E. Lockhart · 229 pages
Rating: (24.8K votes)
“It shattered something inside me that hadn't been broken before.”
“I'm not telling you what I look like in any detail. I hate those endless descriptions of a heroine's physical attributes... First of all, it's boring. You should be able to imagine me without all the gory details of my hairstyle or the size of my thighs. And second, it really bothers me how in books it seems like the only two choices are perfection or self-hatred. As if readers will only like a character who's ideal - or completely shattered. Give me a break. People have got to be smarter than that.”
“When you hate someone you used to love, and you think he's done something awful - he probably has.”
“The problem is I can think whatever I think but I still feel the way I feel.”
“I say, thirteen is too many dogs for good mental health. Five is pretty much the limit. More than five dogs and you forfeit your right to call yourself entirely sane.
Even if the dogs are small.”
“My problem is I can think whatever I think—girl power, solidarity, Gloria Steinem rah rah rah — but I still feel the way I feel.
Which is jealous. And pissy about little things.”
“Dances are generally more fun to think about and get ready for than they actually are when you get there.”
“I don't know if there is a one for me. I think I might like variety.”
“And this is my life, getting dumped with no warning. Or liking people who don't like me back, or who don't like me enough, or not as much as they like someone else.”
“Sometimes it's a good idea to think about what you want from a situation, and try to get it, rather than just blurt out the first thing that comes into your head.”
“I swear, I have no understanding of other human beings.”
“If those are your friends, you've got no need for enemies.”
“Other people apologize and don't mean t "Sorry, but you shouldn't have..." or "Sorry, but I just didn't..." They apologize while telling you that they were right all along, which is the opposite of an actual apology.”
“Face it. There's not going to be a happy ending... at least not with this hero. So don't go mooning around thinking that your breakup is only the crisis before the big romantic scene, because I'm here to tell you that it's not. When you are dumped, you are dumped, and the guy isn't going to change his mind and realize that suddenly he loves you instead of that girl he's flirting with in lunchroom, now that he's free.”
“I sit around too much, waiting for other people to do stuff and angsting about stuff they've done, without doing anything myself.”
“By now, you know everything about Jackson Clarke, probably way more than anyone on earth wants to hear. This is all I have to add:
I still think about him every day.
When I see him, my heart jumps up in my chest.
I long for him to talk to me, and whenever he even says hello, I feel a thousand times worse than I did before.
I wish he was dead.
I wish he still liked me.”
“Now don't go getting excited that I'll suddenly notice Hutch in the soft pink light of the sunset and fall in love. He's not the love of my life, and no, we haven't been destined to get together ever since those gummy bears back in fourth grade, just because that's what happens in moves. And don't go thinking he and I become best friends in a Breakfast Club sort of way, either, with me realizing he's got a heart of gold under the Iron Maiden motorcycle jacket, and him realizing that I'm not the slut everyone thinks I am. Yes, that happens onscreen. But forget it. This is real life. He creeps me out. We have nothing in common besides leprosy.”
“...our family is white as far back on the family tree as I've ever looked, and I guess I picture people white white white unless someone tells me otherwise”
“Noel shook his head. "You think better of this scene than I do, Ruby. Don't you see how fake those girls are? Let it go. Have a laugh about it when you're older. Forget that junk."
I wanted to believe him, to skip off to some punk-rock hangout and develop ironic distance and start over in a universe where it didn't matter what any of these people thought about me. But I couldn't.
I just loved them.”
“Sex Ed - when I finally got to take it - was all about biology and birth control and nothing about anything that actually goes on between people.”
“I think I want a guy who eats vegetables.
And who isn't so normal.
He was just a muffin, you know?”
“They can't beat when I'm unhappy. They try and fix it; they'd fix the whole world if they could, just to make me feel better-even when it's none of their business. It's one of the many hazards of being an only child.”
“Sometimes people are mean because they feel insecure about themselves.”
“Okay, so I'm completely undignified. As soon as school got out, I ran up to Kim, Nora and Cricket on the quad and told them the news. They were completely surprised and excited: Cricket was even jumping up an down. "Shiv! Ag!" she yelled.
"He's fine," said Nora, giggling.
"Have you seen him in his rugby uniform? He has some serious legs," said Kim.
"How did it happen?" Cricket wanted to know.
I told all.
They wanted to know more.
"What did it feel like?"
Electricity.”
“It really bothers me how in books it seems like the only two choices are perfection or self-hatred.”
“Kim called me a slut under her breath in H&P, and Mr. Wallace heard her and gave a lecture on the negative effects of labels, and how words like that serve to limit women’s sexual expression, and how there’s a whole history of words that basically mean slut8 and yet there are no equivalent epithets for men whatsoever, and didn’t that say something about how women are viewed in our culture? He said a more accurate term could be: “a girl who’s using sexuality in an attempt to gain approval from the opposite sex….” Or, if you look at it a different way, “a liberated, open girl who likes boys and feels comfortable expressing affection, but is misunderstood.” Blah blah blah.
I’m sure he meant well, but I wanted to call Kim a megaslut right back and not think about it anymore”
“I thought she was a conniving, lying, man-stealing bitch, and I hoped she would fall in a volcano and die a horrible lava death.7 But”
“I mean, if those are your friends you’ve got no need for enemies.”
“I asked God "Why, why, why?" I turned my face away and wished that I were imagining it all. I had tasted the bitterest essence of war, the sight of helpless comrades being slaughtered, and it filled me with disgust.”
“When you're struggling hard to manage your own emotions, it becomes unbearable to have to witness other people's, to have to try and manage theirs too.”
“Men didn't respect beauty...they used it.”
“I had the fleeting thought then that we are each of us pathetic in one way or another, and the trick is to marry a person whose patheticness you can tolerate.”
“We have missed him in the sunshine, in the storm, in the twilight, ever since. ”
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