“Ultimately, the main reasons why I will be chubby for life are (1) I have virtually no hobbies except dieting. I can’t speak any non-English languages, knit, ski, scrapbook, or cook. I have no pets. I don’t know how to do drugs. I lost my passport three years ago when I moved into my house and never got it renewed. Video games scare me because they all seem to simulate situations I’d hate to be in, like war or stealing cars. So if I ever lost weight I would also lose my only hobby; (2) I have no discipline; I’m like if Private Benjamin had never toughened up but, in fact, got worse; (3) Guys I’ve dated have been into me the way I am; and (4) I’m pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don’t break a beach chair.”

“I’m over here in my unit, isolated and alone, eating my terrible tasting food, and I have to look over at that. That looks like the most fun I’ve ever seen in my entire life, and it’s B.S. - excuse my language. I’m just saying that I wash and dry; I’m like a single mother. Look, we all know home-ec is a joke—no offense—it’s just that everyone takes this class to get an A, and it’s bullshit—and I’m sorry. I’m not putting down your profession, but it’s just the way I feel. I don’t want to sit here, all by myself, cooking this shitty food—no offense—and I just think that I don’t need to cook tiramisu. When am I gonna need to cook tiramisu? Am I going to be a chef? No. There’s three weeks left of school, give me a fuckin’ break! I’m sorry for cursing.”

“Maholtz asked me, “Why do you hate me?”I said, Everyone hates you.“I know,” he said. “I know that,” he said, “but they hate me cause I scared them or had what they wanted. You weren’t ever scarend of me. You never wanted what I had. Except for the sap. And then you took it, and now I don’t have it, so why do you hate me?”Maybe it’s your accent.“I’m from Pinttsburgh,” he said.Maybe you shouldn’t be.“I can’t help where I’m from.”We turned at Main Hall. Feld was talking to Forrest Kenilworth and Cody. The chair sat dripping in front of the door.So maybe it’s your face. The way you look at girls like you’re scheming to corner them.“I was borng this way, though. I can’t help how my face loonks.”So maybe it’s all the banced thing that you say.“They just come out of me. I’m hated, I feel it. I say those things without thinking, from hurnt. I can’t help that either. It’s not my faulnt.”I guess, then, I hate you for being so helpless.”

“I’m just me – half a family, no awareness whatsoever about style, or what’s in and what’s out. I’m not like the lizards. I don’t really even know how I’m supposed to be with a guy that I’m attracted to. I’ve never been a game player. I don’t know how to be coy… or sexy… or whatever. I have no finesse.”

“I have to figure out why I worked at a job I hated for years. I have to find out why I can’t see what everyone else sees in me. I don’t feel beautiful. When I look in the mirror, I never saw beautiful. For this to happen to someone like me, it’s devastating, Jonas. I don’t want you to think it’s vanity, it isn’t. I can’t see me and I need to be able to do that. I need to find out what I’m like and what I want. I have to be comfortable in my own skin before I can be in a relationship the way you want.”

“I have never learned how to arrangemy face into that blank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know—that super-relaxed, totally-in-charge expressionwhich makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of a riot in Jakarta. Oh, no. When I don’t know what I’m doing, I look like I don’t know what I’m doing.When I’m excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently,I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought. As David once put it, “You have the opposite of poker face. You have, like . . . miniature golf face.”