“What’s the difference between spending your life trying to be invisible, or pretending to be the person you think everyone wants you to be? Either way, you’re faking.”

“Pretend to be something you’re not until you are—fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them.”

“What one moment from you defines what it’s like to be alive on this planet. What’s your takeaway?’’There is silence. Tobias doesn’t get her point, and frankly, neither do I. She continues: ‘’Fake yuppie experiences that you had to spend money on, like white water rafting or elephant rides in Thailand don’t count. I want to hear some small moment from your life that proves you’re really alive.”

“You’re a teenage girl, sweetheart. Growing and changing every day. As you’re trying to find out who you are and what you want to be, you have to experiment and try different things, alter clothes, friends, personalities. I don’t think anyone so young can truly be one color just yet. And you’re my only student who’s realized that.”

“You’ve been assigned an identity since birth. Then you spend the rest of your life walking around in it to see if it really fits. You try on all these different selves and abandon just as many. But really it’s about dismantling all that false armor, getting down to what’s real.”

“Skin, bones, blood and organs transplant from person to person. Even what’s inside you already, the colonies of microbes and bugs that eat your food for you, without them you’d die. Nothing of you is all-the-way yours. All of you is inherited.Whatever you’re thinking, a million other folks are thinking. Whatever you do, they’re doing, and none of you is responsible. All of you is a cooperative effort.”