The bottom had arrived. She crashed against it, but it brought no sense of closure or understanding. She just lay there at the bottom looking up. She knew there must be a very tiny circle of light up there somewhere, but just now she couldn’t see it.
She had to have faith not just in trying but in failing. Was she strong enough to fail Was she strong enough not to.
The present no matter what I brought couldn’t change the past. The Past was set and sealed.
Carmen was bad at loving. She loved too hard.
The phone was her worst enemy and her best friend but she never knew which until she answered it.
But then she hadn’t just learned to love this summer – she had also learned how to need.
The word friends doesn’t seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. We forget where one of us starts and the other one stops.
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.
Blood may be thicker than water, but friendship is thicker than both.
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.
You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things.
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.
She wasn’t sure if he wanted more from her or if he wanted less. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was always both.
There was a moment in between, a moment flung free in the midst of the transition, when he made contact. That was the moment she would dwell on.
Alice suspected Paul couldn’t really picture his father, just like she couldn’t picture Paul when he was away. Maybe that was the case with people you wanted more than was good for you.
It was their mothers, long ago. Tibby noted with joy that all four of them were wearing jeans.
There was one thing Bridget like about guys. They took insults well.
Can you make yourself love? Can you make yourself loved? -Lena Kaligaris.
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.
Forget Jack, I’m in love with the cold, dirt floor.