“being a teenager these days is not for the faint of heart. ”

“And to the casual observer it looks like I have moved on since I go around wearing my little happy mask all day. I smile and laugh and carry on like my heart's still in one piece, but beneath it all, I am dying.”

“While Owen and Miles talk sports, I people watch. And this is what I see: teenagers trying to act like adults. Or how they think adults act. But mostly they look ridiculous, and I wonder what they don't want to do something that's more fun than drinking, smoking, flirting, and making out. Why are those activities considered to be fun?”

“I welcome each new day with a hopeful expectancy that I, too, will rise above the ordinary. For I am not content to live a merely "normal" life or settle for an average existence. No, I am destined for more--much, much more.”

“Anyway, Phillip isn't like that. From what I can see, Phillip has good judgement and he genuinely cares about me. And those might be rare qualities in seventeen-year-old boys these days. Not that I'm an expert. Although I am getting better at it.”

“It's amazing the things you realize when you lose someone: you get mad at yourself for not saying the things you could've a million times, you take for granted the days spent doing nothing when you could have been with them.Anyone can be taken, at any time in our lives,but we always wait until they're gone to say the things we never had the courage to before.”

“I do not understand what makes mothers think they are walking-talking thermometers.But I think somewhere during the process of giving birth and changing diapers, they actually begin to belive they have this supernatural sense.”