where there is great love, there are always wishes ...

"In the summer, the song sings itself."
-William Carlos Williams

"The past felt fragile to her But the past was set, right? It couldn't be changed. Why did she feel such a need to protect it?"
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Girls In Pants (Book 3) by Ann Brashares

"She didn't want to leave the place where Kostos could find her. An on a deeper level, she didn't want to put more distance -- in time or in space -- between now and the time when he'd loved her. She didn't want to become a different girl from the one whom he had loved."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Girls In Pants (Book 3) by Ann Brashares 

"Lena too had been abandoned by the person she thought loved her best of all. And without meaning to or wanting to, she harbored a passive, unquenchable hope that someday he would come for her."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Girls In Pants (Book 3) by Ann Brashares 

"Where there is great love, there are always wishes."
-Willa Cather

"It was one of those morning when you come to terms with a strange new reality. You ask yourself, Did I dream that? Did i actually do that? Did he really say that? Reality comes back in bits and pieces, and you experience the novelty of it all over again. You wonder, Will this day and night and tomorrow and all the rest of the days be different because of what happened last night?"
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Girls In Pants (Book 3) by Ann Brashares 

"Sometimes when she thought of Eric, and now more powerfully when she saw him, she felt some achy nostalgia for her old self. for the dauntless, daring soul she used to be. There was something vaguely enchanted about that time. There were certain qualities you possessed carelessly. And you couldn't retrieve them when they were gone. The very act of caring made the impossible to regain. Not all of that spirit was gone. She still had it, but she had a more tempered version. That time with Eric in Baja had been both the height of the magic and its calamitous end. He had managed to inspire both. She was a bit more fragile now. Or no. maybe she was less fragile. Maybe she had come to terms with her injuries and knew how to protect them. she was more self-protective, that was true."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Girls In Pants (Book 3) by 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 pants on."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Girls In Pants (Book 3) by Ann Brashares 

Hear melodies are sweet,
but those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes
Play on
-John Keats

"To the man who only has a hammer in the toolkit, every problem looks like a nail."
-Abraham Maslow

"There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same."
-Norman Mailer

"To love another person is to see the face of God."
-Victor Hugo

"Like before, she was laid open by a glimpse of intimacy, and when she tried to find it again, there was no one and nothing there. Eric offered, whether he meant to or not, some giant idea of love. But she only grasped it long enough to know her poverty. He pushed her to destroy herself. He made her want and then gave her no satisfaction. Why did he do this to her? Why did she let him? how could she give herself away like this, even after she'd already learned such a bitter lesson?"
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Girls In Pants (Book 3) by Ann Brashares 

"You made me believe in you and then you let me down. Is that how it is with you? Do you let people get close just so you can disappoint them?"
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Girls In Pants (Book 3) by Ann Brashares 

"I had this idea that if I could make you happy, then I would be happy, too."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Girls In Pants (Book 3) by Ann Brashares 

"To brave the undertow, we had learned to hold hands."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Girls In Pants (Book 3) by Ann Brashares 

"The only true paradise is paradise lost."
-Marcel Proust

"Sometimes you hung up the phone and felt the bruising of your heart. It hurt now and it would hurt more later. The conversation was too unsatisfying to continue and yet you couldn't stand for it to end."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares 

"There was desire, no question. What else? Would she have continued to love him if he had continued to be available to her? Yes. The answer came before she finished thinking the question. Yes. there was a tie when he loved her and she loved him and they both believed they could be together. Indeed, such a time it was, it had effectively wrecked all the rest of her times. But could she have gotten over Kostos if he hadn't been taken from her so forcibly?"
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares
 
"She watched him with a surprising little thrill in her stomach and waited for him to notice her. How often did she want that? Not often. What she really wanted, she informed herself, was for him to look at her in a particular way. ... She wanted him to give her the look, the slightly extended appraisal that would drain him of his mystery and transform him into a regular person."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares
 
"Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares
 
"She spent a lot of time convincing herself that what you saw, even what you felt, had an unreliable relationship to what was actually there. What was actually there was reality, regardless of whether you saw it or how you felt about it."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares
 
"Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've forgotten this before."
-Steven Wright

"Was she really capable of forgetting him? Was that what she should be striving for? She wasn't sure she wanted to be striving for that. How disorienting it felt. She wasn't sure she wanted to be the forgetting type, even if she could be. If she forgot Kostos, she feared she'd forget most of herself along with him."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares
 
"Now she wanted it. She had stayed up all night working and thinking and studying, and it had culminated in her wanting it. ... In some ways, it had been easier not wanting it. But the wanting felt good. Even if she didn't get it. Wanting was what made you a person, and she was glad to feel like a person again."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares
 
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward."
-Vernon Law

"Lena had forgotten about forgetting Kostos. That was how she knew. When your remembered to forget, you were remembering. It was when you forgot to forget that you forgot. The thing that reminded Lena about Kostos came not from any movement in her brain (which would have constituted a failure to forget) ... It was simple. When she saw Kostos, she remembered him."
-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares

"As she said goodbye to Peter, she suddenly felt sad for him. he would do this same thing again. At some other place with some other misguided girl. He was already looking forward, shaking off the past -- a past that now included her."

-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares
 
"She remembered when she was around four or five asking Carmen if she believed the wish Tibby had made over her birthday candles would come true. 'Yeah, if you wish for something that could actually happen,' Carmen had said philosophically."

-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares
 
"She wondered about him. Had he ever really been able to love her? Did she really love him? There was undoubtedly something beautiful in longing and wishing. Their love story stayed perfect because they couldn't have it. But could he love her imperfection? Would he accept the fact that she wasn't always beautiful? Could he allow imperfection in himself? Would he give up being lovable for her sake? They had their imagined love. It had been wrenching and beautiful. But she now wondered whether either of them had ever had the stomach for the real thing."

-from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: Forever In Blue (Book 4) by Ann Brashares