James Patterson · 288 pages
Rating: (16.7K votes)
“Every masterpiece comes at the end of a long line of failures.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“People always talk about how great it is to get older. All I saw were more rules and more adults telling me what I could and couldn't do, in the name of what's " good for me." Yeah, well, asparagus is good for me, but it still makes me want to throw up.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Now, like all the other schools I’ve ever attended, the hallways of Long Beach Middle School are plastered with all sorts of NO BULLYING posters. There’s only one problem: Bullies, it turns out, don’t read too much. I guess reading really isn’t a job requirement in the high-paying fields of name-calling, nose-punching, and atomic-wedgie-yanking.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“That’s right: Never underestimate the power of a good laugh. It can stop some of the fiercest middle-school monsters.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Excuse me, sir, you got dog poop on your shoe.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“This was the weird part with me and Miller. We both hated each other, but even more than that, he wanted my money and I wanted my notebook back. Neither of us had said anything about it to Stricker, even when we both got suspended. It was like middle school Mafia or something.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“The next forty-five minutes in that office was about as much fun as a day at Disney World—when it’s pouring rain. And all there is to eat are hot-dog buns. And you get electrocuted on the rides.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Thirsty?” I said, trying to stay cool. “You know, this is totally against the rules,” she said. “That makes it taste better,” I said. (Good line, right?) Jeanne”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“I’M RAFe KHATCHADORiAN, TRAGiC HeRO I”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“that kid’s nothing but a little hoodlum.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Five minutes,” I said, and walked away, but my heart was still going just as fast as before. This was only half over. Was it five minutes until I pulled this off? Or five minutes to live?”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“It’s just you, your homework, and the homework room. All. Day. Long. I turned thirteen in that room. Winter ended, and then spring came and went. Wars happened. Trees grew. Babies were born and people died.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“That’s me, by the way, arriving at “prison”—also known as Hills Village Middle School—in”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“I may have been dressed as a falcon, but I’ll tell you what. I felt like the biggest”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Here are some other people I don’t trust as far as I can throw a truckload of pianos.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Rafe jumped Miller!” Gabe said. The problem was, it was true. There were about three dozen witnesses.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“It feels as honest as the day is crummy that I begin this tale of total desperation and woe with me, my pukey sister, Georgia, and Leonardo the Silent sitting like rotting sardines in the back of a Hills Village Police Department cruiser.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“What?” says Kosgrov. “You think I won’t lay you out just because you’re stuck in a wheelchair, funny boy?” “Yeah,” I say. “Pretty much.” Turns out I’m pretty wrong.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Who cares?” I told him. “I’m already in trouble. Keep talking.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Stevie Kosgrov punched me just like I was a regular, normal kid”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Okay? Now you know all this stuff about me, and I still don’t know anything about you. I don’t even know if you’re still there. Are you? And if you are, can I trust you with the rest? I still want to know—are you a good person? Maybe that’s not fair of me to ask, since I haven’t even figured out whether I’m a good person or not. I guess you can be the judge. Here’s the deal. If you’re okay with me so far, then keep reading. But if you’ve gotten this far and you think I’m the lowest of the low and I don’t deserve to have my own book, then maybe you should stop right now. Because it only gets worse from here. (Or better, depending on how you look at it.) Signed, your friend (?), RK”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“I can see why you, sir, are the champ. You bully without regard to race, religion, creed, national origin, or physical abilities. You are an equal-opportunity tormentor.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“family we choose. You don’t know how lucky I am that Pierce and Gaynor chose me. These two guys are awesome. The best.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Mom and Bear got into a big fight that afternoon when she told him what had happened. He kept yelling about how she wasn’t “hard enough” on me, and she kept telling him to back off. I just stayed in my room, wishing for it to be over. Finally, Mom said something about how she was late for work, and she slammed the door on her way out.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“Now, I don’t know if you can appreciate this without actually knowing her, but getting Mrs. Stricker to laugh is like getting an octopus to stand up on two legs.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“pay somebody to go to school for me.”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“alarm box, and put my finger on the little white”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
“she told me, and now she was just annoyed. By the time I said”
― James Patterson, quote from Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life
James Patterson
Born place: in Newburgh, New York, The United States
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“he would go to his uncle’s office where he would answer the telephone or run errands, all with some similitude of responsibility even if not actually of necessity; at least it was an intimation of his willingness to carry some of his own weight. He had begun it when he was a child, when he could scarcely remember, out of that blind and absolute attachment to his mother’s only brother which he had never tried to reason about, and he had done it ever since;”
― William Faulkner, quote from Intruder in the Dust
“Father sighed. “Please spare me these arguments of yours.”
“Whose arguments should I use?”
― Franny Billingsley, quote from Chime
“Looking out of the window at the infinite sky, I prayed out, 'Dear Baby Jesus, I am sorry for my sin, even though I do not know what they are, which seems a bit unfair if it is going to be held against me. But that is your way. And I am not questioning your wisdomosity. In future, however, would it be possible for my life to be not so entirely crap? Thank you.”
― Louise Rennison, quote from Away Laughing on a Fast Camel
“All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find.”
― Dylan Thomas, quote from A Child's Christmas in Wales
“You taste like sin—the best kind imaginable.”
― Emily Snow, quote from Consumed
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