Lauren Myracle

“Sometimes, with Cinnamon, it was like she fell into this "impress the guy" mode and forgot the primary rule of friendship, which was to make your bud look good in front of her boy. Not stupid.”

“Curse false-hand-holding boys!”

“This is your birthday treat, and you're supposed to enjoy it, I reminded myself. It was part of my normal existence to give myself instructions like this. Maybe other people acted and lived in total naturalness. I often wondered if they did. But me? I needed an operating manual.”

“Except I do care about being pretty. Der. I don't think there's a single person in the world who doesn't care about being pretty. Any female, at any rate.”

“That's Chinese, not Japanese”

“I didn’t know what I thought, other than that nothing was easy anymore and no matter what I did, things got messed up.”

“We are all flawed, my dear. Every one of us. And believe me, we've all made mistakes. You've just got to take a good hard look at yourself, change what needs to be changed, and move on, pet.”

“You can rèmove a tattoo; it's just difficult. And supposedly it's pretty painful. Some things, on the other hand, can't be undone.”

“no means no, u weirdo stalkerhead!”

“Tobin turned to Angie. "I'm such an idiot. Why didn't you remind me?"She smiled drowsily. "That you're an idiot? Okay: you're an idiot.""Oh that's great, thanks," he said. She giggled.”

“All I heard were the bumps and crunches of my tires on the dirt road, blending with the dark noises of the forest. But it wasnt the forest that scared me. It was the people who lived and prowled within them.”

“Kids are doing meth in every town in the country, Cat. Dang. Get your head out of your butt.”

“Wally was worse than any fairy-tale witch, and his trailer wasn't made of candy.”

“I felt sucker-punched. It wasn't God's fault Patrick had been treated worse than dirt, as I'd let myself believe. It was mine.”

“My heart, as I closed the cabinet and rose to my feet, was a small dead creature. If I could bury it in the woods, I would.”

“He wouldn't have seen the wolf in redneck clothing.”

“Mother Superior jump the gun...-The Beatles, Happiness is a Warm Gun”

“But you have to live in the present. You have to take the old and make it new -- that's my point.”

“It was you,' I said, my words as new and uncertain as a baby's. I was sixteen and in my bedroom, and I shook my head in an attempt to unscramble my thoughts. 'Not the tongue. The fire.'I shut my eyes, then opened them to make sure I hadn't made this thing up.[...]But Christian hadn't taken his eyes off me, and in his expression I saw a slew of emotions: shame, defiance, fury. Fear, but not for himself. For me. I saw my big brother, who carried me off the ledge at Suicide Rock when I froze up. [...] Who thought I was a fool and had no problem telling me so, but who stuck up for me anyway.”

“I'm in loooove with this boy, and when you in love with someone, you don't give up on 'em, mo matter what.”

“I loved everyone who said yes to the world and tried to make it better instead of worse, because so much in the world was ugly- and just about all the ugly parts were due to humans.”

“Because it's good for nothing," I said. keeping my eyes on Tommy. "Because one worthless piece of shit deserves another.”

“I scowled. I could resist it all I wanted, but I did understand what he was trying to explain. How sometimes he pieces of who you thought you were didn't add up to who you really were, like with me not standing up for Patrick when he wore those pants.”

“Knowledge was more powerful than fear. Love was stronger than hate.”

“He slung both arms around the back of his chair, and it reminded me how different girls and guys were. Girls kept their bodies tucked in tight, while boys took up every inch of room they could.”

“I'd heard a saying about meth, that it took you down one of three roads: jail, the psych ward, or death.”

“Yes, that man acted ugly," she told us in plain English. "But throwing more ugliness back at him ain't the answer.”

“If you breathed deep and set your mind to it, you could rise above your anger.”

“Yet it was an odd twist of language. Based on the way people usually used the words, Christian was traight and Patrick was gay. But Christian, when he got wasted, was gay if you used the old-fashioned, oh-so-merry definition of the word, while Patrick was straight-edge because he didn't drink to the point of passing out.”

“... and my brain put them together in that way brains sometimes do: pairing the ideas that shouldn't be paired, yet nonetheless were.”

“I didn't like being alone. Being alone was slightly better than having to deal with people, that's all. Or so I'd convinced myself.”

“The world was out there waiting to be explored—and not just waiting, but wanting to be explored. So why in heaven’s name shouldn’t I investigate every nook and cranny?”

“So, as a seventh grader,no, you weren't friends with people you didnt like. But sometimesyou also werent friends with people you did like, which was complicated, and which didnt make any sence if you tried to explain it. Sometimes things just changed. Thats where the sadness came in.”

“Is he a sophomore?" Lydia says. "Please tell me he's in our grade.""I don't know," I say. "But weren't you there when he came to the office?" Peyton says."The secretary didn't get out her bullhorn and announce what grade he's in. She just took him to meet Headmaster Perkins.”

“Suck it up. This is the life you chose for yourself, so buck up and deal.”

“If she did see, I hoped she' be amazed. Amazed and thankful, because without even asking, she'd received a genuine autograph from a genuine girl from Atlanta. Not just any girl, but a girl who was, frankly, a pretty big deal. A girl who was me.”

“Even so, I was proud of myself for taking action at all. I didn't hide or run away or pretend the ugliness didn't happen. I stood up and said something that was true. I said it out loud, and by doing so, I was standing up for lots of people, not just me.”

“She pulled into a parking space on the side of the road, put her hand to her chest, and sat for a bit. Then she said that the man already knew he was the one in the wrong, and being wrong had embarrassed him. Since he didn't like feeling that way, he unloaded his bad feelings onto her."Huh?" we'd said."Yes, that man acted ugly," she told us in plain English. "But throwing more ugliness back at him ain't the answer.”

“You should be out stirring up trouble with your friends, not bothering with all them books you read. You know it's them books what make you talk funny.”

“Sometimes when we forget to do things for others, it's because we're too wrapped up in our own problems.”

“Every girl on the planet was familiar to one-last-time e-mail checks.”

“Who would want to be poked by some dumb girl with a stick?”

“It's the way it works," she said in clipped tones. "For one rise, another must fall." "But why? Why can't we just rise, and everybody else can stay where they are? I wouldn't care!" "And you think I would?" Keisha demanded. She glared at me, the visibly pulled herself back. When she exhaled, her nostrils flared. "Say you've taken a math test. Or an English test, since you love books so much. And you get a hundred. You're psyched, right? 'Mom, I got a hundred! I got the highest grade in the class!'" She raised her eyebrows. "But say everybody else gets a hundred, too. Are you still as proud?" "Of course," I said stubbornly. "I'd still have my A." "Bullshit. You like your As because other people get Cs. Because that means you're smarted than they are. Better than they are." "I don't think I'm better than anyone." "Then you're and idiot.”

“Three hot chicks for three hot chicks.""THEY'RE NOT CHICKS THEY"RE DUCKS!”

“We all mess up. It's what we learn from our mistakes that matters.”

“I hadn't been "possessed", after all. Not by an angel or a demon. Maybe there were aspects of both inside me, but I was the one who chose which to let out.”

“God loves you even on your blackest days, and He will always, always be there to guide you home. All you have to do is look for the light of His love.”

“If everyone started off the day singing, just think how happy they'd be.”

“He told me about his slow realization that when one person in a family was sick, the whole family was sick. In Jason's case, the sick person was his father, who was nice enough when he was sober, but mean as a snake when he was drunk.”

“It's unfair how the kids who are starving for attention tended to be so annoying that people had no inclination to give it to them.”