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.
Anatole and I had barely kissed. Most couples in the history of the world had barely kissed. It’s when the world changed and people started doing everything else, that’s when everybody got divorced.
Tibby, on the other hand, had spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with Brian striving for the comfort of not knowing.
Intimacy came faster when a person wore their pain and poor luck for all to see.
I’m afraid of the quick judgements and mistakes that everybody makes. You can’t fix them without time. I’m afraid of seeing snapshots instead of movies.
What was this compulsive need to be loveable?
Patrick: I’m mad. SpongeBob: What’s the matter, Patrick? Patrick: I can’t see my forehead.
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.