A fundamentalist is someone who wants to substitute what he believes for what you believe,” Max said. “And someone who thinks he knows the will of God better than anyone else.
It’s significantly more satisfying to kick a wall than it is to kick thin air. For the rebellious teen- or the teen who wants to feel like a rebel- a clearly defined law gives you something to define yourself against.
Popularity gives you power only over people who care about being popular. Ostracism gives you power only over those who fear being ostracized.
The world was so much more forgiving of strength when it took on the appearance of weakness.
I took up space. I was a collection of cells and memories, awkward limbs and clumsy fashion crimes; I was the repository of my parents’ expectations and evidence of their disappointments
I longed to return to that bloody riverbank, to throw myself in the path of the final arrow, to die ignorant, and so, in love. Better to be killed by an arrow than by the words of the one I most trusted.
You don’t even realize you’re living in a before until you wake up one day and find yourself in an after.
The only thing more dangerous than a willingness to ignore the Law is an ability to change it.
Even now, I believe that to know how is useless if we do not know why. And there are too many who forbid us to ask.
Things fall apart. But things don’t just fall apart. People break them.
For me, the teen years were all about searching for a place for myself, wondering why I seemed so different than everyone else, wondering especially why no one could look past the surface and figure out who I really was underneath.
Of course Stephen King doesn’t believe in teen novels. I’ve started to suspect he doesn’t even believe in teenagers.
Teen fiction should be about teenagers – no matter how many arguments there are about what YA lit should be, this seems like the one thing we can all agree on.