Quotes from Cracked Up to Be

“The sooner you make a mistake and learn to live with it, the better. You're not responsible for everything. You can't control the way things end up.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“How does it feel to know that even at my worst, you're still not good enough?”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Imagine 4 years.
Four years, two suicides, one death, one rape, two pregnancies (one abortion), three overdoses, countless drunken antics, pantsings, spilled food, theft, fights, broken limbs, turf wars–every day, a turf war–six months until graduation and no one gets a medal when they get out. But everything you do here counts.

High school.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“The problem with alienating, self-destructive behavior is people get it into their heads it’s a cry for help. It wasn’t.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“I don't like you with Becky. She's not a very nice girl.'
'I don't like you with Jake. He's not me.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Everyone should know--there's no such thing as a decent human being. It's just an illusion. And when it's gone, it's really gone.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“If I can do things right, I don't see why everyone else can't.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“I mean, you know how it is. You chase a bottle of sleeping pills with a bottle of Jack Daniel's and life's never the same, no matter how many times you try to tell people it was just an accident.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Jake and Chris talk through art and discover they have so much in common it's amazing. Like, They Could Be Boyfriends If They Didn't Like Vaginas So Much Amazing. ”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“I elbow my way through the mass of people to get to my locker because there's something immensely satisfying about the toughest part of my arm connecting with the softest part of everyone else.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Becky, you're only standing there because I decided I didn't want to.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“...We’re working with paint today and I pick the easel next to Jake’s. It thrills him.
“What do you want?”
“I want to apologize if you’re offended by the way I am,” I tell him. “But that’s the way I am with everyone. I was just trying to make you feel welcome.”
“That’s the crappiest apology I’ve ever heard.”
“Well, that’s because I’m not really sorry.”
He rolls his eyes. “Right.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“I take a deep breath. It smells suspiciously like bullshit in here.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Hey, let’s give her some space. Get back to the game, guys,” Chris says. Thank God for him, just this once. “And cheerleading. Get back to that, too.” No one moves. “Okay, fuck off, basically, is what I’m saying. Fuck off!”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“I was perfect... and then I wasn't.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“You think I ever stopped wanting to die after the motel?" I ask. "You think a feeling like that just goes away?”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“You're not responsible for everything, Parker. You can't control the way things end up. Stop trying.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Uh, what are you doing?'
'What does it look like I'm doing?' Jake asks, settling into the seat beside me. The bus jerks forward. 'I'm sitting beside you.'
'No, you're not. Your seat is in the middle. Nice try, though.'
He has the audacity to ignore me, sets his book bag on his lap and rummages through it. After a minute, he pulls out a folded sheet of paper and hands it to me.
I unfold it. 'A love letter? How sweet.'
'No.' He turns pink. 'It's just something I found on the Internet-'
'Porn? You shouldn't have.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“I didn't want to be popular because it was easier; I wanted to be popular because in high school that's the best thing you can be: perfect. Everything else is shit.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Oh" She seems relieved. "So you weren't—"
"Don't worry, Ms.Grey. I wasn't drinking, smoking, toking or snorting in school. I keep the recreational drug use at home where it belongs.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Cardboard cutouts of cheerleaders operated by arthritic monkeys would move more fluidly.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“The fall takes no time and forever.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“You know how you feel when you meet someone and they just give you the impression they're living on this entirely different planet from everyone else? That's sort of how I felt when I met you.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Mom and Dad exchange a nervous glance and have a telepathic conversation about it. I hear every word.

Do we let her out? It's past curfew.
True, but look at that—at least she asked!
I know! I can hardly believe it!
She could have sneaked out, but she asked!
I know! We're good parents!

"What time will you be back?" Dad asks.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Anyway," Jake says. I turn back to him. “I just wanted to start over a good note, that’s all.”
I have to put this poor guy out of his misery. “Look, Jake, I’m not in the market for –“ I almost say a boyfriend, which is true, but this is even truer: “People”.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“Yeah, sure,” I say, and then, for good measure: “Whatever.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“You get away with a lot, even after you're caught.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“it's blindingly awful and awfully satisfying all at the same time.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“I don't have time for the 'things change speech, Parker."
"So give me the CliffNotes version.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

“I get caught up in outcomes. I convince myself they're truths. No one will notice how wrong you are if everything you do ends up right. The rest becomes incidental. So incidental that, after a while, you forget. Maybe you are perfect. Good. It must be true. Who can argue with results? You're not so wrong after all. So you buy into it and you go crazy maintaining it. Except it creeps up on you sometimes, that you're not right. Imperfect. Bad. So you snap your fingers and it goes away.
Until something you can't ignore happens and you see it all over yourself.
And there's only one thing left to do.”
― Courtney Summers, quote from Cracked Up to Be

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Popular quotes

“Moderately wise each one should be,
Not overwise, for a wise man's heart
Is seldom glad (Norse Wisdom)”
― Edith Hamilton, quote from Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

“Words are like seeds, I think, planted into our hearts at a tender age. They take root in us as we grow, settling deep into our souls. The good words plant well. They flourish and find homes in our hearts. They build trunks around our spines, steadying us when we’re feeling most flimsy; planting our feet firmly when we’re feeling most unsure. But the bad words grow poorly. Our trunks infest and spoil until we are hollow and housing the interests of others and not our own. We are forced to eat the fruit those words have borne, held hostage by the branches growing arms around our necks, suffocating us to death, one word at a time.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Ignite Me

“I've never really thought about it before, but it's a miracle how many kinds of light there are in the world, how many skies: the pale brightness of spring, when it feels like the hole world's blushing; the lush, bright boldness of a July noon; purple storm skies and a green queasiness just before lightning strikes and crazy multicolored sunsets that look like someone's acid trip.”
― Lauren Oliver, quote from Before I Fall

“Where did she come from, and where can I find one?"

"Picked this one up at a gas station in West Virginia, bargain price. Last one on the shelf, sorry.”
― Alexandra Bracken, quote from The Darkest Minds

“To shut your eyes is to guess nothing of blindness. Beneath your world of skies and faces and buildings exists a rawer and older world, a place where surface planes disintegrate and sounds ribbon in shoals through the air. Marie-Laure can sit in an attic high above the street and hear lilies rustling in marshes two miles away. She hears Americans scurry across farm fields, directing their huge cannons at the smoke of Saint-Malo; she hears families sniffling around hurricane lamps in cellars, crows hopping from pile to pile, flies landing on corpses in ditches; she hears the tamarinds shiver and the jays shriek and the dune grass burn; she feels the great granite fist, sunk deep into the earth’s crust, on which Saint-Malo sits, and the ocean teething at it from all four sides, and the outer islands holding steady against the swirling tides; she hears cows drink from stone troughs and dolphins rise through the green water of the Channel; she hears the bones of dead whales stir five leagues below, their marrow offering a century of food for cities of creatures who will live their whole lives and never once see a photon sent from the sun. She hears her snails in the grotto drag their bodies over the rocks.”
― Anthony Doerr, quote from All the Light We Cannot See

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