Sara Zarr

“It's as if once you hit high school, you're programmed, like a robot, to be an asshole to your parents.”

“My whole life has been one big broken promise.”

“the mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love. That's the unfinished business between us. because love, love is never finished.”

“When you go to high school, and you're trying to figure yourself out, sometimes it takes doing things that you don't like in order to figure out what you don't like. But it's important to maintain your sense of self throughout the journey.”

“Sometimes I see the future and it's like I'm a blank. I mean I know what I'll look like, that I'll exist. But I don't know who I'll be or who will be with me. At least I know who I'm not and who won't be with me.”

“He felt it too, the air between us, the invisible lines that something or someone had drawn to connect us. That's the way I remember it.”

“Was it only because he happened to be the one who came along when he did? Could it have been anyone? Or was there something about him, that I liked and cared at?”

“It was knowing someone else thought about me for more than one second, maybe thought about me when I wasn't there.”

“This is the last time, the girl thought, that she would remember these things. If they floated back to her again, she would paddle away. When the remembering was done, the forgetting could begin.”

“It's a jagged thing in my throat, how much I miss her.”

“Try a little tenderness ...”

“Because love, love never finishes.”

“I never had a connection like that to anyone, where every day you think about what you’ll tell them and you wonder what they’re doing, and you know they’re wondering what you’re doing.”

“It's just so out of control. Life, I mean. The way it flies off in all these different directions without your permission.”

“I'm remembering how this works. How life doesn't have to be only anxiety about what's gone wrong or could go worng, and complaints about the world around you. How a person you're excited about can remind you there's stuff going on beyond... routine oil changes and homework. Stuff that matters. Stuff to look forward to.”

“My dad died, I write. almost a year ago. Car accident. My hand is shaking; my eyes sting and fill. I add Not his fault before pushing the notebook and pen back across the table, wiping a hand across my cheeks.As he reads, my impulse is to reach out, grab the notebook, run outside, dump it in the trash, bury it in the snow, throw it under the wheels of a passing car - something, something, so I can go back fifteen seconds when this part ofme was still shut away and private. Then I look at Ravi's face again, and the normally white white whites of his eyes are pink. This causes major disruption to my ability to control the flow of my own tears. I see myself when I look at him right now: he's reflecting my sadness, my broken heart, back to me.He takes the pe, writes, and slides it over. You'd think it's something epic from the way it levels my heart. It isn't.I'm really sorry, Jill.Four little words.”

“Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid.”

“don’t mistake a new place for a new you.”

“I don't yell back at my mother. When I'm angry or scared or upset, I don't yell. I stay quiet. I've seen how she is, how she would get with Kent and with me and with other people, life if someone at the pharmacy got in the wrong line or asked too long a question, or if someone on the bus accidentally bumped her. I've watched her my whole life, the way people react to her. It doesn't actually help you get what you want, yelling and being like that. It only makes people think bad of you.”

“I'm still going to love you, always. And in the rock-paper-scissors of life, love is rock. fear, anger, everthing else...no contest.”

“Sometimes you should have something you don't need but that you want.”

“Sometimes you want to hear your own mother's voice.”

“The kind of life I want is to be a person who would get a personal note every day.”

“No one measures a life in weeks and days. You measure life in years and by the things that happen to you.”

“And part of being American is respecting all people's right to be whatever they want to be and at the same time respecting your own right to bitch about it, as long as you're educated and can reason your way through your bitching.”

“Don't ask me how I am,' I blurt. 'Please.' I want to keep feeling good. Just because the lights are on doesn't mean I have to look.”

“Sitting and waiting for something to happen was the worst kind of torture.”

“It's not words, so much, just my mind going blank and thoughts reaching up up up, me wishing I could climb through the ceiling and over the stars until I can find God, really see God, and know once and for all that everything I've believed my whole life is true, and real. Or, not even everything. Not even half. Just the part about someone or something bigger than us who doesn't lose track. I want to believe the stories, that there really is someone who would search the whole mountainside just to find that one lost thing that he loves, and bring it home.”

“It came down to the smallest things, really, that a person could do to say I’m sorry, to say it’s okay, to say I forgive you. The tiniest of declarations that built, one on top of the other, until there was something solid beneath your feet. And then… and then. Who knew?”

