Ann Brashares

“As much as I'm drawn to writing about teenage girls, I like the idea of having the freedom to branch out and write about different ages, for different ages.”

“Love who you love while you have them. That's all you can do. Let them go when you must. If you know how to love, you'll never run out.”

“Tibby, on the other hand, had spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with Brian striving for the comfort of not knowing.”

“My household is, in a nice way, very busy.”

“The path of your life can change in an instant.”

“In a way it scared me, having a summer of experiences and feelings that belonged to me alone. What happened in front of my friends felt read. What happened to me by myself felt partly dreamed, partly imagined, definitely shifted and warped by own fears and wants. And who knows? Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.”

“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?”

“Bridget's anger evaporated and the sadness came back. The anger was easier. She owned and controlled it, whereas the sadness owned her.”

“Developing characters is a strange thing. In the beginning they are abstract and I wonder how to move on from there.”

“It's so much easier to have no expectations than to have big ones.”

“Tibby, who was not fond of change, had once told Bridget that the present, no matter what it brought, couldn't change the past. The past was set and sealed.”

“Together or apart, no matter how far apart, we live in one another. We go on together.”

“My mother says it can't stay like this, but I believe it will. The Pants are like an omen. They stand for the promise we made to one another, that no matter what happens, we stick together. But they stand for a challenge too. It's not enough to stay in Bethesda, Maryland, and hunker down in air-conditioned houses. We promise one another that someday we'd get out in the world and figure some stuff out.”

“she looked up at the stars and gave Tibby thanks. She didn't have to throw her thoughts far to know they reached her.”

“Why was it that her temper and her thinking never happened at the same time? Her temper behaved like a glutton sitting in an expensive restaurant ordering a hundred dishes, only to disappear when the bill came due. It left her lucid mind to do dishes.”

“Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things.”

“If you are distant and misanthropic, selfish or cruel, you will find yourself alone in life and death.”

“She knew whose love she doubted. It wasn't her parents' and it wasn't her friends: It was her own.”

“This is the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. I you don't have what you want now, you don't have what you want.”

“You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn't. As long as your heart kept pumping an your blood kept blowing and your lungs kept filling, you didn't. The pang she felt for Tibby carried something like envy. You couldn't stand still for anything short of death, and God knew she had tried.”