Ann Brashares Quotes

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

Bridget wondered whether it all came down to the claustrophobic choice between dying beautiful or living ugly.

~ Ann Brashares

She felt like parts of her soul were missing, had left her body long ago. It had happened not in Greece three months ago, but long before that. It was in Greece that she'd realized those parts had left her and were not coming back.

~ Ann Brashares

You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things

~ Ann Brashares

Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn't get to have.

~ 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

In a way it scared me, having a summer of experiences and feelings that belonged to me alone. What happened in front of my friends felt read. What happened to me by myself felt partly dreamed, partly imagined, definitely shifted and warped by own fears and wants. And who knows? Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.

~ 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 knew that when she got old it would be more fun to look back on a life of romance and adventure than a life of quiet habits. But looking back was easy. It was the doing that was painful. There were plenty of things she would like to look back on but wasn't willing to risk ...

~ Ann Brashares

The path of your life can change in an instant.

~ 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

Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it.

~ Ann Brashares

She existed in her friends, there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.

~ Ann Brashares

[Carmen] knew a worse friend would have made her feel better.

~ Ann Brashares

We're the Septembers now. The real ones. We are everything to one another. We don't need to say so; it's just true. Sometimes it seems like we're so close we form one single complete person rather than four separate ones. We settle into types- Bridget the athlete, Lena the beauty, Tibby the rebel, and me, Carmen, the...what? The one with the bad temper. But the one who cares the most. The one who cares that we stick together.

~ Ann Brashares

When you remembered to forget, you were remembering. It was when you forgot to forget that you forgot.

~ Ann Brashares

My memory is good for some things and not others.

~ Ann Brashares

she looked up at the stars and gave Tibby thanks. She didn't have to throw her thoughts far to know they reached her.

~ 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

Desire was just the dumbest thing. You wanted what you wanted until it was yours. Then you didn’t want it anymore. You took what you had for granted until it was no longer yours. This, it seemed to her, was one of the crueller paradoxes of human nature.

~ Ann Brashares

This is the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. I you don't have what you want now, you don't have what you want.

~ Ann Brashares

Healing wasn’t always the best thing. Sometimes a hole was better left open. Sometimes it healed too thick and too well and left separate pieces fused and incompetent. And it was harder to reopen after that.

~ Ann Brashares

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

Why was it that her temper and her thinking never happened at the same time? Her temper behaved like a glutton sitting in an expensive restaurant ordering a hundred dishes, only to disappear when the bill came due. It left her lucid mind to do dishes.

~ Ann Brashares

When she made her way to the big picture window that framed the dining room table she froze. She stopped breathing. The anger was growing again.It grew up into her throat, where she could taste it, coppery like blood, in the back of her mouth. It grew down into her stomach, where it knotted her intestines. It made her arms stiffen and her shoulders lock. It pushed against her ribs until she felt they would snap like sticks.

~ Ann Brashares

A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand.

~ Ann Brashares

Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She couldn't get away from the hurt of them. She could leave Eric, walk out of her apartment, walk forever if she liked, but she couldn't escape what really hurt. Tonight even the sky felt like a prison.

~ Ann Brashares

But it was smell that carried memory.

~ Ann Brashares

Honesty was a tough customer... Once you started allowing yourself some honesty, it couldn't easily be contained or limited to one part of your life. It was like poison ivy or a bossy houseguest. Once it was there, you couldn't tell it what to do. You had to really fight to keep it from taking over.

~ Ann Brashares

My mother says it can't stay like this, but I believe it will. The Pants are like an omen. They stand for the promise we made to one another, that no matter what happens, we stick together. But they stand for a challenge too. It's not enough to stay in Bethesda, Maryland, and hunker down in air-conditioned houses. We promise one another that someday we'd get out in the world and figure some stuff out.

~ Ann Brashares

There were those emotions down there, and though she couldn't quite feel them, they were strong and she feared them. It was like watching a thunderhead from high up in a plane, and though you weren't under it, you knew how it would feel if you were. You knew you'd have to land eventually.

~ Ann Brashares

Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good about yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could flip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct ad had nothing at all to give.

~ Ann Brashares

I told him, though, 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. (Riley to her sister Alice about Paul)

~ Ann Brashares

Not even you can reach me here, Carmen thought.

~ 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

She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time

~ Ann Brashares

People sometimes talk about the power of first impressions, and believe me, there is truth to it.

~ 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 kept walking. The very small, brave part of her brain knew that this would be her one chance. If she turned around, she would lose it.

~ Ann Brashares

Lena, listen to me, okay? We don't have much more time here. You are in love. I've never seen anything like this before. You have to be brave, okay? You have to go and tell Kostos how you feel. I swear to God if you don't, you will regret it for the rest of your cowardly life.''What if he doesn't like me back?''That's what I mean about being brave.

~ Ann Brashares