler

Sometimes love was a tonic. Sometimes it was a weapon. And so often it was nearly impossible to tell the difference — Sarah Ockler

Sometimes I think we all feel guilty for being happy, and as soon as we catch ourselves acting like everything is okay, someone remembers it's not. — Sarah Ockler

As we rolled down the Million Dollar Highway, I closed my eyes and held him close around the waist, and he squeezed my hand like it was forever, like we'd really found a way to stop time, and I wanted so, so badly to believe it. — Sarah Ockler

My sisters were wrong to name the Vargas boys in the oath. Names had nothing to do with it. All boys were destined to break your heart. — Sarah Ockler

Sweetheart, when you say Matt's name, you have the same look in your eyes that he'd get whenever he'd say yours. — Sarah Ockler

After half an hour of forced family fun, in which I score fifty points and take out at least seventy-five percent of my anger trying to blast Frankie with the ball, our game is cut short. Princess gets stung on the top of her foot by a teeny-tiny newborn baby of a jelly-fish and carries on like some shark just swam away with her torso. For one brief moment I wonder if it's the ghost of my journal, reincarnated after its watery death to claim vengeance by stabbing her with its thin metal spiral. The thought makes me smile on the inside, just a little bit. — Sarah Ockler

I take a deep breath,
count to ten,
and bury it,
way down deep — Sarah Ockler

If motorcycles - or any object from a person's past - could cure this thing, it would no longer exist. People would unearth their family treasures, polish up the old jewels, bring their loved ones back from the moon. — Sarah Ockler

Sometimes the right hug from the right person at the exact right time makes all the wrong in the world disappear... — Sarah Ockler

Patrick leans in for a hug through the open doorway, and in his arms I'm reminded of the other dream I had last night, which ... oh ... which I immediately stamp out of my mind, hoping that no one else noticed the temperature in the room shoot up about five hundred degrees. Could my subconscious be any more inappropriate? — Sarah Ockler

Love didn't save me; it changed me. Changed me into someone who could save myself. — Sarah Ockler

Blackthorn? Please. Shut. Up. I grab the collar of his jacket and pull him into me, answering every last protest with a kiss- a real one, deep and intentional. — Sarah Ockler

Because they're parents. It's in the job description. Must drive minivans. Must be immune to fashion. Must be freaks. — Sarah Ockler

Whenever we could steal a few minutes alone, that's when we became the "other", the charged-up thing that kept me up at night, afraid of falling so fast, afraid of losing, afraid it wouldn't last once everyone found out. We stole too-short kisses in the front hallway, shared knowing and devious looks across the table when we weren't being watched. We snuck out every night behind the house to watch for shooting stars and whisper about life, our favorite books, about the meaning of songs. It wasn't the topics themselves that changed, we had talked about all of those things befores. But now, there was a new intensity, an urgency to know as much as we could, to fit as much as possible into our final nights, before somebody found out. — Sarah Ockler

How easily some things can be broken for good and for bad, and how some things, no matter how shattered, can still go back together. Like Moo, my family may never be as strong as it once was. There are chips and cracks and scars, But some of them can be repaired, piece by piece, rebuilt into something even more cherished and loved and unique. — Sarah Ockler

In that moment, in the
smoky haze, Celi looks grown up and wounded, and I
realize how young I really am in my long pink nightgown.
My sisters have a whole collection of broken hearts in a
book, and I haven't even gotten my period yet. — Sarah Ockler

They say you can never step into the same river twice. And maybe that's how it was for Papi now, memories shifting and re-forming soundlessly beneath him while the rest of us sat on the shore and watched. — Sarah Ockler

I'm fine, thanks for not asking. — Sarah Ockler

Anna," he said, dragging his frosted fingers through my hair."Don't you know what it means when a boy pulls your hair at your birthday party?" "No." Just, then, i didn't know what anything meant. — Sarah Ockler

Doesn't matter how many people are in the crowd anymore, Delilah. Ten or ten thousand, I'm still only singing for one. — Sarah Ockler

