Wendelin Van Draanen

“Street people use cardboard all the time, and bum alleys are just shanties or lean-tos, though. They’re nothing like my house! Mine is deluxe! It’s a big, thick, super sturdy refrigerator box that I found at an appliance store!”

“I don’t think you’re aloud to be homeschooled if you don’t have a home.”

“Holly, I understand that you are upset because Gemma pulled down your ants, but why did you think pouring motor oil inside her backpack is the way to solve the problem?”

“She was married to my dad, and everything was fine until he got killed in some freak tractor accident.Yeah, that’s what I said, a freak tractor accident.”

“I miss school.What’s wrong with me?”

“Summers there are awful! Winters there are awful! Why do you stay? You ought to run away! Hop a train! Stow away on a bus!What am I saying? You could just buy yourself a ticket.It would be interesting to talk to you if you did it the other way, though.We could compare scars and bruises.It might be fun.”

“I’m not going to be able to sleep a wink tonight.I hate shelters.People coughing and snoring and hacking up who-knows-what.It’s a nightmare.But I do have clean teeth.”

“You told us over and over that you don’t think you could live without books, but the ironic thing is, you’d probably die before you’d think to rip pages out of one to start a fire. Am I right?Well, get over it already. Better to be warm then well-read.”

“(Actually now I’m remembering that the goodbye chow isn’t spelled that way. It’s ciao or something weird like that. It’s Italian, right? But I’m not an Italian gypsy, I’m a hungry gypsy. So spelling it chow makes total sense.)”

“Food in the trash is like the tossed-and-found.”

“Backup backpacks.”

“Blue FaceDisgusting tasteFlush itShush itCold disgrace”

“Okay that’s it. Now I’m torching this.I just need to score a match.”

“It was beyond embarrassing or humiliating or even mortifying. It was ego-slaying!”

“If the mind's not strong, the body acts weak, even if it's not. If the mind says it's too cold or too rainy or too windy to run, the body will be more than happy to agree. If the mind says it would be better to rest or recover or cut practice, the body will be glad to oblige.”

“Girls don’t fight fair. They pull your hair and gauge you and pinch you; then they run off gasping to mommy when you try and defend yourself with a fist. Then you get locked into time out, and for what? No, my friend, the secret is, don’t snap at the bait. Let it dangle. Swim around it. Laugh it off. After a while they’ve given up and try to lure someone else.”

“I’ve flown kites before and I know – sometimes they’re gone forever, and sometimes they’re just waiting in the middle of the road for you to rescue them. Kites can be lucky or they can be ornery. I’ve had both kinds, and a lucky kite is definitely worth chasing for.”

“A painting is more than the sum of the parts,” he would tell me, and then go on to explain how the cow itself is just a cow, and the meadow by itself is just grass and flowers, and the sun peeking through the trees is just a beam of light, but put them all together and you’ve got magic.”

“I fell asleep that night thinking about the kiss that might have been. What did a kiss feel like, anyway? Somehow I knew it wouldn’t be like the one I got from Mom or Dad at bedtime. The same species, maybe, but a radically different beast, to be sure. Like a wolf and a whippet – only science would put them on the same tree.”

“What I'm expecting is for you to behave like the gentleman I always thought you were.”

“You can't dwell on what might have been...and it's not fair to condemn him for something he hasn't done.”

“...Next time you're faced with a choice, do the right thing. It hurts everyone less in the long run.”

“It's experiences in life that give us something to write about, and since good fiction is applied tension, you'll have an arsenal of good material if life hasn't been peachy (and not a whole lot if it has).”

“If chaos is a necessary step in the organization of one's universe, then I was well on my way.”

“One's character is set at an early age. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life. I hate to see you swim out so far you can't swim back.”

“I operate under the assumption that people don't notice the good in me. That's just how things always seem to play out. I get blamed, while con-artist kids like Venus, and Camille, and Gemma get believed. But the rescue lady noticed. In the background, just observing, she noticed.”

“Sometimes I get so caught up in my own problems that I forget how amazing the world is.”

“Get beyond his eyes and his smile and the sheen of his hair -- Look at what's really there.”

“Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss...." He turned to me. "But every once in a while, you find someone who's iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.”

“And then she started climbing/ The girl is in the seventh grade, and she's climbing a tree--way, way up in the tree. And why does she do it? So she can yell down at us that the bus is five! four! three blocks away! Blow-by-blow traffic watch from a tree--what every kid in junior high feels like hearing first thing in the morning. She tried to get me to come up there with her, too. "Bryce, come on! You won't believe the colors! It's absolutely magnificent! Bryce, you've got to come up here!" Yeah, I could just hear it: "Bryce and Juli sitting in a tree..." Was I ever going to leave the second grade behind?”

“My heart stopped. It just stopped beating. And for the first time in my life, I had that feeling. You know, like the world is moving all around you, all beneath you, all inside you, and you're floating. Floating in midair. And the only thing keeping you from drifting away is the other person's eyes. They're connected to yours by some invisible physical force, and they hold you fast while the rest of the world swirls and twirls and falls completely away.”

“To by held above the earth and be brushed by the wind," she said,"it's like your heart has been kissed by beauty.”