“In a way, “failure” is just another word for “the journey,” for not being there yet but on the way. It’s the road we walk on to get wherever it is we’re trying to go.”

“But as I get older I think – can it really be love if we don’t talk that much, don’t see each other? Isn’t love something that happens between people who spend time together and know each other’s faults and take care of each other? In the end I decide that the mark we’ve left on each other is the color and shape of love. That’s the unfinished business between us. Because love is never finished. It circles and circles the memories always out of order and not always complete. There’s one I always come back to: me and Cameron Quick, laying on the ground in an aspen grove on a golden fall day, the aspen leaves clattering and quaking the way they do. Cameron turning to me, reaching out a small and dirty hand, which I take and do not let go.”

“I don’t want these memories to become slippery, to just disappear into the thin air of life the way most things seem to. I want them to stick – even the bad ones – so I repeat them often.”

“I think about how there are certain people who come into your life, and leave a mark. I don’t mean the usual faint impression: he was cute, she was nice, they made me laugh, I wish I’d known her better, I remember the time she threw up in class. And I don’t just mean that they change you. A lot of people can change you – the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart., the first person who crowned you best friend. It’s the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people. Ethan changed me, for instance, but the longer we are apart the more he sort of recedes into the distance as a real person and in his place is a cardboard cutout that says first boyfriend. I’m talking about the ones who, for whatever reason are a part of you as your own soul. Their place in your heart is tender; a bruise of longing, a pulse of unfinished business. My mom was right about that. Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid.”

“The importance of our connection, what it meant to find each other again, the way it made what happened to us and between us not be a waste, not be for nothing. He would know, he had to know, that not saying good-bye would be the worst end of all.”

“I tried his cell over and over but he never answered. Then I’d call just to hear his voice on the outgoing message, until eventually that was gone too.”

“we had each other. I never needed anyone else. That’s the difference between you and me. You need all these people around you. Your friends, your boyfriend, everyone. Every single person has to like you. I only ever needed one person. Only ever needed you.”

“This was a memory I wanted to keep, whole, and recall again and again. When I was fifty years old I wanted to remember this moment on the porch, holding hands with Cameron while he shared himself with me. I didn’t want it to be something on the fringes of my memory like so many other things about Cameron and myself.”

“What brings two people together anyway?”

“And he left. I watched him walk out – he didn’t say good-bye, he didn’t even look back. It scared me, how easy it was for him to do that.”

“Ethan couldn’t possibly understand it, what Cameron and I meant to each other and how different it was from anything like a romance or a crush.”

“I lived too much in my head instead of the real world.”

“The one thing that could never die or be buried was my loyalty to Cameron for everything he’d done for me and what we’d been through together, even if that loyalty was a ghost.”

“I understand that you can never have the whole picture; inevitably, there’s stuff you don’t know, can’t know. But when it comes to Cameron I always want more than I have, would like to be able to take hold of at least one or two more pieces, if only because I’m convinced there are parts of myself inside them.”

“Katy skipped over, her low-rise jeans threatening to fall off her skinny hips. With some girls, that was a sexy look. With Katy, it made you nervous.”

“Okay, then, what was he like? Just give me something to go on so that I have a shot at him!''A shot at him? Are you on an elk hunt?”

“*Story of a Girl By:Sara Zarr*Lexile:760 SRC:12 pts.*Personal Issues*Choice of getting a job to move out*Major Choice*In Process of making it happen*It effects her bother his girlfriend and their baby, because they will move out with her too.*Sometimes we need to take choices that will make your life easier and also others.”

“Some people come into your life and leave a mark.”

“Sometimes I still stare into space and think about Cameron. I think about how there are certain people who come into your life and leave a mark. I don't mean the usual faint impression: He was cute, she was nice, they made me laugh, I wish I'd known her better, I remember the time she threw up in class. And I don't just mean they change you. A lot of people can change you - the first kid who called you a name, the first teacher who said you were smart, the first person who crowned you their best friend. It's the change you remember, the firsts and what they meant, not really the people.”

“I looked at my hand resting on the shelf of the prop cabinet, thinking of the scars that were there whether anyone could see them or not.”

“I had them all fooled into believing I was normal and well-adjusted, a rock of sensibility who could always be counted on to have a positive attitude.”