When someone you love dies, people ask you how you're doing, but they don't really want to know. They seek affirmation that you're okay, that you appreciate their concern, that life goes on and so can they. Secretly they wonder when the statute of limitations on asking expires (its three months, by the way. Written or unwritten, that's about all the time it takes for people to forget the one thing that you never will). — Sarah Ockler

How can I fault her for trying to bury a truth that when exposed to air and sunlight could only hurt the ones she loves? — Sarah Ockler

Matt died of a broken heart — Sarah Ockler

For all its ridiculous imperfections, life is pretty damn perfect sometimes. — Sarah Ockler

I think you're beautiful," an old man at the counter - one of our Sunday night fixtures - says.
...
"You passed the Earl test," she says as she pours him a fresh cup.
"Ma, he says that to anyone who still has their own teeth. No offense, Earl."
"None taken," he says. "But you got your own hair too, so you're twice as pretty. — Sarah Ockler

It's complicated. I think when bad things happen - whether someone dies or people argue or split up - you get to a point where it's just too hard to go back. There's so much lost. So many versions of the truth. So many versions of how things might've turned out differently. We all long for what could have been. For some people, it's just easier to move forward and try to forget. — Sarah Ockler

I just swallow hard.
Nod and smile.
One foot in front of the other.
I'm fine, thanks for not asking. — Sarah Ockler

Mom asked for a cupcake miracle? Well, here comes the freaking holy angel of icing, at your service.
Hudson
Angel icing? That's the craziest, corniest, most whack-ass stuff I've heard in my life — Sarah Ockler

I promise I'll take you there someday. I want to see it with you. I want to see everything with you. — Sarah Ockler

Frankie Perino and I were lucky that day. Lucky to be alive-that's what everyone said. — Sarah Ockler

My entire life has changed in the span of three weeks, but as the seals howl against the Pacific, everything around me remains exactly the same. — Sarah Ockler

I like him, okay?"
"No you don't. You 'well I'm un I don't know um I guess yeah maybe' him. — Sarah Ockler

Rules are rules, yet still
trumped always by kindness and human decency. — Sarah Ockler

I've played a few times, Anna. Remember the parties?"
"Not exactly." I must have been in the bathroom during that part of the nonexistent parties, hiding out from the vomiting hot girl while Frankie completed her beer pong apprenticeship. — Sarah Ockler

Every story is part of a whole, entire life, you know? Happy and sad and tragic and whatever, but an entire life. And books let you know them. — Sarah Ockler

I'm sorry. For all of us. Sorry for all the little ways the people who were supposed to love us most could hurt us so deeply, despite their shared heritage and blood, as thought their knowledge of our pasts gave them unlimited access to all the most tender places, the old wounds that could be so easily reopened with no more than a glance, a comment, a passing reminder of all the ways in which we failed to live up to their expectations. — Sarah Ockler

Surrounding us is an ocean of mess and misunderstanding, full of pirates and sharks just waiting to see who slips in first — Sarah Ockler

When it happens, you're totally unprepared, fragmented and lost, looking for the hidden meaning in every little thing. I've replayed the events of that day a hundred thousand times, looking for clues. An alternate ending. The Butterfly effect.
If I could find the butterfly that flapped its wings before we got into the car that day, I would crush it. — Sarah Ockler

Because I realized I was falling for another guy, fifty-six. — Sarah Ockler

Oh, so you're untouchable, huh, Delilah? You and your fucked-up relationship with your mother and everyone else in your life? Great. Does getting pissed at me make it better? does it fix ANYTHING?"
"You! Can't! Fix! Me! — Sarah Ockler

Maybe he's just ... craving the meatloaf?"
Dani hops off the counter and gives me the once over. "Craving the meatloaf? Is that what the kids are calling it now? — Sarah Ockler

Nothing ever really goes away
it just changes into something else. Something beautiful. — Sarah Ockler

They don't want to know that you'll never eat birthday cake because you don't want to erase the magical taste of frosting on his lips. That you wake up ever day wondering why you got to live and he didn't. — Sarah Ockler

Don't settle, okay? Not for anything. I mean it. You only get this one chance at life, far as I know. Take it. Even if its not with me. — Sarah Ockler

