Top 300 Ann Brashares Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “She had willed her heart to stay small and contained, but it wouldn’t be. Oh, well.”

— Ann Brashares

152. “It was their mothers, long ago. Tibby noted with joy that all four of them were wearing jeans.”

— Ann Brashares

153. “What was it about Eric? He was handsome and talented, yeah. But lots of guys were. She had adored Billy Klein back in Alabama the summer before, and she had even felt attracted to him, but it wasn’t like this. What made you feel that stomach-churning agony for one person and not another? If Bridget were God, she would have made it against the law for you to feel that way about someone without them having to feel it for you right back.”

— Ann Brashares

154. “She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.”

— Ann Brashares

155. “Carmen didn’t like change, and she certainly didn’t like endings.”

— Ann Brashares

156. “It was probably good you couldn’t flip the love switch because sometimes it was what you needed even if you didn’t want it.”

— Ann Brashares

157. “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

158. “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

159. “I don’t have the life of a famous person. But I do feel like I’ve been able to connect with a lot of people.”

— Ann Brashares

160. “How could you cleanse yourself if you couldn’t forget?”

— Ann Brashares

161. “She was sad about what happened to Kostos. And someplace under that, she was sad that people like Bee and Kostos, who had lost everything, were still open to love, and she, who’d lost nothing, was not.”

— Ann Brashares

162. “The present no matter what I brought couldn’t change the past. The Past was set and sealed.”

— Ann Brashares

163. “It was endlessly tricky being in the know. It was a state Carmen had a achieved with a certain bravado, but she found it difficult to maintain. Without Jones, she could easily slip out of the know, relapse into her natural eagerness, and probably never get hired for another part in her life.”

— Ann Brashares

164. “She wasn’t sure if he wanted more from her or if he wanted less. Maybe it was both. Maybe it was always both.”

— Ann Brashares

165. “Once Paul told her that the beach was like him because it changed every day but never made progress.”

— Ann Brashares

166. “He was the strangest of strangers in that he was also her oldest friend.”

— Ann Brashares

167. “As a writer, you live in such isolation. It’s hard to imagine your book has a life beyond you.”

— Ann Brashares

168. “Everything I ever said to you was true and is true.”

— Ann Brashares

169. “What business had she to try to capture life and light?”

— Ann Brashares

170. “Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.”

— Ann Brashares

171. “Bridget cried for the leavers and the left. For the people, like herself, grimly forsaking what precious gifts they would ever get.”

— Ann Brashares

172. “Tibby’s wish would be to hold on to the idea of love even in the face of darkest doubt. Because that was the way in which she failed. Not once, but again and again.”

— Ann Brashares

173. “The dreams weren’t as pleasing when they had no chance of coming true.”

— Ann Brashares

174. “When I turned fifteen, I remember my father gave me a credit card which I was allowed to use for two things: emergencies and books.”

— Ann Brashares

175. “But like everything else, love changed.”

— Ann Brashares

176. “Alice suspected Paul couldn’t really picture his father, just like she couldn’t picture Paul when he was away. Maybe that was the case with people you wanted more than was good for you.”

— Ann Brashares

177. “It was funny how the old practices always came around again. It was the rhythm of human enterprise to invent and worship some new approach, to fully reject it a generation later, to realize the need for it again a generation or two after that and then hastily reinvent it as new, usually without its original elegance. Scientists hated to look backward for anything.”

— Ann Brashares

178. “You could feel things or you could find a way to shut down. But once you were feeling things, you couldn’t decide exactly what to feel.”

— Ann Brashares

179. “She loved her mother and depended on her mother, and yet every single word her mother said annoyed her.”

— Ann Brashares

180. “She was astonished, and at the same time she knew. There were many things in life like that. You couldn’t imagine it, and then it happened and you couldn’t really imagine it hadn’t.”

— Ann Brashares

181. “She wished she could swap her days for her nights, her reality for her dreams. Were you allowed to change from one side to the other?”

— Ann Brashares

182. “I sometimes think the stronger you feel about someone, the harder it is to picture their face when you are away from them.”

— Ann Brashares

183. “How is it that a person could be so relieved and so disappointed, both at the same time.”

— Ann Brashares

184. “Knowing where she was in the world, even if he never touched her, gave him a deep satisfaction, and he half despised himself for being satisfied with so little.”

— Ann Brashares

185. “She glared at him, feeling the old frustration. Sometimes in his presence she felt the deepest connection to him, and other times she felt completely alone-as though any bond to him was her own bitter imagination.”

— Ann Brashares

186. “Marnie loved her better and more honestly than anyone else in the world, with the possible exception of her mother, who loved her intensely if not honestly.”

— Ann Brashares

187. “I think the true ascent of man, the moment when humans divided irrevobably from apes and other fellow creatures, occurred with the birth of the first distinct soul. And much happiness ensued.”

— Ann Brashares

188. “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

189. “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.”

— Ann Brashares

190. “Love didn’t necessarily look the way you expected it to.”

— Ann Brashares

191. “Marnie hated to see her spend so much of herself on someone who didn’t care.”

— Ann Brashares

192. “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 were certain qualities you possessed carelessly. And you couldn’t retrieve them when they were gone.”

— Ann Brashares

193. “A lot of friendship is about practice, that’s something I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older. It’s not simply some spiritual soul-bond of memories and longings, it’s really about having coffee every week, or talking on the phone every day or every other day – whatever suits you.”

— Ann Brashares

194. “Lena always described how she dreaded and mourned things before they even happened. Carmen was beginning to suspect that she was permitting herself to mourn this long separation only now that it was over.”

— Ann Brashares

195. “Girls who wouldn’t take risks both loved and hated girls who did. Bridget.”

— Ann Brashares

196. “I tell myself your spirits were down the day you wrote. You’re fine and we’re fine. I hope it’s true.”

— Ann Brashares

197. “All I could think to do was love her. That’s all a person can do.”

— Ann Brashares

198. “Tibby, you are crazy,” Carmen said. “Those pants are in love with you. They want you for your body and your mind.” She couldn’t help seeing the pants in a completely new way.”

— Ann Brashares

199. “Sometimes he felt sure that the key to happiness was a poor memory.”

— Ann Brashares

200. “Do you have any idea how much I’ve loved you?”

— Ann Brashares