Leila Sales · 276 pages
Rating: (23.1K votes)
“Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all.”
“That's the problem with life. You never get enough time to stare at your ceiling and try to figure out what's going on.”
“You think it's so easy to change yourself. You think it's so easy, but it's not. True, things don't stay the same forever: couches are replaced, boys leave, you discover a song, your body becomes forever scarred. And with each of these moments you change and change again, your true self spinning, shifting positions-- but always at last it returns to you, like a dancer on the floor. Because throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable. And isn't that - just you - enough.”
“People are who they are and, try as you might, you cannot make them be what you want them to be.”
“I believe that a person's taste in music tells you a lot about them. In some cases, it tells you everything you need to know.”
“I had this feeling suddenly. I get this feeling a lot, but I don’t know if there’s one word for it. It’s not nervous or sad or even lonely. It’s all of that, and then a bit more. The feeling is I don’t belong here. I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how long I can stay before everyone else realizes that I am an impostor. I am a fraud. I’ve gotten this feeling nearly everywhere I have ever been in my life. There’s nothing you can do about it except drink some water and hope that it subsides. Or you can leave.”
“Don't you ever want to have just one thing that no one else knows about, so no one can ruin it for you?”
“Sometimes, when you are worn down, day after day, relentlessly, with no reprieve for years piled on years, sometimes you lose everything but the ability to cry.”
“Throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable.”
“Sometimes you just have those days where everything goes wrong. But sometimes, and totally unexpectedly, something can go right.”
“Sometimes you have to give up something you are to get to who you want to be.”
“I didn’t know. I feel sometimes like…there are all these rules. Just to be a person. You know? You’re supposed to carry a shoulder bag, not a backpack. You’re supposed to wear headbands, or you’re not supposed to wear headbands. It’s okay to describe yourself as likeable, but it’s not okay to describe yourself as eloquent. You can sit in the front of the school bus, but you can’t sit in the middle. You’re not supposed to be with a boy, even when he wants you to. I didn’t know that. There are so many rules, and they don’t make any sense, and I just can’t learn them all”
“I don't believe that anyone who is a legitimately interesting person can be popular as a teenager," Mel went on. "Or ever, maybe. Popularity rewards the uninteresting.”
“Don't be special." That's what I would say to my younger self if I could pinpoint the moment when I went astray. But there was no one moment. I was always astray”
“The thing about being an artist," Dad said, folding his newspaper and setting it down on the table, "is that there are always going to be people who want to stop you from doing your art. But this usually says more about them and their issues than it does about you and your art. Trust me.”
“I do want to believe that there's some place in the world that's more mature than high school," Vicky said. "But I haven't found it yet.”
“But you know better than anyone how the Internet sees everything and nothing, all at the same time.”
“People have to create some sort of art so they have something to think about other than their shitty lives.”
“You can't tell me my feelings are overwrought or absurd. You don't know. They are my feelings.”
“But I also felt like an eggshell that had gotten a tiny crack. You can’t repair something like that. All you can do is hope that it sticks together, hope that the crack doesn't grow until all your insides come spilling right out.”
“Which to you have?' Mel asked, blocking the entry with his body. 'Talent or issues?' I paused for a moment, thought about this. 'Both,' I said at last.”
“Tonight the Internet seemed filled with versions of me, like a fun house filled with mirrors. Some of them made me look prettier, and some of them made me look uglier, and some of them chopped me right in half, but none of them were right.”
“Anyone who said I believe in you obviously didn't know me very well.”
“I was smiling like a crazy person because I has just made a hundred people dance, I had just made a hundred people scream, I had just made a hundred people happy. I, Elise, using my own power, had made people happy.”
“I had never killed myself before, so I had no idea what would I want to listen to when it was too late for me to skip to the next song. Like, maybe when you're dying, you actually want to hear something really upbeat.”
“I liked projects where I could take things apart and figure out exactly how they worked. The problem is, you can't do that with people.”
“In Bio last year, I learned that blood is actually a dark maroon when it's inside your body. It's the exposure to oxygen that turns it bright red. And there must have been a lot of oxygen in my bathroom, because that blood was bright, bright red.”
“Of course, as always, there is an arbitrary, invisible fence in place. You can't see it, but it will always keep you out. It will always encircle happiness and keep you out.”
“This should have been a red flag, I realize in retrospect. Working really hard on anything is, by definition, not cool.”
“It wasn't an effect of alcohol. It was more like we got drunk on the night.”
“I demoted him from The Best Man Ever to just The Best Man I’d Ever Met. Superman would have charged out (hell, he’d have flown) to get Lois Lane cookies. I was pretty sure of it.”
“I am here to determine my relationship."
Simon goggled. She couldn't be talking about him. Could she?
"Do you see that man?" Isabelle asked, pointing at Simon. Apparently she was talking about him. "That's Simon Lewis, and he is my boyfriend. So if any of you think about trying to hurt him because he's a mundie or--may the Angel have mercy on your soul--pursuing him romantically, I will come after you, I will hunt you down and I will crush you to powder.”
“Sinking into fiction: the if-only of if-onlys.”
“She had known that being with Clay would be good, that it would eclipse the other times into nothingness, but this was beyond good, beyond anything. All she could think was—no wonder women liked sex. But of course, this was nothing so simple as sex. This was…“Oh, man.”
“All he thinks while he studies pearlescent pigeons is this: I wish I knew how… I wish I knew… I ain’t ever gonna, but I wish I knew how it felt – (-to be free).”
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