Ann Brashares quote: "Carmen: “I want you to leave me alone, but not ignore me. I want you to miss me when I go away to college, but not be sad. I want you to stay exactly the same, but not be lonely or alone. I want to do the leaving, and not have you ever leave me."

Maybe, sometimes, it's easier to be mad at the people you trust because you know they'll always love...
ANN BRASHARES

Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes...
ANN BRASHARES

You thought you had the choice to stay still or move forward, but your didn't. As long as your heart...
ANN BRASHARES

The ocean was the best place, of course. That was what she loved most. It was a feeling of freedom l...
ANN BRASHARES

The distinction has blurred between young adult and adult books. Some of the teen books have become ...
ANN BRASHARES

Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt g...
ANN BRASHARES

She existed in her friends; there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew hersel...
ANN BRASHARES

It's so much easier to have no expectations than to have big ones.
ANN BRASHARES

Not even you can reach me here, Carmen thought.
ANN BRASHARES

They were absolutely lovely, and in their presence, so was she.
ANN BRASHARES

Forget Jack, I'm in love with the cold, dirt floor.
ANN BRASHARES

Riley was quiet for a minute. She gathered her blanket all around her. "Paul always loved you, Alice...
ANN BRASHARES

I love you, I'll never stop.
ANN BRASHARES

Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything ...
ANN BRASHARES

Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it.
ANN BRASHARES

When you feel someone else's pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you know you re...
ANN BRASHARES

I did the searching and remembering, she did the disappearing and the forgetting.
ANN BRASHARES

Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn...
ANN BRASHARES

I agree that a love of reading is a great gift for a parent to pass on to his or her child.
ANN BRASHARES

Her body was a prison, her mind was a prison. Her memories were a prison. The people she loved. She ...
ANN BRASHARES

I don't have the life of a famous person. But I do feel like I've been able to connect with ...
ANN BRASHARES

Lena realized that a fundamental layer of their happiness depended on the four of them being close t...
ANN BRASHARES

She hadn't chosen the brave life. She'd chosen the small, fearful one.
ANN BRASHARES

He was the strangest of strangers in that he was also her oldest friend.
ANN BRASHARES

How terrible would it be to just wait there pathetically alone for him never to show up?"
Eudox...
ANN BRASHARES

In a flash of wonderment she saw firm, continuous ground under her feet, stretching from back then t...
ANN BRASHARES

You could feel things or you could find a way to shut down. But once you were feeling things, you co...
ANN BRASHARES

She was astonished, and at the same time she knew. There were many things in life like that. You cou...
ANN BRASHARES

She wondered again about her inclination to wish for things that made her so deeply unhappy.
ANN BRASHARES

It was her last breakfast with Bapi, her last morning in Greece. In her frenetic bliss that kept her...
ANN BRASHARES

She went around with a broken heart, and she wasn't sure who'd broken it. She thought it was herself...
ANN BRASHARES

When I turned fifteen, I remember my father gave me a credit card which I was allowed to use for two...
ANN BRASHARES

Sometimes you couldn’t face the sadness of being forgotten until you felt the comfort of being rem...
ANN BRASHARES

I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I'v...
ANN BRASHARES

Sex could be a blissful communion,. But it could also be a weapon, and its absence, sometimes, was r...
ANN BRASHARES

Barbara appraised her with critical eyes. ‘Oh my. Well, this is going to need some work.’ She we...
ANN BRASHARES

Dad,
Please accept this money to fix the broken window. I’m sure it’s already fixed, consid...
ANN BRASHARES

Please don't judge me too much until you are older and know more things. (Spoken from mother to daug...
ANN BRASHARES

I picture you four girls back when you were small. I hardly knew where you ended and the other ones ...
ANN BRASHARES

Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It w...
ANN BRASHARES

She'd cried over a broken heart before. She knew what that felt like, and it didn't feel like this. ...
ANN BRASHARES

She didn't open the envelope until she'd gotten to the bus station and needed to pay for her ticket....
ANN BRASHARES

Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd reco...
ANN BRASHARES

I allowed myself to suffer how jarringly destructive the present feels and how fragile the past.
ANN BRASHARES

Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in ...
ANN BRASHARES

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.
ANN BRASHARES

When you remembered to forget, you were remembering. It was when you forgot to forget that you forgo...
ANN BRASHARES

There are two kinds of people in this world. The kind who divide the world into two kinds of people ...
ANN BRASHARES

She perched on her windowsill, gazing at the lurid sun soaking into the Caldera, trying to appreciat...
ANN BRASHARES

What you leave behind is the people you loved. You leave yourself in them.
ANN BRASHARES

