Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map.
She knew what it felt like to stand in front of someone and ask them to love you, to try to pull them to you by the sheer force of your desire, a force so strong it felt as though you were going to die from it.
He was the only person in the world she was tongue-tied around, and yet the only person she really wanted to talk to.
Your peers when you're a teenager will always be the keepers of your embarrassment and regret. It was one of life's great injustices, that you can move on and be accomplished and happy, but the moment you see someone from high school you immediately become the person you were then, not the person you are now.
Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.
It was like she was MADE of cake, light and pretty and decorated on the outside-with her sweet laugh and pink streak to her hair-but it was anyone's guess what was on the inside.
Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.
If a man has so much heat he burns your skin when he touches you, he's the devil. Run away
Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.
How we see the world changes all the time. It all depends on our mood.
Those silly girls had no idea what they were really celebrating. They had no idea what it took to bring Agatha and her friends together seventy-five years ago. The Women's Society Club had been about supporting one another, about banding together to protect one another because no one else would. But it had turned into an ugly beast, a means by which rich ladies would congratulate themselves by giving money to the poor. And Agatha had let it happen. All her life, it seemed, she was making up for things she let happen.
Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too.
It felt as though they were the only people in the world, two young women about to bury the symbol of their helplessness, as if that's all it would take to make them whole again.
Embarrassment felt a lot like eating chili peppers. It burned in the back of your throat and there was nothing you could do to make it go away. You just had to take it, suffer from it, until it eased off.
Superstitions are man's way of trying to control things he has no control over.
The words were strung in the air like garland. She could almost see them.
Memories, even hard memories, grew soft like peaches as they grow older.
He didn't think he belonged here, so she was making him face some uncomfortable facts. People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted.
When your cup is empty, you do not mourn what is gone. Because if you do, you will miss the opportunity to fill it again.
There was a certain power beautiful mothers held over their less beautiful daughters.
Her grandmother used to tell her that a pink sky meant someone in the distance had just fallen in love . . . .
He might be tall enough to see into tomorrow, but he hadn’t looked there in a long, long time. He’d forgotten how bright it was. So bright he could hardly stand it.
To think, after all this time, after all the searching and all the waiting, after all the regret and the time she'd spent away, she came back to find that happiness was right where she's left it. On a football field in Mullaby, North Carolina. Waiting for her.
Stability was overrated. Crises and adventures, on the other hand, could actually teach you something.
It was early evening when they walked outside, the sky the color of pink lemonade.
Don't let anyone see your vulnerable spots. Once they knew how to hurt you, they would do it again and again.
Sometimes people who had been together for a long time got to imagining that things used to be better, even when they weren't.
The area was encompassed in a bubble of warm, fragrant steam from the funnel cake deep fryers. It smelled like sweet vanilla cake batter you licked off a spoon.
The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy.
Right now everyone is drinking bad wine made of sour grapes and hysteria. Let them drink it, and let them regret it in the morning.
After you finish a book, the story still goes on in your mind. You can never change the beginning. But you can always change the end.
Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.
First frost meant letting go, so it was always reason to celebrate.
Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails.
My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change.
When she looked in the mirror these days, she saw someone she didn't recognize...She saw an old woman trying to be beautiful, her skin dry and her wrinkles like cracks. She looked like a very well-dressed winter apple.
Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.
She accepted it from then on. Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.
When you know something’s wrong, but you don’t know exactly what it is, the air around you changes.
She never thought she was good at making friends. But maybe she was just trying to be friends with the wrong people.
Men of thoughtless actions are always surprised by consequences.
Her life was monotonous, but it kept her out of trouble. . . . This, her father would say, was called being an adult.
Not every man was sorry when he hurt a woman.
I think of the future all the time. All my life I've chased dreams of what could be. For the first time in my life, I've actually caught one. I'll give you one day at a time, Claire. But remember, I'm thousands of days ahead already.
Because he knew the best way to get what he wanted was to break down what made us strongest. And our friendships were what made us strong.
When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over.
When you're a teenager, your friends are your life. When you grow up, friendships seem to get pushed further and further back, until it seems like a luxury, a frivolity, like a bubble bath.
To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story.
Those who decided to stick with her would be her true friends. The others would just be scenery.
When people believe you have something to give, something no one else has, they'll go to great lengths and pay a lot of money for it.
Everything had felt so precarious since her mother's death, like she was walking on a bridge made of paper.
The word lethologica describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.
Being left makes you doubt your ability to keep people, even friends.
It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me.
Her friendship . . . still existed, as if it was a living, breathing thing, something that came to life the moment it happened and didn't just go away because they no longer acknowledged it.
But that would leave Paxton to fend for herself, and the last thing any woman wanted in this kind of situation was to look around and see all the people who could help her doing nothing.
That's the fairy tale. You meet, you fall in love, you kiss, and neither of you is revolted by it. You get married and have kids and live happily ever after.
If they just carried on like always, everything would be ok.
She'd fallen into the best part of her past.
Willa?" "Yes" "It's morning and I still love you.
It looked like the world was covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon.
Girls like us, when we love, it takes everything we have.
Wasn't that the point to being married? That you had a partner, someone you trusted, to help with important decisions.
