“There’s no winning arguments with your parents, so why get all pumped up over them? It is way better to dive down and get out of the way than it is to get clobbered by some parental tidal wave.”

“And since you know what a tree-climbing weenie I am, I think it's pretty clear that I'm willing to do anything to get her to talk to me. Man, I'll dive after her into a chicken coop full of poop if that's what it takes. I'll ride my bike all the stinkin' way to school for the rest of eternity if it means being with her”

“You told us over and over that you don’t think you could live without books, but the ironic thing is, you’d probably die before you’d think to rip pages out of one to start a fire. Am I right?Well, get over it already. Better to be warm then well-read.”

“And then she started climbing/ The girl is in the seventh grade, and she's climbing a tree--way, way up in the tree. And why does she do it? So she can yell down at us that the bus is five! four! three blocks away! Blow-by-blow traffic watch from a tree--what every kid in junior high feels like hearing first thing in the morning. She tried to get me to come up there with her, too. "Bryce, come on! You won't believe the colors! It's absolutely magnificent! Bryce, you've got to come up here!" Yeah, I could just hear it: "Bryce and Juli sitting in a tree..." Was I ever going to leave the second grade behind?”

“Don't sum up a person based on what you see, or what you don't understand; get to know them”

“Sometimes I get so caught up in my own problems that I forget how amazing the world is.”

“Holly, I understand that you are upset because Gemma pulled down your ants, but why did you think pouring motor oil inside her backpack is the way to solve the problem?”