She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet str...
ANN BRASHARES

But I know this. We're ready to move forward again in our way. Together or apart, no matter how far ...
ANN BRASHARES

Bridget cried for the leavers and the left. For the people, like herself, grimly forsaking what prec...
ANN BRASHARES

I killed her once and died for her many times and I still have nothing to show for it. I always sear...
ANN BRASHARES

She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, ac...
ANN BRASHARES

Honesty was a tough customer... Once you started allowing yourself some honesty, it couldn't easily ...
ANN BRASHARES

He didn't seem to realize that three excuses was as good as no excuse.
ANN BRASHARES

I'm afraid of time... I mean, I'm afraid of not having enough time. Not enough time to understand pe...
ANN BRASHARES

Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to t...
ANN BRASHARES

It was like a dream you might have after death in which lost people came back to life, your friends ...
ANN BRASHARES

His distress and pleasure mixed and married, giving birth to several anxious children.
ANN BRASHARES

Bridget cried for the leavers and the left. For the people, like herself, grimly forsaking what few ...
ANN BRASHARES

I told him that he better be good to you. When you came along, I said I'd share you, but I told him ...
ANN BRASHARES

Show me a girl with her feet planted firmly on the ground and I'll show you a girl who can't put her...
ANN BRASHARES

You broke up with him," a combination Effie-Carmen voice in her head reminded her.

"But t...
ANN BRASHARES

I tell myself your spirits were down the day you wrote. You're fine and we're fine. I hope it's true...
ANN BRASHARES

She was bad at love. She loved too hard.
ANN BRASHARES

sometimes you need to make a mess.
ANN BRASHARES

She wasn't as destructive as Bee. She had never been as dramatic. Rather, she'd slipped carefully, s...
ANN BRASHARES

Treasure in such large amounts stopped feeling precious
ANN BRASHARES

The phone was her worst enemy and her best friend but she never knew which until she answered it.
ANN BRASHARES

You Could Only See As Far As Your Headlights, But You Can Make Your Whole Trip That Way :)
ANN BRASHARES

I know you are always finding ways to love me in spite of how horrible I am, I hope I haven't run ou...
ANN BRASHARES

Tibby sat on the outside of a group of kids in the film program. There was a lot of dark clothing an...
ANN BRASHARES

Everything I ever said to you was true and is true.
ANN BRASHARES

But there were times when you felt miserable and you wanted to feel better, and other times when you...
ANN BRASHARES

The bottom had arrived. She crashed against it, but it brought no sense of closure or understanding....
ANN BRASHARES

Women always seemed to bring the size they wished they were to the fitting room, rather than the siz...
ANN BRASHARES

But then she hadn’t just learned to love this summer – she had also learned how to need.
ANN BRASHARES

The dreams weren’t as pleasing when they had no chance of coming true
ANN BRASHARES

Carmen sat up when she heard a familiar trill from her computer. It was an instant message from Bee....
ANN BRASHARES

Sometimes it is a relief to be invisible
ANN BRASHARES

Some things have to be believed to be seen. -Ralph Hodgson
ANN BRASHARES

Life isn't just fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all. -William Goldman
ANN BRASHARES

Carmen didn't like change, and she certainly didn't like endings.
ANN BRASHARES

Carmen was bad at loving. She loved too hard.
ANN BRASHARES

I mean putting yourself out there in the way of overwhelming happiness and knowing you're also putti...
ANN BRASHARES

The word friends doesn't seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. We for...
ANN BRASHARES

She got tired of herself. She got tired of not being able to say what she wanted or do what she want...
ANN BRASHARES

Lena knew she had spent too much of her life in a state of passive dread, just waiting for something...
ANN BRASHARES

She used to cry roughly three times a year. Now she seemed to cry three times before breakfast. Coul...
ANN BRASHARES

I was supposed to write a romantic comedy, but my characters broke up.
ANN BRASHARES

You don't have time, Len. That is the most bitter and the most beautiful piece of advice I can offer...
ANN BRASHARES

People sometimes talk about the power of first impressions, and believe me, there is truth to it.
ANN BRASHARES

Lena always described how she dreaded and mourned things before they even happened. Carmen was begin...
ANN BRASHARES

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

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

You couldn't erase the past. You couldn't even change it. But sometimes life offered you the opportu...
ANN BRASHARES

A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless an...
ANN BRASHARES

Tibby, who was not fond of change, had once told Bridget that the present, no matter what it brought...
ANN BRASHARES

