Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“I’d take a physical fight over Touchy-Feely Share Time, hands down”

“Nobody liked my plan."You want us to split up?" Chase asked, his brow wrinkling in obvious bewilderment.Lake echoed the sentiment, her voice flat. "Why would we split up? There's four of us and one of him." After a brief moment's pause, she amended her head count to better reflect the real odds. "Three and a half of us, one of him."Three and a half, as in three werewolves, one human. I narrowed my eyes. "For your sake, Lake, I'm going to pretend that Devon is the half."Dev, unquestionably the strongest person in the room, just shrugged and let me keep my delusions. "It's because of my petite stature," he said. All 6'4" of him.”

“Mi casa es su casa. Literally. I'm pretty sure your dad owns it.”

“If I lied, you'd smell it, so I'll stick with that's no concern of yours and suggest you leave it at that.”

“The fact that you don't hate him for this breaks my heart. And if we weren't leaving because of what they'd done to you, we'd be leaving because the pack has twisted you enough to make you think that it's okay for someone to treat you that way.”

“Straw met camel's back. Breaking commenced.”

“Devon: "Why, Bryn, I do believe he's given her your pen."Bryn: "Well, get Freud on the phone. He'll have a field day with this one.”

“Sometimes make-believe is just another word for rare.”

“Bethany blinked. "Did you just hit me?" she asked, disbelief coloring her every feature.Skylar raised both hands, palms outward. "I come in peace!""You do not come in peace. You hit me.""I hit in peace!”

“There's an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I've been thinking about a lot while writing this essay. In it, Buffy sacrifices her own life to save her sister, and right before she does, she tells her sister that the hardest thing to do in the world is to live - ironic words coming from someone about to kill herself for the greater good. As I'm writing this, I just keep thinking that Katniss never gets to sacrifice herself. She doesn't get the heroic death. She survives - and that leaves her doing the hardest thing in the world: living in it once so many of the ones she loves are gone.”

“Firecracker Gale and dandelion Peeta are so different from each other that it's easy to imagine that a girl who would choose Gale is a completely different person than one who would choose Peeta. When people sit around debating who Katniss should choose, maybe what they're really debating actually is her identity - and the romance is just a proxy for that big, hard question about the ever-changing, unaware girl on fire.”

“Katniss isn't the kind of hero we're used to seeing in fiction. She reacts more than she acts, she doesn't want to be a leader, and by the end of Mockingjay, she hasn't come into her own or risen like a phoenix from the ashes for some triumphant moment that gives us a sense of satisfaction with how far our protagonist has come.She's not a Buffy. She's not a Bella. She limps across the finish line when we're used to seeing heroes racing; she eases into a quiet, steady love instead of falling fast and hard.”

“It seems like everyone I know has very strong feelings about which boy is the best fit for Katniss, but also because the books themselves contain a commentary on the way audiences latch onto romance, even (and maybe especially) when lives are atstake.”

“I'm not Team Gale or Team Peeta. I'm Team Katniss...the core story in the Hunger Games trilogy has less to do with who Katniss ends up with and more to do with who she is - because sometimes, in books and in life, it's not about the romance.Sometimes, it's about the girl.”

“Before, I liked cars, yachts, a door locked from the inside, and you. :)”

“Before I liked cars, yachts, having a door to lock, and you. :)”

“....And b-t-w, if anyone asks you what's in the box, I'd say 'feminine supplies.'"The box was large and heavy, and there was a distinct clanging sound as I carried it. "As in tampons?""Keely's not going to ask questions. Ali's busy with the twins, and everyone else around here is male. Tampons scare the bejeezus out of them, my dad included, but if the person who asks is a Were, they'd smell a lie. Hence, feminine supplies.""Because we're females, and they're our supplies?" I guessed. "No. Because weapons are feminine." Lake gave me an insulted look. "Why do you think I named my gun Matilda?”

“Bryne want kill dinosaur, i said pantomiming what i thought passed for a descent dinosaur killing motion.For the first time in weeks, Ali laughed. Go on. And if you're very good, Ali show Bryn big heaping secret. fiiiiiirrrre. Make tasty warm dinosaur meat.”

“Caring was dangerous. Caring hurt.”

“Sometimes, I felt like if I could just fold up into a small enough ball, my body would collapse on itself like a star, and I could supernova myself into a new existence.”

