I'm afraid of time... I mean, I'm afraid of not having enough time. Not enough time to understand people, how they really are, or to be understood myself. I'm afraid of the quick judgements or mistakes everybody makes. You can't fix them without time. I'm afraid of seeing snapshots, not movies. - Ann Brashares
If you are distant and misanthropic, selfish or cruel, you will find yourself alone in life and death. - Ann Brashares
I do believe that characters in novels belong to their writers and their readers pretty equally. I've learned a lot of things about the characters I write from people who read about them. Readers expand them in ways I don't think of and take them to places I can't go. - Ann Brashares
He loved her for being so beautiful, and he hated her for it. He loved how she put shiny stuff on her lips for him, and he also reviled her for it. He wanted her to walk home alone, and he wanted to run after her and grab her up before she could take another step. - Ann Brashares
They were absolutely lovely, and in their presence, so was she. - Ann Brashares
Desire was just the dumbest thing. You wanted what you wanted until it was yours. Then you didn’t want it anymore. You took what you had for granted until it was no longer yours. This, it seemed to her, was one of the crueller paradoxes of human nature. - 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 like I have some control, because I know I never do. - Ann Brashares
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. - Ann Brashares
He was the strangest of strangers in that he was also her oldest friend. - Ann Brashares
She was worried these thoughts would crush her if she let them come, but they didn't. You didn't know how heavy they were until you tried to lift them. You didn't know how strong you were. - Ann Brashares