Finalement, ce n'est peut-être pas la corruption ni l'avidité qui rend lâche. Peut-être n'est-ce...
ANN BRASHARES

Lena, listen to me, okay? We don't have much more time here. You are in love. I've never seen anythi...
ANN BRASHARES

She kept walking. The very small, brave part of her brain knew that this would be her one chance. If...
ANN BRASHARES

she looked up at the stars and gave Tibby thanks. She didn't have to throw her thoughts far to know ...
ANN BRASHARES

You know what the secret is? It's so simple. We love one another. We're nice to one another. Do you ...
ANN BRASHARES

When she made her way to the big picture window that framed the dining room table she froze. She sto...
ANN BRASHARES

Why was it that her temper and her thinking never happened at the same time? Her temper behaved like...
ANN BRASHARES

Bridget's anger evaporated and the sadness came back. The anger was easier. She owned and controlled...
ANN BRASHARES

You'll turn out ordinary if you're not careful.
ANN BRASHARES

I'm writing this down, because it is going to be hard for me to say it. Because this is probably our...
ANN BRASHARES

Let me love you, but don't love me back. Do love me and let me hate you for a while. Let me feel lik...
ANN BRASHARES

Sometimes you need to make a mess.
-Loretta, the Rollinses' hosekeeper
ANN BRASHARES

Maybe they would look at each other and feel some odd yearning, but neither of them would know why. ...
ANN BRASHARES

Why do we fight the things we fight when giving into them isn't so bad at all?
ANN BRASHARES

Even Obama's staunchest supporters are starting to leave him. Last week Michelle Obama demanded ...
ANN COULTER

Know when to tune out, if you listen to too much advice you may wind up making other peoples mistake...
ANN LANDERS

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
ANN LANDERS

Class never tries to build itself up by tearing others down. Class is already up and need not strive...
ANN LANDERS

Class is considerate of others. It knows that good manners is nothing more than a series of petty sa...
ANN LANDERS

People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.
ANN LANDERS

The trouble with talking too fast is you may say something you haven't thought of yet.
ANN LANDERS

One out of four people in this country is mentally unbalanced. Think of your three closes friends; i...
ANN LANDERS

Class can 'walk with kings and keep its virtue and talk with crowds and keep the common touch.&#...
ANN LANDERS

People who care about each other enjoy doing things for one another. They don't consider it serv...
ANN LANDERS

If you have love in your life, it can make up for a great many things that are missing. If you don&#...
ANN LANDERS

I don't believe that you have to be a cow to know what milk is.
ANN LANDERS

The Lord gave us two ends - one to sit on and the other to think with. Success depends on which one ...
ANN LANDERS

All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good...
ANN LANDERS

Too many people today know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
ANN LANDERS

I don't think most people are all heroic or all villainous, so I find ambiguity of motivations t...
ANN NOCENTI

You need that guy like a giraffe needs strep throat.
ANN LANDERS

I'm a little bit more unusual so I consider myself as the black sheep.
ANN WILSON

We all have burdens and we need to learn to carry each other's burdens, lighten each other's...
ANN ROMNEY

You can't fool yourself anymore that your art is your art. When you're not getting paid for ...
ANN POWERS

If Donald Trump's candidacy has proven anything, it's that the media has no idea what Americ...
ANN COULTER

If I were a 40-year-old woman, 40-to-50, I'd want to be getting my mammograms. They catch cancer...
ANN ROMNEY

Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them.
ANN LANDERS

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
ANN LANDERS

I often feel that I have a split personality. I love more than anything to be in my study writing, b...
ANN HOOD

All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good...
ANN LANDERS

There can be life after breast cancer. The prerequisite is early detection.
ANN JILLIAN

If love means that one person absorbs the other, then no real relationship exists any more. Love eva...
ANN OAKLEY

Where there's smoke around a conservative, there are journalists furiously rubbing two sticks togeth...
ANN COULTER

We need not fear life, because God is the Ruler of all and we need not fear death, because He shares...
ANN LANDERS

After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high...
ANN RICHARDS

Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are ...
ANN LANDERS

Keep in mind that the true measure of an individual is how he treats a person who can do him absolut...
ANN LANDERS

... be radical about grace and relentless about truth and resolute about holiness...
ANN VOSKAMP

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend y...
ANN PATCHETT

I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days befo...
ANN VOSKAMP

I believe in recovery, and as a role model I have the responsibility to let young people know that y...
ANN RICHARDS

It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most ef...
ANN DRUYAN

Simplicity is ultimately a matter of focus.
ANN VOSKAMP

Mother Mary of Anabolic Grace, we got Teras incoming?” He levels angry blue eyes on me. “You’r...
ANN AGUIRRE

