“I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe, but that has not been my experience.”

“I don't know what I believe, Hazel. I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe, but that has not been my experience.”

“Dad smiled. He put a big arm around me and pulled me to him, kissing the side of my head. “I don’t know what I believe, Hazel. I thought being an adult meant knowing what you believe, but that has not been my experience.”

“The fourth way to get a boy to like you is to be yourself. Now, I am contractually obligated as an adult to give that advice, even though it doesn't work. But yeah, be yourself, even though no one has any idea what it means to be yourself. Like whose self would I otherwise be being?”

“I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults.”

“I bet if you look at the average teenager and the average adult, the average teenager has read more books in the last year than the average adult. Now of course the adult would be all like, 'I'm busy, I got a job, I got stuff to do.' WHATEVER! READ! I mean, you're watching CSI: Miami. Why would you be watching CSI: Miami, when you could be READING CSI: Miami, the novelization?”

“But what did I have left to contribute? Just this? Just being the last known pair of truly human eyes to look up into the sky and experience the ␣eeting ␣ush of hope? Being a person, I had come to realize, is a communal activity. Dogs know how to be dogs. But people do not know how to be people unless and until they learn from other people.”