If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.
Love. It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between.
To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can’t let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.
And before you barrel through some idiotic Cosmo girl list of how-well-do-you-know-your-man questions, let me say that I don’t know squat about him except that he kisses like a god and screws like a devil.
This is the problem with forever friends. They know too much.
Some women nodded, others shook their heads. I would have killed myself before I let one of them move into my house. Would you Helen? Would you really?
I am a mother and mothers don’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of their children, even when they are afraid, even when their children are adults.
He is a man, and he is afraid. This is not a good combination.
Vietnam…war…it did something to us. Or maybe not. Maybe the bad seeds were always in me, and war gave them a dark place in which to grow.
She had tried to be loved by him; more important, she had tried to keep loving him, but in the end, one was impossible as the other.
It is nearly impossible.”Nearly impossible and impossible are not the same thing.
I just want to keep you safe.I smile. Americans can be so naive.
Hey, Meg,” she said without preamble. I need you to write a letter of recommendation for me. I’m applying for grad sc
I am like some wounded animal in a darkened lair, nursing the thorn in my paw, unable to find anyone to take it out.
A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep into her bones.
Vianne knelt down beside Sarah, she felt for a pulse and found none. The silence turned sour, thick; all Vianne could think about was the sound of this child’s laughter and how empty the world would be without it.
she should have told me that times slides away on a hillside of lose shale and takes everything in its path-dreams, opportunities, hopes. And youth. It takes that fastest of all.
Angie: “How do I pitch these ideas to her?”Mira: “From a distance, preferably wearing body armor.
Liam learned that it was possible to appear to move forward when you were really standing still.
This time I really am going to light the world on fire,’ she said, laughing. ‘I finally have a fucking match.
it’s better to be bold than meek.If you jump off a cliff at least you’llfly before you fall
The trip from Portland to New York City was like climbing Mount Everest without oxygen. It went on and on, and by the time you reached your destination, there was no sensation left in your extremities.
Those are exactly the kind of memories I try to avoid, but they’re like abestos: invisible and deadly. You need special gear to get rid of them.
Memories are who we are, Tul. In the end, that’s all the luggage you take with you. Love and memories are what last.
He’d learned in the past few months that telling a girl what to wear–even one the size of a golf club–was a bad idea. Histrionics often followed.
Was Vianne really supposed to let Sophie starve to prove her loyalty to France?
. . .you sounded frustrated and pissed off and amazingly happy
It isn’t about being at the same school or the same town or even the same room. It’s about being together. Love is a choice you make.
Sometimes you simply made the wrong choice and you had to live with it. You could only change the future.
The next morning, Angie woke with the sun…Her eyes felt gritty and swollen.Once again she’d watered her mattress with memories.
Girls like you can’t understand,” Julia said, and it was true. Ellie had been popular. She didn’t know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime.
That was the one thing she knew now. Some chances came and went, and if you missed them, you could spend the rest of your life standing alone, waiting for an opportunity that had already passed you by.
but that shadow self of hers wasn’t so sure. The ugly, toxic thought was smaller than a drop of blood, yet it poisoned the entire stream.
Elizabeth: “Maybe he’ll surprise you.”Meghann: “Birdie, they all surprise me. Last week, I hugged my date at the door and felt a bra strap.
That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were there, making you laugh even in your darkest hours.
Caro: “Bite me.”Ruby: “I gave that up in kindergarten.
A generous donor (who had no doubt lived a life that imperiled his mortal soul) had granted [the Sisters] more than one hundred waterfront acres.
She pouted prettily, and he wondered if that was one of the things they taught wealthy young girls at schools like Miss Porter’s. If not, it had been passed down from one generation to another as carefully as the secret of fire.
Tragedy was like that, a razor that sliced through time, severing the now from the before, incising the what-might-have-been from reality as cleanly as any surgeon’s blade.
Lulu twirled in front of Jolene, banging into the seat. her eyes sparkled in that I’m-either-going-to-scream-or-fall-asleep-any-second kind of way.
… allow me to be an old man for a moment and to remind a young girl who is used to being impulsive that there can be none of that anymore.
It felt as if she were bleeding – but it wasn’t blood that leaked out of her, not something that could be easily transfused. Instead she was losing her dreams.
I’ve never begged. not for anything… except my mother’s love.And that was a useless waste of time.
Marah will come looking for me one day, Kate had said, pressing the journal into my hands. Be with her when she reads it. And my boys… show them these words when they can’t remember me.
We are outside again, walking, when he takes a bite and stops dead. “Wow,” he says after a minute. Then, “Wow,” again.I smile. Everyone remembers their first taste of Paris. This will be his.