“Look around you. The earth wouldn't exist without the sun. Plants would die without rain. We're all meant to lean on something. Or someone.”

“We’re all meant to lean on something. Or someone.' I smile. He frowns. He surprises me and grabs the pen out of my hand. He starts writing something down in his neat block letters. He slides the journal back to me. 'I build walls around myself. I lean on those.' I don’t need to ask him why. Everybody builds walls—it’s for protection. I scribble quickly. 'Maybe you should break the walls down once in a while.' 'I’ll just build them up again', he writes. 'But maybe you’ll add a few windows the next time around. Or a door?”

“Maybe [the man who talks to himself] is normal and we're the crazy ones. Maybe everyone should talk to themselves. Maybe we're all just afraid of what we would say.”

“When we sat down in the plane, Clare took something out of her pocket and handed it to me. It looked like a tube of lipstick.I frowned at her. 'Is this really the time to swap make-up?' I asked.She grinned. 'It's a hand taser. My parents make me carry one.' She took the cap off and pointed to the metal edge. 'If someone attacks you, you press the tip against their skin and it shoots out a charge.'I looked down at it. 'Does it last long?'She shook her head. 'It's pretty harmless. Noah and Pat used to play taser tag around the house when I was growing up.”

“Think about our bodies. We're a chain of veins and organs and tehy're all interconnected. If something isn't going right in one area, the whole system can get out of whack. That's teh way I see the world. We're all connected. I don't see myself as this separate entity. I see things in a much larger scale. Everything I do directly affects another person, all the way down the chain. Every person I help can help another; we're all connected. Change happens one person at a time. And I want to commit my life to seeing that through.”

“You see the most when you're not looking for anything in particular...when you look too hard for something, you get nearsighted because you only see what you want to see.”

“What happens if you lose?" Jeremy pressed."I don't see it as winning or losing. I'm just looking for a middle ground," he [Justin] said. "I get that technology is convenient and has its benefits. We definitely can't live without it. We can't go back to living in caves. But most people are so plugged in, they're not even living in the real world. Our lives aren't grounded by anything. Being too dependent on something makes you a slave to it. And I sure as hell won't worship a digital screen. So I'm looking for a halfway point. A balance. It's not just about ending digital school. It's about having a choice.”