Ann Brashares - Sisterhood Everlasting (2011)

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They needed to grieve alone was what Tibby's dad said. Lena wondered if really there was any choice in that. Everyone grieved alone.

Ann Brashares
It's natural to overlook and even sacrifice the things that belong to us most easily most gracefully. So here's me asking you to please not make that mistake.

Ann Brashares
She existed in her friends; there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.

Ann Brashares
She wondered if maybe tragedy was what it took to make your heart capable of admitting a new member.

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
She loved her mother and depended on her mother, and yet every single word her mother said annoyed her.

Ann Brashares
For the first time she saw that the nurse's name was Tabitha.

Ann Brashares
She'd cried over a broken heart before. She knew what that felt like, and it didn't feel like this. Her heart felt not so much broken as just... empty. It felt like she was an outline empty in the middle. The outline cried senselessly for the absent middle. The past cried for the present that was nothing.

Ann Brashares
He took her hand and they started walking toward the baggage claim. They didn't say anything to each other. They swung their held hands like little kids, like they believed anything could happen, like they might take off soaring into the air. All the things you wanted to happen could happen. Why not?

Ann Brashares
She got under the covers and put her arms around the bag. She could smell Tibby. It used to be she couldn't smell Tibby's smell in the way you couldn't smell your own; it was too familiar. But tonight she could. This was some living part of Tibby still here and she held on to it. There was more of Tibby with her here and now than in what she had seen in the cold basement room that day.

Ann Brashares
There were those emotions down there, and though she couldn't quite feel them, they were strong and she feared them. It was like watching a thunderhead from high up in a plane, and though you weren't under it, you knew how it would feel if you were. You knew you'd have to land eventually.

Ann Brashares
She had to have faith not just in trying but in failing. Was she strong enough to fail Was she strong enough not to

Ann Brashares
What you leave behind is the people you loved. You leave yourself in them.

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
Lena always described how she dreaded and mourned things before they even happened. Carmen was beginning to suspect that she was permitting herself to mourn this long separation only now that it was over.

Ann Brashares
Bridget cried for the leavers and the left. For the people, like herself, grimly forsaking what precious gifts they would ever get.

Ann Brashares
A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand.

Ann Brashares
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.

Ann Brashares
Their friendship was only one aspect of their lives but it seemed to give meaning to all the others.

Ann Brashares
Because she was raw and uncertain, and she liked to keep all the messy parts of herself to herself.... As much as Lena liked to hide the mess and display the finished product, by this point she was all mess and no product.

Ann Brashares
It was probably good you couldn't flip the love switch because sometimes it was what you needed even if you didn't want it.

Ann Brashares
She hadn't chosen the brave life. She'd chosen the small, fearful one.

Ann Brashares
He no longer represented someday a possibility. He represented a road not taken a road that suddenly shot so far into the distance she couldn't see it anymore.

Ann Brashares
She knew that when she got old it would be more fun to look back on a life of romance and adventure than a life of quiet habits. But looking back was easy. It was the doing that was painful. There were plenty of things she would like to look back on but wasn't willing to risk...

Ann Brashares
They were here all at once, but not together. Survival took self-absorption, and it made them strangers with nothing to do and no way to relate. Emergencies gave you a shape and a plot to take part in, while death was no story at all. It left you nothing.

Ann Brashares
Bridget's anger evaporated and the sadness came back. The anger was easier. She owned and contolled it, whereas the sadness owned her.

Ann Brashares
But will he come I just want to know what you think the odds are. Tell me what you really think." "I think Tibby was a wise girl. I think she loved you.

Ann Brashares
He took her in his arms right away. "I'm so sorry," he murmured in her ear. He rocked her, saying it over and over. But no matter how many times he said it, no matter how much she knew he meant it, the words stirred around in her ear but didn't get into her brain. Sometimes he could comfort her. Sometimes he said what she needed, but today he couldn't reach her. Nothing could.

Ann Brashares
She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.

Ann Brashares
You don't have time, Len. That is the most bitter and the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer. If you don't have what you want now, you don't have what you want.

Ann Brashares