"She knew whose love she doubted. It wasn't her parents' and it wasn't her friends: It was her own."

"She didn't open the envelope until she'd gotten to the bus station and needed to pay for her ticket. He hadn't given her the thousand dollars she'd asked for-he'd given her ten thousand."

"We're the Septembers now. The real ones. We are everything to one another. We don't need to say so; it's just true. Sometimes it seems like we're so close we form one single complete person rather than four separate ones. We settle into types- Bridget the athlete, Lena the beauty, Tibby the rebel, and me, Carmen, the...what? The one with the bad temper. But the one who cares the most. The one who cares that we stick together."

"She went around with a broken heart, and she wasn't sure who'd broken it. She thought it was herself, mostly."

"He loved her for being so beautiful, and he hated her for it. He loved how she put shiny stuff on her lips for him, and he also reviled her for it. He wanted her to walk home alone, and he wanted to run after her and grab her up before she could take another step."

"Some people fall in love over and over again while some people can only do it once."

"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."