Emilio and his brothers had been a topic of more Jude-and-Zoe middle school gabfests than the Cullens, the Lightwoods, or any of the other mysterious yet fictional bad boys we dreamed about back then, and she'd freak if she knew he'd resurfaced. — Sarah Ockler

So Old Man Date Rape was number what?" she asks. "Four or five?"
"We're not counting him," I say. "This is the Twenty Boy Summer, not the Twenty Dirty Old Man Summer. — Sarah Ockler

But homegirl don't know jack about hockey! — Sarah Ockler

No matter how long you waited, no matter how hard you wished, no matter how much you missed the past, time marched forward. — Sarah Ockler

You know, hon, after Stephie died, we never really talked about her." she says, her hands tight around the cart handle. "There's a lot of pain there. Still. I guess we feel like we failed her. Like maybe if we were home instead of away at college, we could've done something to fix her. Something my patents and the doctors and her boyfriend missed. Sometimes I think I don't have the right to talk about her. Like at the end, I don't know her well enough to say anything. So much of her life became secret. She spent all of her time with her boyfriend, and when she was home, her nose was buried in her diary. I swear that diary was her best friend, even more than Megan."
"Did you ever read it?" I ask.
"No."
"Not even after she died?"
Aunt Rachel shakes her head, removing an eggplant from the middle row and pressing her fingers against its flesh. "To this day, I don't know if I would've, either. We never found it, Delilah. It's like she just ... took it with her. — Sarah Ockler

Would 'sorry' have made any difference? Does it ever? It's just a word. One word against a thousand actions. — Sarah Ockler

Let someone else have a lucky day, Anna. — Sarah Ockler

According to the crazy, bug-eating guys on those survival shows, human beings are the most adaptable creatures on earth- we can get used to just about anything. Doesn't mean it's okay. I mean, who wants to get used to eating grubs and collecting maple leaves for toiler paper? No thanks. — Sarah Ockler

I told him that I would love him with everything I had in me until the very end of everything, and I meant it. — Sarah Ockler

Heartless, someone called me the other day. A heartless bitch.
But that's where I get stuck.
If I'm so heartless, what's this bruised thing in my chest, full of fire and hope, banging so loud I can't sleep, can't think? What is it that aches when he kisses me, aches when I walk away? — Sarah Ockler

They didn't hold Frankie as she sobbed for hours at a time without talking. They didn't make sure she ate even when she wasn't hungry. They didn't do her homework when she couldn't concentrate, or explain to our teachers why she was late to every class. — Sarah Ockler

But I want to spend the whole trip out here, with the ocean replenishing her treasures like an old shopkeeper as I sleep alongside her in the sand. — Sarah Ockler

I used to think certain people in my life were the real deal. That we'd stay tight forever. — Sarah Ockler

Every day you wake up and think, we'll fix things tomorrow. — Sarah Ockler

Are you for real?' I whispered against his lips. 'Yes or no.'
'You're killing me, princesa.' His words slid into my mouth as our bodies pressed together. — Sarah Ockler

His pink fingers found the shell around my neck, touched it softly. He lifted it and saw the scar. His brow furrowed.

He whispered, "Is your voice inside the shell?"

I smiled a little sadly.

"That's okay," he said. "We don't have to talk to be friends. — Sarah Ockler

We can get used to just about anything but it doesn't mean it's okay — Sarah Ockler

He loved to read. He loved words, the way they string together into sentences and stories. He wanted to study them, to know and create them, to share them with the world. — Sarah Ockler

Despite my ability to read people, I felt like an outsider, like someone watching a party from the other side of the glass. I could see these things unfold, but I couldn't quite understand the dynamics, the deep knowing that comes from growing up with people you care about. — Sarah Ockler

There was no going back to the way things were, because all you ever got was the way things are. — Sarah Ockler

The sun rises over the Grand Canyon, igniting rocks that have been there for two billion years before we were born and will likely remain two billion years after we're gone. My heart aches with the cruel and unimaginable beauty of it. We are nothing. We are everything. — Sarah Ockler

Family tragedies had a way of smashing everything apart and then gluing it all back together. The problem was no one ever knew how long the glue would hold. — Sarah Ockler

