“I didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience.”

“I didn't know I had it in me. There's more to all of us than we realize. Life is so much bigger, grander, higher, and wider than we allow ourselves to think. We're capable of so much more than we allow ourselves to believe.”

“Youths as children will see no wrong but feel it, as juveniles youths will see and feel wrongs and cope anyway they can, as adults spend a life time trying to forget the cruelties and memories of those wrongs they once knew.”

“God, youth is a terrible time! So much feeling and so little notion of how to handle it!”

“Part of the post-apocalyptic, dystopian trend is that it seems to go hand in hand with young adult novels. Maybe that's because it's not simply the adults who are aware of the current crisis. Teens are the ones who are being told, again and again, that their futures are in jeopardy. The teen years can feel dystopian even in the best of times. But I don't think we realize how much pressure and feeling of doom we're passing down to our teens.”

“This book made me feel strangely awkward, because I'm afraid of finding my own story in it. I take books too seriously.”