“It was like this blackness that crept into the corners of my life until everything was grey and dirty. My insides felt burnt out, like if you cut me open, all you would find would be smoke. No heart. No bones. There was nothing left, just the anger. It followed me everywhere. It sat on my bed and watched me sleep and when I had to eat, it looked at me across the table.”
“I don’t know if that’s ever happened to you, if you’ve loved someone, loved who they are, then found out they’re not that person after all. It doesn’t just break your heart, does it? It breaks you. Then you’re not who you thought you were, either.”
“We all know what we had, don’t we? We just never thought we could lose it.”
“All my life, all I'd ever heard was: Emily's so shy, Emily's so quiet, Emily's so clever. Thinking back on it now, I don't know if I was ever any of those things, or if I just became shy and quiet and clever because everyone said I was.”
“Why do you hate her, Emily?"
"For reminding me that I did this to myself.”
“China shop rules, Juliet: you break it, you pay for it, and you broke me. You got what you deserved.”
“Doctor Gilyard was right, Juliet and I do have a lot in common. She lost her mother, I lost my mother. She lost her father, I lost my father. She had to start again, I had to start again. She had to pretend to be someone else, I had to pretend to be someone else. But where she was better for it, I was worse. Where she used what happened to make her stronger, I held on to it. I let it distil into something filthy and black. And I hated her for that.
Hated her.”
“That fucking notebook. I’m going to set fire to it.”
“Hast du jemals so jemanden kennengelernt? jemanden,der so gut ist -nicht perfekt ,sondern gut -das man sich daneben wie Abfall fühlt”
“I'd like to add some beauty to life," said Anne dreamily. "I don't exactly want to make people KNOW more... though I know that IS the noblest ambition... but I'd love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me... to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I hadn't been born.”
“When I talked to him earlier, he said he had to work tonight,” Peter explained, “but that we should go ahead and draw for him.”
“Draw?” I asked uneasily. “Oh Lord. Tell me it’s not Pictionary night too.”
Peter sighed wearily. “Draw for secret Santas. Do you even read the e-mails I send?”
“Secret Santas? Seems like we just did that,” I said.
“Yeah, a year ago,” said Peter. “Just like we do very Christmas.”
“You know how these things are supposed to work, right? The good-looking popular guy suddenly shows interest in the mousy girl from the country. Everyone hates her for it, but she starts to gain confidence in herself. Then the guy betrays her and regrets it. It’s awful, but afterward she ‘finds herself,’ realizes she doesn’t need him, and maybe there’s some other stuff that happens”—he waggles his fingers in the air—“and finally she turns into the most beautiful girl ever because she likes herself. But it won’t work at all if you don’t stammer and blush and pretend you don’t like me.” She’s”
“I used to imagine adventures for myself, I invented a life, so that I could at least exist somehow.”
“I kiss him to get him to stop talking. If he keeps talking I will love him, and I don't want to love him. I really don't. As strategies go, it's not my finest. Kissing is just another way of talking except without the words.”
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