“I was never normal, but I liked to pretend that I was. It usually took a few months before everyone else caught on.”

“If I pretended to be "normal" and behaved just like everybody else, if I masked my emotions and smiled a lot, even if I felt disconsolate, nobody would be able to tell”

“I caught a glimpse of my shadow today. It's usually so hard to see because it always hides behind me. It's so much easier to see everyone else's.”

“No one is normal. Everyone is just pretending to be normal.”

“Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It's like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to. It was like that when I asked Alice Evans to be my bathroom partner. I wasn't one of the girls who tortured her on purpose, but I had nver lifted a finger to help her before, or even spent one minute being nice to her.”

“New York is strange in the summer. Life goes on as usual but it’s not, it’s like everyone is just pretending, as if everyone has been cast as the star in a movie about their life, so they’re one step removed from it. And then in September it all gets normal again.”