“Your lot in life? A lot is something you draw, like straws. It's chance. You didn't get this life by chance. You chose it on purpose. If you're dissatisfied from it, you can change it.”
“And the rest is happily ever After.”
“Waiter, this is not the policeman I ordered. I wanted one with a lot less sauce.”
“But you can’t live your life worried about dying all the time. If you do, you’re dead already.”
“My knee radiated heat. As I watched him pull himself from the car and walk casually across the brightly lit parking lot, I thought dumb things. I will never wash my knee again. I will never wash these jeans again. I will cut the knee out of these jeans and sew a pillow to sleep on every night, just to have a molecule of him in my bed with me.”
“You can't tell a seventeen-year-old anything. They think they're immortal. They don't listen. Seventeen-year-olds have to see it for themselves.”
“Consider yourself hugged. Virtual hug."
I felt the virtual hug, warm and snug.”
“Officer After leaned across the seat toward me - which, under the circumstances, made me start back. 'I'm sorry I'm not allowed to beat the shit out of him for you.”
“Yeah, I understood that last night at the wreck. Nothing says I love you like a dead body.”
“I guess we both understood that our relationship was built entirely on witty repartee, and neither of us thought we could be witty on four hours of shut-eye.”
“All right," I said. "But from now on, every time you show me a dead body, I'm having sex with Eric.”
“I swear, Tiff, if my ass made good grades, you'd want to date my ass.”
“What have we done to each other?”
“That's stupid. I said no because you don't love me.
- John”
“I should have run away from you and started college and gone on without you. But I would always have regretted it if I didn't give this a shot.
- Tiffany”
“His dark eyes challenged me. They were weapons that could hurt me. Here was the worst thing about them: I could tell that if Johnafter loved you, his dark eyes would be beautiful and friendly and warm. So every time he cut me down with a look that was cold and unfriendly and ugly, it was a double insult, a reminder of what I could never have. I found myself avoiding his dark eyes when I could.”
“Why are you pretending to write, when I already know you're just doing that to intimidate me?”
“No. I just don't want to be a detective. They figure out what happened after the fact, when it's too late. I want to prevent it from happening.”
“That is the way convince people. Or change them and prevent them from hurting whether themselves and others. Art is the most effective form of communication.
You can use it to lift the human spirit and make them understand that there is more to life than their next drug use.”
“He looked over at me. “Indigo,” he said. “Cyan”. He glanced at the road in front of him, glanced at me. He reached over and ran his fingers down one of the darkest strands in the back, where I’d used a little purple. “Violet.”
“I gave my dad a thumbs-up.
He stared at me. My mom turned to him in the car, asking him, What? What is it? He kept staring at me. My brown hair was an even bigger shock for him than I'd expected.
I smiled and waved at him and mouthed, "Welcome home."
He put his hand to his eyes. He knew I was finally cured.”
“Boys are two years behind girls in maturity level.”
“Art is the most effective form of communication.”
“Nothing says "I love you" like a dead body”
“What do you write in those forms?” I asked.
“Nothing. I just do this to look threatening.”
“No matter how careful you are"..."there's always going to be a mess, and you're going to have to clean it up afterward.”
“Tiffany, this is Officer After, who arrested you. Officer After, this is Tiffany Hart, who doesn't remember you.”
“She had burned through a fair sampling of manhood trying to find someone, not to make her "happy" - that wasn't the point - but to cauterize her relentlessly dripping wounds.”
“Yes, anything could happen at any time.”
“It's not what you're thinkin!" Jennah squawks, turning pink. "My God, you men only have one thing on the brain! We went for a walk in the park!"
"Well, we didn't exactly do very much walking," I interject, determined to wind her up.
Harry begins to laugh.
Jennah gasps in outrage. "We sat and watched the swans on the lake, thank you very much, Harry!"
Harry is still laughing. "Now could that possibly be a euphemism for--"
Jennah yelps and whacks Harry on the back of the head. Harry cries out in mock outrage. "Aargh! Is this how she treats you, Flynn? Whacking you if you don't make the bed in the morning, whacking you if you don't put the loo seat down--!”
“Every morning I was renewed, though. Air and light healed me, over and over. I got to where I depended on it. When I was feeling my worst, I would step out into the yard and put my hands on the branches of the little redbud. It made me feel like I was saying a prayer, to do this. I know that sounds like foolishness, but that little tree was like an altar for me. I stood there in the cold of early winter, wishing for the redbud to bear leaves so that I might put my face against them.”
“Who and what we surround ourselves with is who and what we become. In the midst of good people, it is easy to be good. in the midst of bad people, it is easy to be bad.”
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