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.
Maybe happiness didn’t have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place.
Once upon a time there was a pair of pants.
Sometimes trust felt like the worst gift in the world.
Clearly this wasn’t the kind of household where they ate steak every night. And so Tibby chewed the meat with as much vigor as was possible for a girl who had been a vegetarian since she was nine.
She was already lost – she couldn’t really get more lost, could she? When you belonged nowhere, you sort of belonged everywhere.
She wanted his profession of feelings to do the trick. She really did. She knew he wanted that too. Whether he spoke the truth or not, he thought he could make her feel better, and he really, really wanted to. But it wasn’t what she needed. Her need was as big as the stars, and he was down there on the beach, so quiet she could hardly hear him.
A pigeon is the same thing as a dove. Did you know that?
Some girls couldn’t stand being alone. Bridget was different. She went to movies, restaurants, even parties by herself. She loved her three friends above all other things, but she’d rather be alone than cling to people she didn’t care about.
Each time her mind flashed on that image for a second, a fraction of a second, it blinded her like a flashbulb, burning out the center of her mind’s eye to blackness.
Whenever you did something because “life is too short not to,” you could be sure life would be just long enough to punish you for it.
If I could meet you again, at a different time under different circumstances, I could let myself worship you the way you deserve.
When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet. – Stanislaw J. Lec.
Lena felt that all pretty faces were all alike – straight, even, regular. It was the ugliness, the sadness that set them apart. Lena couldn’t find that much objective ugliness in hers. But the sadness was apparent.
Lena remembered the old adage about knowing whether you’d chosen the right career by how you felt on Sunday night.
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.
The notorious after-date phone call. If a guy called within three days, he liked you. If he waited a week, that meant he didn’t have any better options and was probably just trying to get lucky. If he didn’t call at all, well, that-was obvious.
Her private soul read like a poster by her little sister.
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.
She was still holding out for something that wasn’t going to happen. She was good at waiting. That seemed like a sad thing to be good at.
She needed to know someone was looking out for her. She needed someone to promise her that the world wasn’t empty.