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Children always know when their mothers are crazy - they just never admit it, not out loud, to anyone.
Sarah Addison Allen -
You'd be surprised how easy some things can be, things you never thought you'd do, when you take self-respect out of the equation.
Sarah Addison Allen
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Her grandmother used to tell her that a pink sky meant someone in the distance had just fallen in love . . . .
Sarah Addison Allen -
...she was still water in his hands. He didn't know how to hold on.
Sarah Addison Allen -
Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.
Sarah Addison Allen -
There was a certain power beautiful mothers held over their less beautiful daughters.
Sarah Addison Allen -
Whenever I would get too nosy as a child, my grandmother would say, "When you learn someone else's secret, your own secrets aren't safe. Dig up one, release them all.
Sarah Addison Allen -
I should let people in. If they leave, they leave. If I break, I break. It happens to everyone. Right?
Sarah Addison Allen
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But relying on one person for your every need is so dangerous. One set of hands isn't enough to keep you from falling.
Sarah Addison Allen -
My writing process is very organic. I start with an idea. I have the general story arc and the cast. But then I sit down to write, and things change.
Sarah Addison Allen -
Your peers when you're a teenager will always be the keepers of your embarrassment and regret. It was one of life's great injustices, that you can move on and be accomplished and happy, but the moment you see someone from high school you immediately become the person you were then, not the person you are now.
Sarah Addison Allen -
Some men you know are Southern before they ever say a word," Julia said as she and Emily watched Sawyer's progress, helpless, almost as if they couldn't look away. "They remind you of something good--picnics or carrying sparklers around at night. Southern men will hold doors open for you, they'll hold you after you yell at them, and they'll hold on to their pride no matter what. Be careful what they tell you, though. They have a way of making you believe anything, because they say it that way.
Sarah Addison Allen -
Sometimes people who had been together for a long time got to imagining that things used to be better, even when they weren't.
Sarah Addison Allen -
Some people don't know how to fall in love, like not knowing how to swim. They panic first when they jump in. Then they figure it out.
Sarah Addison Allen
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Fate never promises to tell you everything up front. You aren't always shown the path in life you're supposed to take. But if there was one thing she'd learned in the past few weeks, it was that sometimes, when you're really lucky, you meet someone with a map.
Sarah Addison Allen -
When she looked in the mirror these days, she saw someone she didn't recognize...She saw an old woman trying to be beautiful, her skin dry and her wrinkles like cracks. She looked like a very well-dressed winter apple.
Sarah Addison Allen -
She'd assumed she'd be married and have kids by this age, that she would be grooming her own daughter for this, as her friends were doing. She wanted it so much she would dream about it sometimes, and then she would wake up with the skin at her wrists and neck red from the scratchy lace of the wedding gown she'd dreamed of wearing. But she'd never felt anything for the men she'd dated, nothing beyond her own desperation. And her desire to marry wasn't strong enough, would never be strong enough, to allow her to marry a man she didn't love.
Sarah Addison Allen -
How can we know the true meaning of charity if we don't even know how to help those closest to us?
Sarah Addison Allen -
She sometimes thought she was going crazy. Her first thought when she woke up was always how to get him out of her thoughts. And she would keep watch, hoping to see him next door, while plotting ways to never have to see him again.
Sarah Addison Allen -
Her life was monotonous, but it kept her out of trouble. . . . This, her father would say, was called being an adult.
Sarah Addison Allen
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If anyone had been paying attention to the signs, they would have realized that air turns white when things are about to change, that paper cuts mean there's more to what's written on the page than meets the eye, and that birds are always out to protect you from things you don't see.
Sarah Addison Allen -
If they just carried on like always, everything would be ok.
Sarah Addison Allen -
No one should ever compromise the dignity of another human being.
Sarah Addison Allen -
Nothing is really broke, so it's not like I can fix it. I just have to keep trying to find what I'm looking for.
Sarah Addison Allen