Sarah Addison Allen > Quotes

“Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“Happiness is a risk. If you’re not a little scared, then you’re not doing it right.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“Every life needs a little space. It leaves room for good things to enter it.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“Men of thoughtless actions are always surprised by consequences.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“I'm homesick all the time," she said, still not looking at him "I just don't know where home is. There's this promise of happiness out there. I know it. I even feel it sometimes. But it's like chasing the moon - just when I think I have it, it disappears into the horizon. I grieve and try to move on, but then the damn thing comes back the next night, giving me hope of catching it all over again.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“When you're happy for yourself, it fills you. When you're happy for someone else, it pours over.”
― Sarah Addison Allen

“Girls like us, when we love, it takes everything we have.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“It feels like he's taken your heart, doesn't it?....Like he's reached in and pulled it out from you. And I bet he smiles like he doesn't know, like he doesn't know he's holding your heart in his hand and you're dying from him.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“I spent so much time telling myself that this wasn't home that I started to believe it," she said carefully. "Belonging has always been tough for me."

I can be your home," he said quietly. "Belong to me.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“I needed to stop being what everyone thought I was.”
― Sarah Addison Allen

“Why were girls in such a hurry to grow up? Agatha would never understand. Childhood was magical. Leaving it behind was a magnificent loss.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi, and she always smelled faintly of cottonwood and peaches.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

“She accepted it from then on. Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“Coffee, she'd discovered, was tied to all sorts of memories, different for each person. Sunday mornings, friendly get-togethers, a favorite grandfather long since gone, the AA meeting that saved their life. Coffee meant something to people. Most found their lives were miserable without it. Coffee was a lot like love that way. And because Rachel believed in love, she believed in coffee, too.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“Living down your own past was hard enough. You shouldn't have to live down someone else's.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“She looked like autumn, when leaves turned and fruit ripened.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

“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

“Her grandmother used to tell her that a pink sky meant someone in the distance had just fallen in love . . . .”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“People always say life is too short for regrets. But the truth is, it's too long.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“He was the only person in the world she was tongue-tied around, and yet the only person she really wanted to talk to.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“People adapt. People change. You can grow where you're planted.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“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, The Peach Keeper

“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, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“We're connected, as women. It's like a spiderweb. If one part of that web vibrates, if there's trouble, we all know it, but most of the time we're just too scared, or selfish, or insecure to help. But if we don't help each other, who will?”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“You are who you are, whether you like it or not, so why not like it?”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

“My favorite books are the ones that make me smile for hours after reading them. I want that for my readers, for the sweetness to linger. Sort of like chocolate, but without the calories”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“That's the fairy tale. You meet, you fall in love, you kiss, and neither of you is revolted by it. You get married and have kids and live happily ever after.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“Adolescence is like having only enough light to see the step directly in front of you.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“There was a strange but universal understanding among women. On some level all women knew, they all understood, the fear of being outnumbered, of being helpless. It throbbed in their chests when they thought about the times they left stores and were followed. The knocks on their car windows as they were sitting alone at red lights, and strangers asking for rides. Having too much to drink and losing their ability to be forceful enough to just say no. Smiling at strange men coming on to them, not wanting to hurt their feelings, not wanting to make a scene. All women remembered these things, even if they had never happened to them personally. It was a part of their collective unconscious.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story.”
― Sarah Addison Allen

“Happiness is a risk. If you're not a little scared, then you're not doing it right.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“It was like the way you wanted sunshine on Saturdays, or pancakes for breakfast. They just mad you feel good.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells

“Safe is just another word for scared.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“It took me a long time to realize this: We get to choose what defines us.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“If a man has so much heat he burns your skin when he touches you, he's the devil. Run away”
― Sarah Addison Allen

“She'd always known he didn't love her. But it was easier to bear when he didn't know she loved him. That way they were even. Now he knew he had all the power.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“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, Garden Spells

“The words were strung in the air like garland. She could almost see them.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“When you're a teenager, your friends are your life. When you grow up, friendships seem to get pushed further and further back, until it seems like a luxury, a frivolity, like a bubble bath.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“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, The Peach Keeper

“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

“Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen

“She never thought she was good at making friends. But maybe she was just trying to be friends with the wrong people.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“People fall in love all the time. And it's not always with the right people. And it's not always reciprocated.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“She was so Southern that she cried tears that came straight from the Mississippi.”
― Sarah Addison Allen

“The next morning dawned bright and sweet, like ribbon candy.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, Garden Spells