“People who are different are considered ineffective. People who can’t hide their shortcomings are not considered a threat. A lot of spies rely on being unobtrusive, but we flat out flaunt the fact that we’re different, and those we try to get information from put us on an even lower level than the ones they don’t notice. They don’t believe we’re even capable of being a threat, and they misstep more than they might with someone they simply don’t know.”

“What grinds me the most is that we’re sending kids out into the world who don’t know how to balance a checkbook, don’t know how to apply for a loan, don’t even know how to properly fill out a job application, but because they know the quadratic formula we consider them prepared for the world?”

“We’re hungry for acceptance—from ourselves even more than from others—for love, for fulfillment, for peace. We’re hungry for a life we think we don’t deserve or can’t have, for the person we know we can be if only we’d give ourselves the chance.”

“I don’t know if it’s possible to take hate away from people. Not even people like us, who’ve seen firsthand what hate can do. We’re all hurting. We’re all going to be hurting for a long time. And we, probably more than anyone else out there, will be searching for a new reality every day. A better one.”

“Whatever problems we had back then don’t exist anymore. It’s why we have this second chance, and we can’t throw it away. Besides, you were the one who said we’re not exactly the same as we were back then. If we’re not the same, then things can turn out differently.”

“We all wear uniforms, even if we’re conforming to unconformity. People who try so hard to look different end up looking the same as all the other people who try so hard to look different.”