A Quote by Ann Brashares
It was frustrating when people loved you and took an interest in you and sometimes worried about you and personally cared what you did with yourself. Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good bout yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could clip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct and had nothing at all to give." (Lena, 194)
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I wished there was some kind of switch on my brain. That I could turn it off in the same way that I could turn off the television. Just click it off and immediately empty my mind of all these images and worrying thoughts. And simply leave a blank screen. Or if I could just remove my head and put it on the bedside table and forget about it until morning. And then attach it again when I needed it.
Don’t you do that.” She turned away from the mirror, toward him. “Don’t you dare make a joke. It took a great deal of courage to say what I did. And you don’t have to speak a word in return, but I will insist you be man enough to take it. I won’t have you making light of my feelings, or making light of yourself—as if you’re not worthy of them. Because you are worthy, Colin. You’re a generous, good-hearted person, and you deserve to be loved. Deeply, truly, well, and often
I couldn't look at her. I'd been jealous and hurt, and I had dragged Liv into the middle of my own broken mess of a life. All because I thought Lena didn't love me anymore. But I was stupid, and I was wrong. Lena loved me so much, she was willing to risk everything to save me. I had given up on Lena, after she had refused to give up on me. I owed her my life. It was as simple as that.
God spoke to me clearly and said, 'Did I give my son Jesus on the cross expecting nothing in return?' God bankrupted heaven and gave the best gift he could give. He gave the best offering he could give. What did God need? He needed sons and daughters, he gave the very thing he needed. You can bring God a gift fully expecting something in return. Get to the phone!'
It could be anything. It could be Jesus and it could be the Furby and it could be the lint that lives in my navel, but it's probably not. Whatever it is, I doubt we as humans on Earth could have any perception of it while we're here. So, why give yourself a headache thinking about it. Just be a good person. That's what an ethicist is.
I know that sometimes when you are really worried about something, it ends up not being nearly as bad as you think it will be, and you get to be relieved that you were just being silly, worrying so much over nothing. But sometimes it is just the opposite. It can happen that whatever you are worried about will be even worse than you could have possibly imagined, and you find that you were right to be worried, and even that, maybe, you weren't worried enough.
You could not turn off love- even the rather absent, sometimes taken for granted love- the way you'd turn off a faucet. Love ran from the heart and the heart had it's own imperatives
Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings, for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.
I felt that everyone had the same sentiments when it came to love that I did. I felt like if you really cared for somebody, then that was it. It never occurred to me that people could lie about the way they felt about you. I had to learn that the hard way.
Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes, for instance, and Effie was good at being happy.
We had enough years in front of us to be serious and grown-up and respectable. Why rush it? But on the other hand we always complained when teachers and other adults treated us as kids. In fact there was nothing that annoyed me more. So it was a frustrating situation. What we needed was a two-sided badge that said 'Mature' on one side and 'Childish' on the other. Then at any moment we could turn it to whatever side we felt like being and the adults could treat us accordingly.
All through first and second and third hour, Eleanor rubbed her palm. Nothing happened. How could it be possible that there were that many never ending all in one place? And were they always there, or did they just flip on wherever they felt like it? Because, if they were always there, how did she manage to turn doorknobs without fainting? Maybe this was why so many people said it felt better to drive a stick shift.
Can you make yourself love? Can you make yourself loved? -Lena Kaligaris
When two people were in love you had to leave them to it. Especially when you weren't in love and wished that you were. That could embarrass. That could hurt.
In the business world, I did fairly well, but wasn't happy. A bout of sciatica put me flat on my back. All I could do was read, listen to my mother's stories about the Sandovals, and daydream: a return to self. My writing career had begun.
I could never pretend something I didn't feel. I could never make love if I didn't love, and if I loved I could no more hide the fact than change the color of my eyes.
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