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 crueler paradoxes of human nature.

— Ann Brashares

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.

— Ann Brashares

Even exciting places are boring most of the time. Wars. Movie sets. Emergency rooms.

— 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

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

He loved her for being so beautiful, and he hated her for it. He loved how she put shiny stuff on her lips for him, and he also reviled her for it. Furthermore, he wanted her to walk home alone, and he wanted to run after her and grab her up before she could take another step.

— 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

Her need was as big as the stars, and he was down there on the beach, so quiet she could hardly hear him.

— 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

He wanted to take his love back from her so badly. The old techniques didn’t work anymore. In fact, they’d never worked. How do you stop loving someone? It was one of the world’s more brutal mysteries. The more you tried, the less it worked.

— Ann Brashares