Elizabeth Scott

“That's you, right?' he asks me. 'Yeah.' 'Cute. Not that I, uh, think little kids are cute. Just that you were cute. I mean, you can see how you turned out to be so...oh.”

“I-I don't usually go around throwing rocks at people's windows. Or saying that I've wanted to kiss you since your first day at work, when you wanted to know why we had three codes for fish sandwiches when we only sold one kind.”

“Well as much as I'm sure the people next door who are pretending they aren't looking at me would like to hear what I have to say, I'd rather say it to just you.”

“She has no idea who I am, not really. She's just someone who's noticed me because the video and she'll forget what she's said before the day is over. Me? Not so much, but I go on, my legs shaking and a mix of anger and despair burning inside me.”

“She looked at me for real and saw I was serious. She saw I knew she was for me like you know that tomorrow morning the sun will rise.”

“...Oh, and he groped your face. Sounds like true love to me.' 'He didn't grope my face. We were talking. And he also bought me animal crackers. I like them.' 'You also bitched about them not being in the vending machine for a week. Everyone in the building knows you like animal crackers.' 'I don't see you bringing me any.' 'Do you want me to?”

“Everyone else carries a backpack, but not Josh. He has a cool, beat-up messenger bag, covered with stickers protesting all kinds of things.”

“I love this time of day,' Josh says-talking to me, he's talking to me!-and I try to think of the right thing to say. 'I love you' sounds a little intense for the conversation. 'Can we make out?' sounds like something Jackson would say, and even if I am thinking it, I never want to sound like Jackson. Ever. 'Me too,' is what I come up with. Brilliant, right?”

“I don't eat bread.' Is she pouting? It's hard to tell. She's had a lot of chemicals injected into her face.”

“There's no good way to die, you know? No way I've seen, anyway. It all ends with tubes and bedpans and IVs and I just-- smoking gets me out of there. Gets me outside, gets me away from all the--""Sick people?" I say, and she shakes her head."Away from my life.”

“Anger can try to break your heart, but sorrow is what will. What can. What does.”

“I liked him first, but it doesn't matter. I still like him. That doesn't matter either. Or at least, it's not supposed to.”

“Sometimes being me is very confusing.”

“Like a heart, and I wish mine wasn't beating.”

“I heard how people sounded when their dreams were shattered, when their lives were turned into a waking nightmare.”

“Something in me, in my bruised heart, wakes up, and even though I'm terrified, I don't push the feeling away.”

“It could be enough, maybe, or at least a start, but the problem is that at night I tumble into dreams that aren't dreams at all. I tumble into memories and wake up aching for a dying world and a quiet, cold life that offered me nothing but sitting in a still room.”

“No, it can't," I say. "It's— it's the kind of thing you want to say, that you want to believe, but it isn't— I know isn't true. I thought my heart knew things, but what I thought was real turned out to be a lie, and now I don't—”

“And yet here I am. Broken and bleeding on the inside, heartsick, I am here.”

“Whatever happened to me just now has gotten to me, broken past the fragile shell I've built. More than my memory is gone. My soul has wings that beat to a heart I don't understand and I see things, feel things that I know aren't from here, but that are so real.”

“The sun flitered in through the small, dirty windows, catches his eyes. They are brown, ordinary, but the way he looks at me—no one has ever looked at me like he does. He looks at me like he sees something. Someone.Me."All right," he says, and puts his hands behind his head."Go ahead.”

“How can I remember a world that isn't mine? One that isn't the one I wake up in every day now?”

“He is nothing to look at, and yet I can’t stop looking at him. There is something beautiful in how his face is made, how all the tiny flaws blend together into something more perfect than perfection could ever be.”

“He's looking at me as if the whole world waits for my next breath, with an intensity that makes my heart pound and my palms sweat and then he smiles, a sweet curve of his mouth, and my breath catches, but then I freeze because there is something about it, something beyond it that I know, that makes my mind go blank with fear and pain.”