“Jack Peyton is HOT!" someone from the audience yelled."Toby Klein is HOTTER" a male voice argued, and I almost went into an epileptic fit of disgust at both the words and the tone."Now, now," Jack said, raising his hands. "Don't be ridiculous. Mr. Corkin is clearly the hottest”

“I'm not your girl" "You could be.""Yeah and I could also tattoo an anorexic pterodactyl on my navel, but I'm not planning on do that, either”

“So their cheerleaders are ugly, their football players are wimps, and they're our archrivals because why?”

“Sometimes, there aren't any good choices. Sometimes, making the right one is hard... It's funny, but when you think about it, we're all broken. That's what life does. It knocks you down and breaks you and you either get back up again, or you don't. You either do things on your terms, or you don't. You let the bad things win, or you don't.""You either let it break you, or you don't.”

“I laid my head on his neck, and the two of us-girl and wolf-fell asleep, into a dream within a dream.”

“Left with nothing but my own bloody fingertips, I let out a war cry of my own, raked my nails over its face, and fought like a girl.”

“My little sister snuck out of the house carrying a circular-saw blade and a can of Mace. I couldn't exactly let her come alone.”

“Skylar todl you to come here?" I asked dumbly."No," Bethany said. "Skylar told me not to come here. Same dif.”

“Well," a female voice said. "What have we here?""Here," Bethany said, responding to the woman's rhetorical question, "we have a teenager. And she's pissed.”

“Darryl likes codes," Skylar explained. "A few weeks ago, I asked him what someone might hypothetically need to break into a supercomputer. He hypothetically made me this.”

“Darryl does talk," Skylar said. "If you listen. And FYI, I have a really strong feeling that he's going to be the next Bill Gates, so you might want to be a little nicer to him.""I have a really strong feeling," Bethany deadpanned, "that if you don't tell me what's on that USB drive, I will end you.”

“Little Sisters' Survival Guide, rule number thirty-seven," Skylar said. "Scream before they hit you.”

“All's fair in love and war--and black ops.”

“Don't think this means I'm giving up. There's more than one way to decapitate a hellhound, and as it so happens, I know them all.”

“I sense that the chocolate chips have hit the fan.”

“I'm not telling you what to do, I'm just telling you what you're going to do. There's a difference.”

“What I really needed wasn't a dose of school spirit; it was a glass of water, an aspirin the size of my fist, and the answers to the history exam that I hadn't studied for the night before. "As long as I'm dreaming," I muttered, my words lost to the cacophony of the gym, "I'd also like a pony, a convertible, and a couple of friends.""That's a tall order." I'd known that there were people sitting next to me, but I couldn't begin to imagine how one of them had heard me. I hadn't even heard me. "Would you settle for a piece of gum, an orange Tic Tac, and an introduction the the school slut?”

“Most of the time, it felt like my father and I were completely different species. Possibly literally, depending on the day and whether or not I actually qualified as human at the time.”

“This was our language: half-truths, obvious lies, accusations neither one of us would ever make. It was a system eery bit as complicated as Morse code or the dancing of bees. Don't ask, don't tell, stay civil.”

“Lake breathed out a happy sigh as she approached the row filled with guns. "Matilda was my first, but ladies, you know how to make a girl want to stray.”

“You have no right to tell me-""You do not want to finish that sentence, missy. You want to sit down, close your mouth, and eat.""How am I supposed to eat with my mouth closed?”

“You're going down, Bronwyn. Them's fighting words.”

“Casey was in the bed with Ali. And that was where I drew the line. Because eww.”

“Luckily for me, I didn't know precisely what it was that I'd done to merit a visit from our pack's leader. There were any number of possibilities, none of which I wanted to openly admit on the off chance that there was something I'd done that he hadn't found out yet.”

“Not going to walk me to the door?" I asked, pretending to be shocked at his lack of gallantry."Of course I am. many would think that a bonny lass such as yerself wouldst be able to stay out of trouble for a distance of fifteen feet, but I know better.""Did you just use the words yerself and wouldst in the same sentence? You can't be a pirate and a courtier at the same time, Dev. It just isn't done.”

“I smiled half a smile at her puppy antics, wondering what it would be like to be able to join her, to shed my human skin and the confines that went with it and just live in the moment as a wolf. What would I look like with four legs and fur—would I be light-colored like Katie, or a darker timber, like Dev? I wondered if I would be velvet black with ice-blue eyes, like Chase.”

“I turned my attention back to Kaitlin, who now appeared to be very conscientiously stalking my shoelace.”

“Lake, could you please stop sweet-talking the weapons? It's kind of freaking me out.”

“Aren't you supposed to be taking my order?' I asked.'Bite me. And then you can tell me what's wrong.”

“There wasn't an in-between for me. I lived at extremes. And maybe I'd die at them too.”