she could live big. she could make herself do things that were hard ...

Finished rereading all the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants books this week and watching the movies. Here are quotes from the first two books and the first movie ...

"It felt like nothing would ever be the same again. Some things never would be. But we knew no matter how far we traveled on our own paths, somehow we would always find our way back to each other. And with that, we could get through anything."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (movie)

"The truth is there's a little bit of loser in all of us, ya know? Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things ... making those count for more than the bad stuff. Maybe we just get through it ... and that's all we can ask for."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (movie)

"Luck never gives: it only lends."
-Ancient Chinese Proverb

"Love your pals. Love yourself."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares

"Love is like war: easy to begin, hard to end."
-Proverb

"Lena was suspicious of many things. But she had earned her suspicions about boys. Lena knew boys: They never looked beyond your looks. They pretended to be your friend to get you to trust them, and as soon as you trusted them, they went in for the grope. They pretended to want to work on a history project or volunteer on your blood drive committee to get your attention. But as soon as they got it through their skulls that you didn't want to go out with them, they suddenly weren't interested in time lines or dire blood shortages. Worst of all, on occasion they even went out with one of your best friends to get close to you, and broke that same best friend's heart when the truth came out."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 

"Bridget fixed her eyes on him. Look up, you. He did. Then he looked away so fast it was almost gratifying. He noticed her, all right."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 
"He was watching her. He didn't see her see him seeing her yet, and she didn't want him to. She made it a point never to be coy, but she wanted him to be able to watch her if he wanted to. He looked mellow from sun and running."

-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 

"Bridge needed a single focus. She had too much energy, she knew, and a fair amount of raw, undisciplined talent. At almost every point in her life, she needed one simple, unified goal to keep her going forward fast. Otherwise there was the possibility of going backward where she did not want to go."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 

"'Bridget is singled-minded in achieving her goals,' Dr. Lambert had written. 'Single-minded to the point of recklessness.'"
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 

"Wish for what you want. Work for what you need."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 

"When we get back, do you think you could give me a few pointers on how to be a normal person? I don't seem to get it."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 

"What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. ... Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks -- the traffic signal that said 'Walk' the second you got there -- and the downticks -- the itchy tag at the back of your collar -- that happened to every person in the course of a day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day. Maybe it didn't matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn't matter if your friend was possibly dying. Maybe you just got through it. Maybe this was all you could ask."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 

"Bee's life had been remade at one time. There were fault lines from hen. Bee sprinted along in a torrent of activity, but once in a while, something unexpected slammed her hard. It left Bee slow and uncertain. She fretted. She wasn't good at putting herself back together. Bridge was like a toddler sometimes. She grasped for power. She demanded it. But when she got her way, she was left only with herself, and that terrified her. ... She needed to know someone was looking out for her. She needed someone to promise her that the world wasn't empty."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 

"What happened in front of my friends felt real. What happened to me by myself felt partly dreamed, partly imagined, definitely shifted and warped by my own fears and wants. But who knows? Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 

"There were a million little lines of shading that we couldn't convey so easily. They were the subtle things, and understanding them, even knowing when you missed them, was what separated other friends from real friends, like we were."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Book 1) by Ann Brashares 

"Nothing is too wonderful to be true."
-Michael Faraday

"The word friends doesn't seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. We forget when one of us starts and the other one stops."
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares

"'I think about the person I used to be, and she seems so far away. She walked fast, I walk slow. She stayed up late and got up early, I sleep. I feel like if she gets any farther away, I won't be connected to her at all anymore.' ... 'Do you want ... to stay connected to her?' Tibby's words were slow and quiet, seeming to make their way to Bridge one at a time. Bee had made every effort to change herself this year. Tibby quietly suspected she knew the reason. Bee couldn't outrun her troubles, so she'd entered her own version of the witness protection program.. Tibby knew how it was to lose someone you loved. And she also knew how tempting it was to cast off that sad, ruined part of yourself like a sweater you'd outgrown. 'Do I want to?' Bee thought about the words carefuly. Some people (like Tibby, for instance) tended to listen in a muffled, sheltered way. Bee was the opposite. 'I think I do.'"
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares 

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered."
-Nelson Mandela

"Fine, blood was thicker than water. But friendship, it struck Tibby, was thicker than both."
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares 

"How did you separate attraction from love? And how could you possibly think you loved someone you barely knew and hadn't seen in almost nine months and quite possibly would never see again?"
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares 

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
-Winston Churchill

"There was a strange thing about her memory, and she had noticed it before this. When she was eleven and the terrible stuff had happened, her brain had sort of erased itself. Everything from that time or before she'd either forgotten completely or remembered as though it had happened to somebody else."
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares 

"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."
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares 

"Some things have to be believed to be seen."
-Ralph Hodgson

"Maybe she would see him in the next five minutes. Maybe she would never see him again. She was desperately afraid of both possibilities at the same time."
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares 

"'Lena, I know how you are.' Lena wished she knew. 'How am I?' 'If I come close, you run away. If I stay still then maybe, slowly, you might come.'"
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares 

What is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the words I have read in my life.
-Walt Whitman

"She could sit here and cry for as long as she liked. She could crawl under the desk. She could run around in the paring lot. She could live big. She could make herself do things that were hard. She could. For once, Tibby was right smack in the middle, and she could see a lot better from here."
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares 

"Any place at any time, if you are thinking of me, you can be sure that I am thinking of you."
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares 

"The bottom had arrived. She crashed against it, but it brought no sense of closure or understanding She just lay there at the bottom looking up. She knew there must be a very tiny circle of light up there somewhere, but just now she couldn't see it."
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares 

"Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath it. At night, the ice weasels come."
-Matt Groening

"Carmen wondered at the silence to create a stronger bond, even, than thousands and thousands of words."
-from The Second Summer of the Sisterhood (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pant, Book 2) by Ann Brashares