“I see it in his eyes, he has eyes you can see everything in, and I say, "Morgan," my voice as quiet as the ghost I am supposed to be.”

“I don't know how I know that, but I do. I can feel the beat of that truth inside me. Taste it bitter on my tongue.Sometimes, like now, I didn't think I want to know who I really am.”

“But I know a lie when I hear one.”

“love is...you get confused and you do stuff you don't mean to do-and you just-you hate yourself and sometimes you don't even want to love the person you do because it would be so much easier if you didn't.But you just-you just do.”

“Love-real love-can’t be defined. It just is.”

“it´s just...today has really sucked, and when you´re around stuff doesn´t seem so crappy - Will”

“Three life lessons:1.No one will see you.2.No one will say anything.3.No one will save you.”

“That damn spark.”

“And now I see what has been there all along, what I've noticed but never truly understood until now. Eli is as uncertain as I am, as we all are. Life has surprised him like it has me. Has hurt him like it has me.”

“Because I-I'm someone who wants to kiss you. Be with you." Eli says as if it is obvious, as if I know what is written on his heart.”

“I’m broken, I have cut myself wide open. I can see my heart and it is not what I believed it was, it is not good and kind and all the things I have always thought I am.”

“School is just like having a job. You have to show up, you have to do your work, and you have to be around tons of idiots or mean people. Now that I think about it, it's worse than having a job. At least there you get paid.”

“Talking about someone who makes you happy actually makes you happy.”

“...sometimes, you have to break your own heart.”

“I lied to Julia, I didn't know what else to do because you - you make me feel..." I had to stop. Not because I didn't have words. I did. But I was afraid to say them.He looked at me, and I knew then I could love him. That if I let myself I would."You make me feel too," he said, and held out one hand.”

“My full name is Lauren Lee Smith. Of all the names I could have been given, that's the one I got. Lauren Lee Smith. It has all the personality of a toaster.”

“I think the way I feel when I look at Evan comes from her. In pictures taken the day she married my dad, she was reckless, laughing, spinning around in circles. She looked like her whole world was him. She looked a kind of happy I can't even imagine.I don't want that. I don't want to be like that. I don' want to feel the way she did because I know what happens when you do. You love with your whole heart, with everything, and you wake up one morning and kiss someone good-bye the way you always do except you mean it as good-bye forever. ”

“I love you,' I say, and I watch his smile bloom I finally get how great those three little words are. I finally get what they really mean.”

“You tell yourself that you aren't something or that you can't be something, and you know what? It will become true. You have to decide who you are and what you can do and then go after what you want. Because believe me, no one is going to give it to you.”

“Hope was supposed to be a good thing, but it was starting to feel like every other four-letter word you're not supposed to say.”

“Just once, I wanted to lose something without the whole world watching.”

“Josh pulls me aside."Hey, About before, I just... I wanted to say ... well, I think you're pretty special." He says, kind of stumbling over the words a little. Like he's hesitant to say them, now i wish he'd hug me again. And then kiss me.But he doesn't. He just waves and walks off.I sigh."Hannah, I just... I want you to know if I pause alot when I tell you how special you are I want you to think that I'm... very... very... deep," Finn says”

“Check it out. I got a new name tag today." He unclipped it and held it out toward me.I looked at it. "A. GUY."He grinned. "Someone actually asked me what the A stood for," he said, his hand brushing mine as he took the tag back, sliding it into his pocket. "I said Larry.”

“I love books. I like that the moment you open one and sink into it you can escape from the world, into a story that's way more interesting that yours will ever be.”

“I always wanted to be grown up. When I was little I couldn’t wait to be a teenager and go to high school. When I got there I wanted to be done with it, wanted to get out into the world, the real one, and live in it. The thing is, that world doesn’t exist. All growing up means is that you realize no one will come along to fix things. No one will come along to save you.”

“Too late, too late, juice pouring does not a kind soul make, and I killed you.”