“I'm pounding and kicking him and I'm all me and I'm kicking and kicking into the face that's crying and begging for mercy, kicking, kicking...only for real, for cold ice real, it's not my foot smashing his face to a pulp, but my stick smashing the puck into the board, and it's not him crying, but me.”

“Just because I'd kicked junk, after all, did not mean I'd kicked being a junkie. And junkies lie. It's their primary addition.”

“Every day I hold my breath until I see her. Sometimes in class, sometimes in the hallway. I can't start breathing until I see her smile at me. She always does, but the next day I'm always afraid she won't. At lunch I'm afraid she'll smile more at BT than at me. I'm afraid she'll look at him in some way that she doesn't look at me. I'm afraid that when I go to bed at night I'll still be wondering. I'm always afraid. Is that what love is - fear?”

“It's hard to do nothing totally. Even just sitting here, like this, our bodies are churning, our minds are chattering. There's a whole commotion going on inside us." "That's bad?" I said. "It's bad if we want to know what's going on outside ourselves." "Don't we have eyes and ears for that?"She nodded. "They're okay most of the time. But sometimes they just get in the way. The earth is speaking to us, but we can't hear because of all the racket our senses are shaking. Sometimes we need to erase them, erase our senses. Then-maybe- the earth will touch us. The universe will speak. The stars will whisper." The sun was glowing orange now, clipping the mountains' purple crests. "So how do I become this nothing?" "I'm not sure,"she said "There's no one answer to that. You have to find your own way. Sometimes I try to erase myself. I imagine a big pink soft soap eraser, and it's going back and forth, back and forth, and it starts down at my toes, back and forth, back and forth, and there they go-poof!-my toes are gone. And then my feet. And then my ankles. But that's the easy part. The hard part is erasing my senses-my eyes,my ears,my nose, my tongue. And last to go is my brain. My thoughts, memories, all the voices inside my head. That's the hardest, erasing my thoughts." She chuckled faintly. "My pumpkin. And then, if I've done a good job, I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into and empty bowl." "And?" I said. "And I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference anymore between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain." She smiled dreamily. "I like that most of all, being rain.”

“I used to be the sort of boy who had sand kicked in his face, now I'm the sort of boy who watches somebody else have it kicked in their face”

“in the book i'm reading (The Principal) the main chareter best friend has to go to a differnt school. I can picture them waiting at the bus stop together crying.”

“He wagged his finger in my face. "You're not SUPPOSED to do anything. YOU'RE the one trying to change ME. Remember? As far as I'M concerned, YOU can do anything you want.""Except criticize you.""Hey," he said, "if that's how you want to spend your life, getting on my case"--he threw out his arms--"be my guest." He turned his deep blue eyes on me. "And anyway--" He let it hang there. He was smirking.Suddenly I felt as if I were on roller skates. "What?""I know why you're doing it."I stopped. He walked on."Doing what?" I said. "What? Why?" I think I was babbling.He flipped his answer as blithely as a candy wrapper over his shoulder: "You know.”