There was a mood of magic and frenzy to the room. Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails. And then there was the smell-the smell of hope, the kind of smell that brought people home.
If we measured life in the things that almost happened, we wouldn't get anywhere.
It had always fascinated him that she'd consumed so many words, that her head was full of stories, told a thousand different ways.
I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.
Some people don't know how to fall in love, like not knowing how to swim. They panic first when they jump in. Then they figure it out.
It took me a long time to realize this: We get to choose what defines us.
He reached for her and kissed her. It was all at once passionate, as if there was too much in him to contain. He was immediately swept up in it. It took no effort, the difference between swimming on your own and being washed away in a flood.
Misfits need a place to get away, too. All that trying to fit in is exhausting.
Children always know when their mothers are crazy - they just never admit it, not out loud, to anyone.
My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories
People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted.
Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.
Nothing is really broke, so it's not like I can fix it. I just have to keep trying to find what I'm looking for.
She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi, and she always smelled faintly of cottonwood and peaches.
When you have to do something, you have to do it. Putting it off only makes it worse. Believe me, I know.
You are who you are, whether you like it or not, so why not like it?
When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief.
To this day she could make tap water boil just by kissing him.
Sometimes its necessary to embrace the magic, to find out what's real in life, and in one's own heart.
Everything was quiet, a strange sort of quiet that felt like an unfinished sentence.
...she was still water in his hands. He didn't know how to hold on.
He'd always been fascinated by her, drawn to her the way curious people are always drawn to things they don't understand.
He had a smug smile on his lips like he knew, even in his sleep, that women all around him were dying from love because he'd taken their hearts and hidden them where they'd never find them.
Safe is just another word for scared.
all we have is our deep and abiding love for each other. We can't loose that or we loose ourselves. If we don't help each other, who will?
You're dying with the way things are," Della Lee said harshly, causing Josey to lower the handful of popcorn she was about to put in her mouth. "You're going to lose yourself in this, Josey. It's going to happen if you don't change. I know. I lost myself trying to find happiness in things that didn't love me back.
I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.
Magic is what we invent when we want something we think we cant have.
We have history, you and I. You just don’t know it yet.
She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.
Always make your needs and expectations known,she used to say. That way no one gets hurt.
Some men you know are Southern before they ever say a word," Julia said as she and Emily watched Sawyer's progress, helpless, almost as if they couldn't look away. "They remind you of something good--picnics or carrying sparklers around at night. Southern men will hold doors open for you, they'll hold you after you yell at them, and they'll hold on to their pride no matter what. Be careful what they tell you, though. They have a way of making you believe anything, because they say it that way.
How can we know the true meaning of charity if we don't even know how to help those closest to us?
Men. You can't live with them, you can't shoot them.
How could someone with a life this full feel this empty?
Love always hurts. That’s one thing I know you know. But it’s worth it. That’s what you don’t know. Yet.
You can't change where you come from, but you can change where you go from here. Just like a book. If you don't like the ending, you make up a new one.
I'll give you one day at a time, Claire. But remember, I'm thousands of days ahead already.
But surprises were nothing new to her. Like opening a can of mushroom soup and finding tomato instead; be grateful and eat it anyway.
It was like the way you wanted sunshine on Saturdays, or pancakes for breakfast. They just made you feel good.
Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss.
That, they knew, was true friendship. And they knew, if you're lucky enough to find it, you hold on to it.
People fall in love all the time. And it's not always with the right people. And it's not always reciprocated.
He used to believe good things happened in this kind of weather.
People always say life is too short for regrets. But the truth is, it's too long.
If anyone had been paying attention to the signs, they would have realized that air turns white when things are about to change, that paper cuts mean there's more to what's written on the page than meets the eye, and that birds are always out to protect you from things you don't see.
But relying on one person for your every need is so dangerous. One set of hands isn't enough to keep you from falling.
He reached out and pushed some hair behind her ears. The gesture was tender, but it hit her with an unexpected force, like when you're in the ocean and a wave hits you. It's so soft and coll that it surprised you that it has such strength.
But one thing she [Rachel] did believe in was love. She believed that you could smell it, that you could taste it, that it could change the entire course of your life.
Some of the best people i know are fools', Evanelle said. 'The strongest people I know.
When someone needs help, you help. Right?
She sometimes thought she was going crazy. Her first thought when she woke up was always how to get him out of her thoughts. And she would keep watch, hoping to see him next door, while plotting ways to never have to see him again.
Blank-slate friendships were thin and temperamental. She knew that. There was no history there to cement people together, for better or worse.
No one should ever compromise the dignity of another human being.
I just don't know where home is. There's this promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it's like chasing the moon - just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon. I grieve and try to move on, but then the damn thing comes back the next night, giving me hope of catching it all over again.
I've never seen you hide from anyone before. He must do something crazy to you.
Living down your own past was hard enough. You shouldn't have to live down someone else's.
Watching them, she realized they made so much sense together. Every look, every touch, was a reassurance, almost electric, as if they were shocking each other with every contact.
Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.
We're connected, as women. It's like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there's trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we're just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don't help each other, who will?
The trick is not to make eye contact. They don't charge if you don't make eye contact.
