No matter how far back you cut a willow tree, it will never really die.
She realized all at once the deeper thing that bothered her, the thing that made him not just irritating but intolerable: how he kept loving her blindly when she deserved it so little.
Honesty was a tough customer... Once you started allowing yourself some honesty, it couldn't easily be contained or limited to one part of your life. It was like poison ivy or a bossy houseguest. Once it was there, you couldn't tell it what to do. You had to really fight to keep it from taking over.
His distress and pleasure mixed and married, giving birth to several anxious children.
Riley was quiet for a minute. She gathered her blanket all around her. "Paul always loved you, Alice. He knows I know that. I know he loves me, too. But it's different." Alice opened her mouth, but nothing came out at first. "He loved me once. But I think that part is over," she said slowly. "No, it's not. It hasn't even begun." Riley took Alice's bare foot in her hand and squeezed it. "I told him, though, that he better be good to you. When you came along, I said I'd share you, but I told him to remember that you're my sister. I loved you first."
Maybe, sometimes, it's easier to be mad at the people you trust because you know they'll always love you, no matter what.
She was sad about what happened to Kostos. And someplace under that, she was sad that people like Bee and Kostos, who had lost everything, were still open to love, and she, who'd lost nothing, was not.
Lena was an introvert. She knew she had trouble connecting with people. She always felt like her looks were fake bait, seeming to offer a bridge to people, which she couldn't easily cross.
Time is what keeps things from happening all at once.
Sometimes you need to make a mess. -Loretta, the Rollinses' hosekeeper
It's always nervewracking to put yourself out there. But it's the root of joy.
You surround yourself with your pain or you avoid it and let it find you when you are trying to do other things
It was hard to feel the right emotions at the right times. They didn’t come at all when you set a place for them, and they sacked when you weren’t ready, when you were just innocently flossing your teeth, for example, or eating a bowl of cereal.
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.
She wasn’t sure if he wanted more from her or if he wanted less. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was always both.
There was a moment in between, a moment flung free in the midst of the transition, when he made contact. That was the moment she would dwell on.
Alice suspected Paul couldn’t really picture his father, just like she couldn’t picture Paul when he was away. Maybe that was the case with people you wanted more than was good for you.
Sometimes you couldn’t face the sadness of being forgotten until you felt the comfort of being remembered again.
It was their mothers, long ago. Tibby noted with joy that all four of them were wearing jeans.
There was one thing Bridget like about guys. They took insults well.
Can you make yourself love? Can you make yourself loved? -Lena Kaligaris
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. Carmen knew this vicious predicament as well as anyone in the world. How bitter it felt when you acted badly to everyone and ended up hating yourself the most.
Wear them, they will make you brave.
And I thought about the color and I realized what blue it was. It was the soft and changeable, essential blue of a well-worn pair of pants. Pants = Love
The rules took a while to sort out. Lena and Carmen wanted to focus on friendship-type rules, stuff about keeping in touch with one another over the summer, and making sure the Pants kept moving from one girl to the next. Tibby preferred to focus on random things you could and couldn't do in the Pants --- like picking your nose.
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