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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

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Ann Brashares
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: July 30
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
City of Alexandria
Virginia
Things
Ways
Belong
Think
Read
Writers
Thinking
Write
Places
People
Character
Characters
Take
Reader
Expand
Writing
Novel
Novels
Believe
Learned
Readers
Way
Pretty
Equally

More quotes by Ann Brashares

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Gestating characters feels something like the mental equivalent of gestating a baby. In both cases, to create them you lose yourself. Or at least you reshape yourself to encompass them.
Ann Brashares
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Different people were good at different things, Lena mused. Lena was good at writing thank-you notes, for instance, and Effie was good at being happy.
Ann Brashares
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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
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But certain souls cohere. It's rare but possible. But it takes two powerful wills to make it so.
Ann Brashares
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She kept walking. The very small, brave part of her brain knew that this would be her one chance. If she turned around, she would lose it.
Ann Brashares
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Wear them, they will make you brave.
Ann Brashares
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you remember what is lost, and you forget what's right in front of you.
Ann Brashares
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A tree is such a rich metaphor in a million beautiful ways. You can consider a tree growing and consider its connectedness to all things above and under the ground.
Ann Brashares
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Something about giving in without a fight felt wrong.
Ann Brashares
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Wish for what you want, work for what you need. -Carmen's grandmother
Ann Brashares
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What you leave behind is the people you loved. You leave yourself in them.
Ann Brashares
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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
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A part of her wanted to tell him she still loved him, and that even though this love was hopeless and long over, it still consumed her year after year. It was a tangled hairball of feelings and she couldn't pull forth any one strand.
Ann Brashares
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You hold on to old experiences: injuries, injustices, and great love affairs, too. And you hold them in your joints and your organs, and wear them on your skin.
Ann Brashares
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What happened to me by myself felt partly dreamed, partly imagined, definitely shifted and warped by my own fears and wants. But who knows? Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens.
Ann Brashares
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She existed in her friends there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.
Ann Brashares
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Starting is hard so I really need to give myself permission to do a bad job. I always give myself leave to write total nonsense for as long as I need to release the pressure, because it's really hard to start if you feel like that first sentence you write has to actually mean something.
Ann Brashares
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We forgive and forget. At least I forgive and he forgets.
Ann Brashares
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She got tired of herself. She got tired of not being able to say what she wanted or do what she wanted or even want what she wanted.
Ann Brashares
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How terrible would it be to just wait there pathetically alone for him never to show up? Eudoxia's expression grew more serious. That's what you're doing anyway, my dear.
Ann Brashares