Carmen hated the 'life is too short" rationalization. She thought it was one of the lamer excuses in the history of excuse-making. Whenever you did something because "life is too short not to," you could be sure life would be just long enough to punish you for it.

Ann Brashares

Categorized in : Long Would Be Life Is Too Short

You couldn't erase the past. You couldn't even change it. But sometimes life offered you the opportunity to put it right.

Ann Brashares

i-hate-you opportunity past

When you feel someone else's pain and joy as powerfully as if it were your own, then you know you really loved them.

Ann Brashares

inspirational-love pain friendship

Maybe the truth is, there's a little bit of loser in all of us. Being happy isn't having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe it's about stringing together all the little things.

Ann Brashares

sisterhood being-happy happiness

I look back on my 20s. It's supposed to be the prime of your life, the most vital, the most beautiful. But you're making your critical decisions and sometimes your most critical mistakes.

Ann Brashares

critical-decisions mistake beautiful

The path of your life can change in an instant.

Ann Brashares

life-can-change-in-an-instant instant path

When she is happy, she can't stop talking, when she is sad she doesn't say a word.

Ann Brashares

women talking being-happy

The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem. Got that? -Coach Brevin

Ann Brashares

sparrows pirate attitude

Today is the tomorrow we worried about yesterday.

Ann Brashares

depression time birthday

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

Ann Brashares

disappear forget remember

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

Ann Brashares

family love-you life

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

Ann Brashares

forget-you forget remember

I always interpret coincidences as little clues to our destiny

Ann Brashares

destiny coincidence littles

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

writing character believe

A loving soul was always more beautiful over the long haul, but actual prettiness was fleeting.

Ann Brashares

soul beautiful long

There was nothing new in sitting on this dock, on this or that wooden bench, watching for his boat to come. In some ways, she was always waiting for him.

Ann Brashares

benches sitting waiting

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

loving-someone technique world

She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time

Ann Brashares

lava knees smile

She kept walking. The very small, brave part of her brain knew that this would be her one chance. If she turned around, she would lose it.

Ann Brashares

brave would-be brain

You know what the secret is? It's so simple. We love one another. We're nice to one another. Do you know how rare that is? - Carmen

Ann Brashares

nice simple secret

Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it.

Ann Brashares

lonely happiness thinking