Lena realized that a fundamental layer of their happiness depended on the four of them being close to one another. Their lives were independent and full. Their friendship was only one aspect of their lives, but it seemed to give meaning to all the others.
Exactly! We run or we lose ourselves in something, somebody, anything to try and ease our pain.
She loved her mother and depended on her mother, and yet every single word her mother said annoyed her.
His distress and pleasure mixed and married, giving birth to several anxious children.
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.
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.
Polly was pretty good at dieting, all right, but she was beginning to wonder whether you ever lost the parts of your self that you wanted to lose.
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.
She had willed her heart to stay small and contained, but it wouldn’t be. Oh, well.
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.
No matter how far back you cut a willow tree, it will never really die.
It’s always nervewracking to put yourself out there. But it’s the root of joy.
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.
One must have a good memory to keep the promises one has made.
There are some people who fall in love over and over.
Love didn’t necessarily look the way you expected it to.
Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes, for instance, and Effie was good at being happy.
Wear them, they will make you brave.
Don’t talk to me. I’m tired and grumpy and I’ll probably make fun of you.
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?