"The night sky stretched on forever above me, the stars flung like glass beads and pearls on a black velvet cloak."

"I just thought of a great theory that explains everything. When I went to that party, I was abducted by aliens. They have created a fake Earth and fake high school to study me and my reactions. This certainly explains cafeteria food."

"Yes it is, because you can only be brave if you're scared."

"Censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them."

"I'd given him bits and pieces of my peculiar life, but colored softer and funnier than they had been. I'd painted my dad as Don Quixote in a semi, on a quest for philosophical truths and the best cup of coffee in the nation."

"I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?"

"Tell me this is a nightmare."

"We tilt our heads back and open wide. The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one breath everything feels better.Then it melts.The bus drivers rev their engines and the ice cloud shatters. Everyone shuffles forward. They don't know what just happened. They can't remember."

"My only choice was to fight my way out, even if I didn't think I would make it."

"Principal Principal: Where's your late pass, mister?Errant Student: I'm on my way to get one now. PP: But you can't be in the hall without a pass. ES: I know, I'm so upset. That's why I need to hurry, so I can get a pass. Principal Principal pauses with a look on his face like Daffy Duck's when Bugs is pulling a fast one. PP: Well, hurry up, then, and get that pass."

"You're the one who doesn't understand, I've been standing on the edge with you for years."

"Few people know this, but I am a trained assassin, skilled in jujitsu and krav maga. I can also, with a few folds, turn an ordinary piece of notebook paper into a lethal weapon. Or I can turn it into a butterfly, which is a great trick when I'm babysitting.'I fought a smile. 'A trained assassin who babysits.''Only the Greene twins and only because their family gets every premium channel on the planet."

"I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking."

"We have to acknowledge that adolescence is that time of transition where we begin to introduce to children that life isn't pretty, that there are difficult things, there are hard situations, it's not fair. Bad things happen to good people."

"My parents didn't raise me to be religious. The closest we come to worship is the Trinity of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. I think the Merryweather cheerleaders confuse me because I missed out on Sunday School. It has to be a miracle. There is no other explanation. How else could they sleep with the football team on Saturday night and be reincarnated as virginal goddesses on Monday?"

"Everyone is born a freak,' notes Hayley. 'Every newborn baby, wet and hungry and screaming, is a fresh-hatched freak who wants to have a good time and make the world a better place. . . . Most teenagers wind up in high school. And high school is where the zombification process becomes deadly."

"Having a friend made everything else suck less."

"No, I am never setting foot in this house again it scares me and makes me sad and I wish you could be a mom whose eyes worked but I don't think you can."

"This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values...."

"I just want to sleep. The whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won't. I'll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head."

"Where did you live before you came here?' I asked. 'The moon,' he said smoothly. 'We left because the place had no atmosphere."

"If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that's why I was put on the planet."

"I can't do everything for you. You must walk alone to find your soul."

"The smoke shifted direction and I breathed in. Breathed out. On the inhale I was angry. On the exhale there it was again. Fear. The fear made me angry and the anger made me afraid and I wasn't sure who he was anymore. Or who I was."

"The gloaming that closed over us the cemetery had crawled inside his skin."

"I had let down my shields, that was the problem. The crazy inside Dad had infected me, weakened me so that when Finn smiled, I'd been vulnerable. I'd dropped my shields and let myself pretend that somebody like Finn would want to be with somebody like me."

"My English teacher has no face. She has uncombed stringy hair that droops on her shoulders. The hair is black from her part to her ears and then neon orange to the frizzy ends. I can't decide if she had pissed off her hairdresser or is morphing into a monarch butterfly. I call her Hairwoman."

"I need a new friend. I need a friend, period. Not a true friend, nothing close or share clothes or sleepover giggle giggle yak yak. Just a pseudo-friend, disposable friend. Friend as accessory. Just so I don't feel or look so stupid."

"Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it. He doesn't hear the impact, can't smell the blood."

"I have to go. Boss hasthis weird idea that I should actually work while he's payingme."

"She turns to us, acts surprised to see us, then does the bit with the back of the hand to the forehead. 'You're lost!' 'You're angry!' 'You're in the wrong school!' 'You're in the wrong country!' 'You're on the wrong planet!"

"She cannot chain my soul. Yes, she could hurt me. She'd already done so...I would bleed, or not. Scar, or not. Live, or not. But she could not hurt my soul, not unless I gave it to her."

"Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March..........I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world...I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness...Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.I am thawing."

"Why are you being so mean?''Friends tell friends the truth.''yeah, but not to hurt, to help."

"A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree.Dad: He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again. You watch - by the end of summer, this tree will be the strongest on the block."

"I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way.... I didn't try hard enough to swallow myself."

"When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time."

"It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say."

"I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I needto see my bones or I will hate myself even more and Imight cut out my heart or take every pill that was evermade."

"I could never hate you, even if I wanted to."

"I want to tell him that it's just a stupid car, but bits of me are scattered all over town; the graveyard, school, Cassie's room, the motel, and standing in from of the sink in my mother's kitchen. It takes too much energy to gather all the bits together, so I just sit there and watch him implode."

"Dr. StupidParker says that when I'm sad it really means I'm angry and when I'm angry it really means I'm afraid."

"I stuff my mouth with old fabric and scream until there are no sounds left under my skin."

"Why do you have such a crappy attitude about math?''I don't. I have a crappy attitude about everything."

"The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up. That's when they can hear us true."

"I want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy -- old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length."

"Melancholy held me hostage, and the bees built a hive of sadness in my soul."

"There was a loud shuffling above. A line of redcoats took their position at the edge of the ravine and aimed down at the rebels. 'Present!' the British officer screamed to his men. 'Present!' yelled the American officer. His men brought the butts of their muskets up to their shoulders and sighted down the long barrels, ready to shoot and kill. I pressed my face into the earth, unable to plan a course of escape. My mind would not be mastered and thought only of the wretched, lying, foul, silly girl who was the cause of everything. I thought of Isabel and I missed her. 'FIRE!"

"Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!"

"They mean hot like 'I'm too good for you I got my own money don't be frontin' me.' You're more like 'Be my boyfriend I'll make you cookies come meet my dad ' know what I mean."