“I realise now that I wanted to disappear. To get so lost that nobody ever found me. To go so far away that I'd never be able to make my way home again. But I have no idea why.”
“A person’s character, I realize, is never black-and-white. There is so much gray.”
“Teenagers, as everyone knows, tend to believe they are immortal.”
“Don’t say ‘sorry.’ Just cut it out.”
“Liz?"
"Hmmm?"
"Why do you care about me?"
The question seems to startle me. It's uncharacteristic for Richie, who is usually so cool and self-assured. I open my eyes. "Why would you ask me that?"
"Because I don't understand. We're so different."
I reach around the side of his face. Once again, I wipe fresh beads of sweat from his forehead. This time, I don't even bother wiping my hands on my pants. I lace my fingers into his again, and the two of us lie together, his damp clamminess seeping onto my made up face and my pretty clothes. Obviously, I couldn't care less.
"But we fit," I whisper. "Like this." And I tighten my grip around him.
"Mmm." He smiles, his eyes still closed.
"You're right. We do."
"Richie...I'm lying. I don't like you."
"You don't?" His voice cracks.
"No." I bring my lips close to his ear. "I love you Richie Wilson.”
“It occurs to me now that it isn't that I was always certain there was no truth to the rumor; it was that I didn't want to acknowledge the possibility there could be any truth to it.”
“He can't hear you." Alex sighs. "You aren't the sharpest sheep in the barn, are you?"
"That's not even the right metaphor," I snap, my attention still focused on Richie. "It's the sharpest pencil in the box."
"Right." Alex nods. "Except you are a sheep. I'm not stupid, I just adjusted the metaphor to fit your persona-"
"Oh, shut up. Richie!" I scream again. Alex shakes his head.”
“You know what my friends and I used to call girls like you? Girls who had everything handed to them on a silver platter, who only cared about how they looked and who was dating the most popular guy?"
"What?"
His grin grows wider. "We called you bitches. You girls were straight-up bitches.”
“There was never any question, not for either of us, that we'd stay together after high school. Richie Wilson was the love of my life.”
“Solo quiero que vivan su vida; que sigan adelante sabiendo que cada instante es valioso, que cada día es un regalo; que vean la vida como lo que es: una serie de infinitas posibilidades, no solo de grandes penas sino también de grandes alegrías.”
“Why should they bother to go grocery shopping? It's not like their son needs to eat or anything like that.”
“It’s like they don’t even know how to stand beside each other without one groping the other. Their clinginess has always annoyed me.”
“My favorite uncle was gay,” she says, “and he doesn’t like to dance, either.” She looks at Chad. “I don’t like that word. Fag. Don’t use it, okay?”
“he saw that which cannot be seen; a concept; the adaptive, self-seeking urge to survive, to bend everything that can be reached to that end, and to remove and to add and to smash and to create so that one particular collection of cells can go on, can move onwards and decide, and keeping moving, and keeping deciding, knowing that - if nothing else - at least it lives. And it had two shadows, it was two things; it was the need and it was the method. The need was obvious; to defeat what opposed its life. The method was that taking and bending of materials and people to one purpose, the outlook that everything could be used in the fight; that nothing could be excluded, that everything was a weapon, and the ability to handle those weapons, to find them and choose which one to aim and fire; that talent, that ability, that use of weapons.”
“I will go out again this very night with my rockets and fuses. I will blow them straight out of their comfortable beds. Blow the rooftops off their houses. Blow the black, wretched night to bits. I will not stop. For mad I may be, but I will never be convenient.”
“Es una lección invariable a la humanidad que la distancia en el tiempo, y asimismo en el espacio, da perspectiva a las cosas.”
“Wow. Who would want a fish for a pet when they could have a turtle?!”
“Hello Dad! It is now three in the morning. Do you know where I am? ”
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