Ann Brashares: Herring

“I killed her once and died for her many times”

“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.”

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

“He was the strangest of strangers in that he was also her oldest friend.”

“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.”

“I killed her once and died for her many times and I still have nothing to show for it. I always search for her; I always remember her. I carry the hope that someday she will remember me.”

“She glared at him, feeling the old frustration. Sometimes in his presence she felt the deepest connection to him, and other times she felt completely alone-as though any bond to him was her own bitter imagination.”

“She wanted him to see all of her and also none of her. She wanted him to be dazzled by the bits and blinded by the whole. She wanted him to see her whole and not in pieces. She had hopes that were hard to satisfy.”

“She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time”

“She had willed her heart to stay small and contained, but it wouldn’t be. Oh, well.”

“Love made you admire funny things about a person, like how good she was at remembering to return her library books and at slicing cucumbers very thin. She was a veritable wonder at pulling a splinter out of her foot.”

“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.”

“Lena knew she had spent too much of her life in a state of passive dread, just waiting for something bad to happen. In a life like that, relief was as close as you got to happiness.”

“Tibby cried into her soup when it finally came. "I'm scared…," she told it. The carrots and peas made no reply, but she felt better for having told them.”

“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.”

“She wanted him to notice her so much.”

“I always search for her; I always remember her. I carry the hope that someday she will remember me.”

“She wasn’t sure if he wanted more from her or if he wanted less. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was always both.”

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