Bittersweet Quotes
"I've never met a problem a proper cupcake couldn't fix."
"It's been a long time since I've run a competitive program. Even with months of dedicated practice, there's no guarantee I'd be good enough to win."
"If a girl spends every weekend sneaking off to the lake in the dead of winter and no one is around to see her, is she really skating at all?"
"If you stay focused, you can skate your way to the top. You can be the queen of everything. You just have to want it bad enough."
"The basic rule is to smile a lot, even when you feel like choking someone, keep on smilin'."
"Human beings are the most adaptable creatures on earth—we can get used to just about anything."
"You’ve got a crazy losing streak, but there’s no reason you can’t end it."
"I didn’t keep myself alive another lousy day just to watch you half-ass your way across the rink, bambina. Capisce?"
"It takes forty-two muscles to frown, and only twelve to jam a cupcake in your mouth and get over it."
"It’s the little stuff that makes it so special."
"Sometimes the lyrics just … wow. It’s so cool that you dig those guys."
"No need to bring up the past, Princess Pink. We’re cool."
"Sometimes I imagine the great and final exodus, all of us wrapped in scarves and mittens and puffy coats, piling onto the Erie Atlantic with two suitcases apiece, dousing the place in gasoline and tossing a match, hitting the tracks and never looking back."
"That day, I really was a ballerina and he was my whole world and if I let myself now, I bet I could still feel the warmth of his hand around my tiny pink mitten."
"Not just a friend. Not just a skating bud, showing him those complicated crossovers again and again until he gets them right."
"It wasn’t the same without you. We weren’t skating together, we weren’t even talking."
"My whole body reacts to his touch, skin heating up as his fingers trace lines down my neck, across my collarbone, erasing the rest of my thoughts."
"It's like driving in a blizzard, slowly inching along the road back home only to realize at the end of a long, cold night that you've pulled into someone else's driveway, someone else's life."
"His hand glides up my neck, tangling into my hair, and the kiss intensifies, my heart hammering so loudly in my ears that I no longer hear the celebration around us."
"But as good as he makes me feel on the outside, on the inside, I can’t stop my mind from wandering."
"I'd heard the same arguments from my mother over the years, every time I wanted to skip an event or sleep in an extra hour instead of going to five a.m. practice."
"I'm about to make you wish you never got up."
"Sometimes life rocks so hard your heart wants to explode just because the sun came up and you got to feel it on your face for one more day."
"Every day, the moment you open your eyes and pull off your blankets, that’s what you hope for. The sunshine on your face, warm enough to make your heart sing."
"Life is as gray and desolate as winter on the lakeshore, and there’s no way around it, no cure, no escape."
"But once in a while, you pick the right thing, the exact best thing."
"If anything, it just makes me want to nail that scholarship even more."
"I haven’t had a Sisley kind of day in a long time."
"We’re not outwardly fighting anymore—things are quiet. Civil. Friendly enough, but not friends."
"Whenever you make a choice, something or someone becomes the unchosen."
"I know I’m not part of the practices anymore, but now, as they glide around the rink in their blue-and-silver jerseys in perfect formation, my whole body tingles with pride."
"When everyone else told them they couldn’t do it, they marched out to the rink, banged their sticks on the ice, and raised the dead."
"I miss it, Ma. I miss being on the ice. And I’m tired of sneaking around to do it."
"The thing is, best friends don’t use that stuff as an excuse to treat each other like garbage."
"He’s your father, even if he’s not around. Helping with college is the least he can do."