"I hated being called considerate.
It was my mother's favorite thing to be. It always made me feel like a
jerk, like a cross between Goody Two-Shoes and Florence Nightingale. I
loved Eeyore and felt sorry for him, that's all. I wasn't being good, I
wasn't saving people. I just liked the sad old donkey."
– Joan Abelove, Saying It Out Loud
"A half-forgotten holiday has unveiled every knife that sticks inside me,
every cut. No Rachel, no Heather, not even a silly, geeky boy who would like
the inside girl I think I am."
– Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
"Lawyers on TV always tell their clients
not to say anything. The cops say that thing: 'Anything you say will be
used against you.' Self-incrimination. So why does everyone make such a
big, hairy deal about me not talking? Maybe I don't want to incriminate
myself. Maybe I don't like the sound of my voice. Maybe I don't have anything
to say."
– Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak
"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an
inexhaustable well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times,
and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a
certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply part
of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it. Perhaps
four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will
you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless."
– Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
" What happened to me by myself felt partly dreamed, partly imagined,
definitely shifted and warped by my own fears and wants. But who knows?
Maybe there is more truth in how you feel than in what actually happens."
– Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
"It's mind control, see. You have to go to school, get those exams, get to
university or college, get a job, get married, don't miss the boat, do it now
or you'll shoot your life down the drain. Yeah. They got you as soon as you
were born. They never risked a second of your life. When you have kids they'll
be telling them they have to wear a plastic mask and put a penny in the slot
about their nose before they can breathe in."
– Melvin Burgess, Smack
"Tar's so sweet. He's the sort of person who makes you want to be close to
him. He's the sort of person you'd pick to be in love with.
"So it was ... maybe a bit unfair on him. On the other hand, I liked
him more than anyone and I fancied him something rotten. After the phone call
I started to think about spending days with him with no one to say do this, do
that ... and I just felt SOOOO good about it. Holding his hand in the dark.
Sleeping with him, talking to him when there was no one else there. Looking
after him because, poor Tar, he needs someone. He wants someone. He wants me."
– Melvin Burgess, Smack
"Sometimes when we were hiding behind the breakers with the crowd, he'd
hold me so tight, I'd think he's not just holding me, he's holding on to me,
like I'm stopping him from falling off. I'd see him looking at me and his eyes
were so full of ... I dunno. Like he was about to cry. And, it's stupid, I know,
but I think maybe he's hurting because he loves me and I don't love him, and
this great lump used to come up into my throat and I'd hold him tight and try
and squeeze him as tight as I could and try as hard as I could to fall in love
with him the way he loved me."
– Melvin Burgess, Smack
"'Contrariwise,' continued Tweedledee, 'If it was so, it might be; and if
it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.'"
– Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
"I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them
that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't
change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much
worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have. Good
and bad.... I don't know. It's just different. Maybe it's good to put things
in perspective, but sometimes, I think that the only perspective is to really
be there. Like Sam said. Because it's okay to feel things. And be who you are
about them."
– Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
"'That's one way to win in history,'
her father said. 'You don't bother with battles and soldiers and gunpowder.
You make a group of people unimportant, and they vanish, like an unpopular
kid in the class.'"
– Caroline B. Cooney, Burning Up
"He began to understand why people talked to God. You didn't need to give
half so much background or play as many games."
– Caroline B. Cooney, Burning Up
"Have you ever just sat and stared
at the ocean? Mind-boggling, the way the waves just keep rolling in like
that, crashing on the rocks, one after the other. And when you think how
they've been doing this for millions of years ... I sigh and wrap
my arms around my knees. Makes me feel like my dumb problems don't matter
one little bit. Not to the universe ..."
– Linda Crew, Someday I'll Laugh About This
"Now I see that you can't even do
the same thing the very next day in the same place with the same people
and expect it to turn out right. It's like we're all in motion, caught
up in our own changes. No choice but to keep moving on to something new."
– Linda Crew, Someday I'll Laugh About This
"'Why do you suppose people don't
like other people to know they care?' I wonder out loud. Kirsten doesn't
say anything, so I try to answer my own question. 'Maybe because when people
know you care, they can figure out how to hurt you.'"
– Linda Crew, Someday I'll Laugh About This
"But it's strange, when you've always
been told something is true, like the moon will come back. You need
proof. And while you wait, you feel the entire balance of your world just
tipping. It's crazy. But when it's over, and it does come back,
that's the best, because it's all you want, everything narrows down to
just that. It's this great rush, like for that one second everything's
okay with the world again. It's amazing."
– Sarah Dessen, Keeping the Moon
"There are some things in this world you rely on, like a sure
bet. And when they let you down, shifting from where you carefully
placed them, it shakes your faith, right where you stand."
– Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You
"Sometimes love can be an ugly thing."
– Sarah Dessen, That Summer
"I wondered if this was how Gwendolyn
felt running wild at night, this lost, loose feeling that no consequence
could be so harmful as the sense of staying where you were, or of being
who you are."
– Sarah Dessen, That Summer
"I wanted to be somewhere else ... Someplace where the sight of me
sobbing would tie me to no one and no one to me."
– Sarah Dessen, That Summer
"...to a happy man, a prayer is a monotonous composition, void of meaning,
until the day when suffering deciphers the sublime language through which the
poor victim addresses God."
– Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo translated by Robin Buss