In your entire life, you can probably count your true friends on one hand. Maybe even on one finger. Those are the friends you need to cherish, and I wouldn't trade one of them for a hundred of the other kind. I'd rather be completely alone than with a bunch of people who aren't real. People who are just passing time. — Sarah Ockler

I was falling in love.
I am losing my father.
With Emilio Vargas.
To smoke and shadow.
My heart fluttered.
My heart aches.
To feel it.
To deny it.
Life.
Death.
Possibilities.
Endings — Sarah Ockler

We only had this one life. We could wish for the past all day long. We could look at old pictures and tell ourselves the same old stories but they're just that - stories. Memories. They happened. And maybe they were wonderful and amazing, and maybe they changed our lives in ways we'd never be changed again, but they no longer existed. By the time we stopped to reflect on one moment, it was gone, and another was instantly upon us, also destined to pass. — Sarah Ockler

Some people call it child labor. I call it ... let's not get technical. — Sarah Ockler

I think we both like Crazy Anna a little more than regular Anna. It's like magic - while I was trying on the bathing suit last month, it rubbed against my butt and unleashed the Absolute Best Summer Ever Bikini Genie, granting all my wishes. — Sarah Ockler

You can't help who you love,"he says,"even if the timing is horrendous. — Sarah Ockler

I closed my eyes under the fluroescent lights and tried to make another birthday wish, a onetime do-over, a rebate, a trade-in on the kitchen sink kiss that started everything, offered up for just one last miracle. — Sarah Ockler

Anger was sharp edged and clear. Grief was messy, blurry.
But in the end both left you hollowed out inside. — Sarah Ockler

This boy wore the ocean in his eyes, green-gray-blue, ever shifting, and I recognized him immediately. Knew before he said another word that he was as dangerous as he was beautiful. — Sarah Ockler

I'm not sure if you even want me around or if you just feel sorry for me. I'm not sure of anything. — Sarah Ockler

Emily, Megan, Jack, Luna, Patrick ... they helped me learn what true friendship is. It's never perfect, but it is important. — Sarah Ockler

She makes her people work on Sundays?" Rachel whispers, pulling some of my grandmother's old food from he fridge and sniffing it.

"Nah-weekends are optional. They only have to work them if they want to keep their jobs. — Sarah Ockler

Why did he leave so fast at the end? Who was on the phone? A girl? That's it, he must have a girlfriend. One from another school. One he was just about to call so he could propose to her, but I interrupted, and then he had to run off to take her call, because weddings don't just plan themselves, you know. — Sarah Ockler

I wonder how many loose buttons there are in this world, just rolling around in a jar without a mate or a blouse to go on. No purpose. Just siting there unnoticed. Forgotten. — Sarah Ockler

Sometimes you gotta just take things for what they are and appreciate them, not try to label it or explain it. Explanations take the mystery out of it, you know? — Sarah Ockler

What is the statute of limitations on feeling guilty for cheating on a ghost? — Sarah Ockler

This is mine, I thought. Music. Rhythm. The intense rush that came from connecting with something so deeply, so right. No matter that I couldn't sing. I could breathe. I could dance. I could move. The music was still in me. It always would be. — Sarah Ockler

I felt the loss of my voice like a fresh wound, a cold blade against my throat, and I closed my eyes to keep the sea from spilling down my cheeks. No one knew me like my family in Tobago, but they'd known me always as Elyse, beautiful songbird, weaver of music that could bring a man to his knees. Music was my life, a rare gift that Natalie and I had shared, had grown into, had grown because of.
And now, without the music, I was just . . . Elyse. Broken.
My family didn't know me anymore. Natalie didn't know me. I didn't know me. — Sarah Ockler

It was one thing to have your own kind of hope, an ember you could nurture inside, something to inspire you when things got dark. If it died, it was on you; no one else even had to know about it, and you were free to reignite it, or to give up and walk away. But when you were carrying it with another person, for another person, it was a dangerous dream. Treacherous as the sea, yet fragile as a bubble. — Sarah Ockler

I gave him my own sexy raised eyebrow, because unlike Emilio, I knew how to do that shit correct. — Sarah Ockler