STRAIGHT FROM THE BOOK: MY NAME IS MEMORY By Ann Brashares

Ann*As promised*

• I have seen beauty in countless things. 
• She honored herself with the idea that maybe he needed her, that maybe she was the one who could understand him. 
• "If he liked you, you would know it."
• How many times could you give up on someone you loved?
• "This might be the last time I see him, " she said plaintively. "I don't know what will happen after this. I need to make him remember me." 
• "I thought the year would end and we would all go our separate ways and we could never have talked to each other," she said bravely.
• "I'm so sorry. I love you. Do you know that?" He was holding her, pressing his face desperately in her hair. "I always have."
• He'd push her. He'd scared her. He besieged her. He'd vowed he wouldn't and he did.
• She is my doing and my undoing. She always had been.
• He tricked himself into thinking that she would look into his eyes and remember, that love would conquer all.
• "You were supposed to remember... him." Esme said it loudly and with indignation. "You were supposed to remember how you loved him. He said he would come back, and you promised you would remember him."
• "I thought maybe you finally gave up on Daniel and decided to move on, but now I'm suddenly thinking that's not the whole story."
•  That was the first time I knew her and loved her. I loved her innocently then, I promised you. Even in my mind.
• How much silence was lonely? How much attention was unsettling? How little attention was cold?
• There are short periods of joy you have to stretch through of empty years... You have to make them last as well as you can.
• "You're a good man and I do not understand you."
• When you live as long as I do, always is a crippling distance.
• Smell was like the wormhole connecting you to the other parts. Memories of smell didn't fade, and they short-circuited your entire psychology. It is the closest thing to time travel on this earth.
• As I've said it's desire more than anything else that keeps us coming back for more. 
• "I loved him. He didn't want to leave me. He said we'd be together again. He said he wouldn't ever forget me, no matter what, and I have to try not to forget him. That's why I wrote the note."
• "This didn't happen by accident. You are my first memory every time, the single thread in all of my lives. It's you who makes me a person."
• "I'm sorry for what you've been through," she said. "I can't stand to think of the pain you've been in. You deserve better."
• "I'm a stubborn chit, you know." I held her hard. "Yes, you are. But you are not hopeless."
• "You'll fall in love again. And maybe you'll look back and remember me every so often. And when you come back again, I will be waiting for you. I will find you."
• Please believe him. Keep your heart open to him. He can make you happy. He has always loved you, and you once loved him with all your heart.
• "You are a hoarder," Ben said to me once. "You hate to let go."
• "Attachment disorder" it said in big, sharp print at the top.
• It was the thought of her that kept me moving forward.
• "Love who you love while you have them. That's all you can do. Let them go when you must.if you know how to love, you'll never run out."
• "You love your memory but you need to love your girl," she said by way of parting. "You remember what is lost, and you forget what's right in front of you." 
• "Next time?" "Next time,"she said. It was a ritual between them. It was always next time. She wanted something to hold on to so she could believe in next time.
• Some chances you really did lose.
• "I still love you, and I think about you all the time. I'm not down there. I'm right here."
• He loved it because he'd been loved.
• It was not a smile but like a smile.It wasn't a face of fear.It was an expression of faith more than anything. She had faith in him and the things he promised her. She trusted him.
• No! If you don't have a choice, you had to make a choice. If you didn't have options, you made some. You couldn't just let the world happen to you. 
• "I know I said I'd let you, but I can't."
• He had to fight. That's all he had. Not memories, nor experiences, not skills. He had a will. And his will was to fight until he couldn't fight anymore.
• Don't you go yet, he begged his heart.

"I need to tell you something."

"Okay."

"I'm glad you told me."

"Yes, because now I can tell you that it's okay."

"What Daniel taketh away, Daniel giveth."

"What do you mean?"

"You gave more than you took, my love. We're all square."

• I get defeated or discouraged, and I die because I've figured there's always a new life and it will be better. But nothing can be better than this life, because I have you.
• You promised me, she said to him in her thoughts every morning and night and a thousand times in between. I love you. I won't give up on you.
• Love demands everything, they say, but my love for you demands only this: that no matter what happens or how long it takes, you'll keep faith in  me, you'll remember who we are, and you'll never feel despair. Yours forever,...