“She sleeps; she sleeps.And when she sleeps, she dreams.And when she dreams, she dreams of a girl who was lost at sea but one day found the shore.”

“And when she dreams, she dreams of a girl who was lost at sea but one day found the shore.”

“You know this girl.Her hair is neither long nor short nor light nor dark. She parts it precisely in the middle.She sits precisely in the middle of the classroom, and when she used to ride the school bus, she sat precisely in the middle of that, too.She joins clubs, but is never the president of them. Sometimes she is the secretary; usually, just a member. When asked, she has been known to paints sets for the school play.She always has a date to the dance, but is never anyone’s first choice. In point of fact, she’s nobody’s first choice for anything. Her best friend became her best friend when another girl moved away.She has a group of girls she eats lunch with every day, but God, how they bore her. Sometimes, when she can’t stand it anymore, she eats in the library instead. Truth be told, she prefers books to people, and the librarian always seems happy to see her.She knows there are other people who have it worse—she isn’t poor or ugly or friendless or teased. Of course, she’s also aware that the reason no one teases is because no one ever notices her.This isn’t to say she doesn’t have qualities.She is pretty, maybe, if anyone would bother to look. And she gets good enough grades. And she doesn’t drink and drive. And she says NO to drugs. And she is always where she says she will be. And she calls when she’s going to be late. And she feels a little, just a little, dead inside.She thinks, You think you know me, but you don’t.She thinks, None of you has any idea about all the things in my heart.She thinks, None of you has any idea how really and truly beautiful I am.She thinks, See me. See me. See me.Sometimes she thinks she will scream.Sometimes she imagines sticking her head in an oven.But she doesn’t.She just writes it all down in her journal and waits.She is waiting for someone to see.”

“In my humble opinion, love is when a person believes that he, she or it can't live without some other he, she or it...I said believes. No one actually needs another person or another person's live to survive. Love, Lizzie, is when we have irrationally convinced ourselves that we do.”

“There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.”

“She hasn't cried once. SHe doesn't understand that Margaret is dead. At that age, they can't fully understand the concept of death. It's a good thing really.Jane fully understood the concept of death and she felt truly injured that Aunt Bess considered her unmoved. Jane thought it should be perfectly clear to everyone that rearranging the furniture in her dollhouse was her expression of grief. She had been moving the Mother Doll (it was a nuclear family of dolls that consisted of a mother, a father, a boy, and a girl) and all the Mother Doll's possessions into the dollhouse's attic. Jane wondered why tears were considered a superior form of grief to the rearrangement of one's dollhouse.Feeling terribly misunderstood, Jane began to cry. Oh listen, said Aunt Bess, she begins to understand.”

“Liz, I like you very much," he says. "Oh," she says, "I like you very much, too!"Owen is not sure if she means "O" for Owen, or just plan "Oh." He is not sure what difference it would make in either case. He feels the needs to clarify. "When I said 'I like you very much,' I actually meant 'I love you.'" "O," she says, "I actually meant the same thing." She closes the car door behind her."Well," he says to himself, driving back to his apartment, "isn't that something?”