There are always women who will take men on their own terms. If I were a man I wouldn't bother to ch...
ANN OAKLEY

Men are the enemies of women. Promising sublime intimacy, unequalled passion, amazing security and g...
ANN OAKLEY

Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don't recognize them.
ANN LANDERS

I have always had the feeling I could do anything and my dad told me I could. I was in college befor...
ANN RICHARDS

If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it wo...
ANN LANDERS

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.
ANN LANDERS

Clearly, society has a tremendous stake in insisting on a woman's natural fitness for the career of ...
ANN OAKLEY

Trouble is the common denominator of living. It is the great equalizer.
ANN LANDERS

No one has the right to destroy another person's belief by demanding empirical evidence.
ANN LANDERS

Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with ...
ANN LANDERS

What the vast majority of American children needs is to stop being pampered, stop being indulged, st...
ANN LANDERS

The real question is why are millions of people so unhappy, so bored, so unfulfilled, that they are ...
ANN LANDERS

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
ANN OAKLEY

One out of four people in this country is mentally imbalanced. Think of your three closest friends. ...
ANN LANDERS

At every party there are two kinds of people -- those who want to go home and those who don't. The t...
ANN LANDERS

The primary function of myth is to validate an existing social order. Myth enshrines conservative so...
ANN OAKLEY

Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization.
ANN OAKLEY

Bragging is not an attractive trait, but let's be honest. A man who catches a big fish doesn't go ho...
ANN LANDERS

Let us keep Christmas beautiful Without a thought of greed, That it might live forevermore To fill o...
ANN SCHULTZ

It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is tha...
ANN BEATTIE

If you marry a man who cheats on his wife, you'll be married to a man who cheats on his wife.
ANN LANDERS

Bragging is not an attractive trait, but let's be honest. A man who catches a big fish doesn't go h...
ANN LANDERS

Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with ...
ANN LANDERS

Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.
ANN LANDERS

The trouble with talking too fast is you may say something you haven't thought of yet.
ANN LANDERS

When the mind has once begun to yield to the weakness of superstition, trifles impress it with the f...
ANN RADCLIFFE

When one can hear people moving, one does not so much mind, about one's fears.
ANN RADCLIFFE

It is dismal coming home, when there is nobody to welcome one!
ANN RADCLIFFE

There is some magic in wealth, which can thus make persons pay their court to it, when it does not e...
ANN RADCLIFFE

Poverty cannot deprive us of many consolations. It cannot rob us of the affection we have for each o...
ANN RADCLIFFE

All married couples should learn the art of battle as they should learn the art of making love. Good...
ANN LANDERS

What has a man's face to do with his character? Can a man of good character help having a disagreeab...
ANN RADCLIFFE

There is some comfort in dying surrounded by one's children.
ANN RADCLIFFE

What are riches - grandeur - health itself, to the luxury of a pure conscience, the health of the so...
ANN RADCLIFFE

Though the vicious can sometimes pour affliction upon the good, their power is transient and their p...
ANN RADCLIFFE

The refreshing pleasure from the first view of nature, after the pain of illness, and the confinemen...
ANN RADCLIFFE

Employment is the surest antidote to sorrow.
ANN RADCLIFFE

I tasted too what was called the sweet of revenge - but it was transient, it expired even with the o...
ANN RADCLIFFE

Through the eight books in 'The Treasure Chest' series, readers will meet twins Maisie and F...
ANN HOOD

In my adult life, I had spent a lot of time angry at God, mostly over the sudden deaths in my family...
ANN HOOD

Admittedly, no Republican can get elected statewide in California anymore, but nor can what we think...
ANN COULTER

Know yourself. Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonder...
ANN LANDERS

I think in the immediate days after 9/11, the administration acted very, very well. I liked the deci...
ANN RICHARDS

I'm accusing Republicans of thinking the Jews have so much power.
ANN COULTER

If a university official's letter accusing a speaker of having a proclivity to commit speech cri...
ANN COULTER

We were a family that made our Halloween costumes. Or, more accurately, my mother made them. She too...
ANN HOOD

Carmen: “I want you to leave me alone, but not ignore me. I want you to miss me when I go away to college, but not be sad. I want you to stay exactly the same, but not be lonely or alone. I want to do the leaving, and not have you ever leave me.

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Ann Brashares

Carmen: “I want you to leave me alone, but not ignore me. I want you to miss me when I go away to college, but not be sad. I want you to stay exactly the same, but not be lonely or alone. I want to do the leaving, and not have you ever leave me.

Ann Brashares

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