When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.
Why are you being so mean?””Friends tell friends the truth.””yeah, but not to hurt, to help.
If I ever form a clan, we’ll be the anti-cheerleaders and walk under the bleacher forming mild acts of mayhem.
I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or fears?
She cannot chain my soul. Yes, she could hurt me. She’d already done so…I would bleed, or not. Scar, or not. Live, or not. But she could not hurt my soul, not unless I gave it to her.
Look at the stupid, poor people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people, look at their dead baby. It’s death porn for the masses.
Revision means throwing out the boring crap and making what’s left sound natural.
No, I am never setting foot in this house again it scares me and makes me sad and I wish you could be a mom whose eyes worked but I don’t think you can.
Homework is not an option. My bed is sending out serious nap rays. I can’t help myself. The fluffy pillows and warm comforter are more powerful than I am. I have no choice but to snuggle under the covers.
I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner.
I just thought of a great theory that explains everything. When I went to that party, I was abducted by aliens. They have created a fake Earth and fake high school to study me and my reactions. This certainly explains cafeteria food.
I watch the Eruptions. Mount Dad, long dormant, now considered armed and dangerous. Mount Saint Mom, oozing lava, spitting flame. Warn the villagers to run into the sea.
She turns to us, acts surprised to see us, then does the bit with the back of the hand to the forehead. “You’re lost!” “You’re angry!” “You’re in the wrong school!” “You’re in the wrong country!” “You’re on the wrong planet!
Nicole can do anything that involves a ball and whistle.
Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.
I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page
Dr. StupidParker says that when I’m sad it really means I’m angry and when I’m angry it really means I’m afraid.
Killing people is easier than it should be.” Dad put on his beret. “Staying alive is harder.
Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.
This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values….
The world is crazy. You need a license to drive a car and go fishing. You don’t need a license to start a family. Two people have sex and BAM! Perfectly innocent kid is born whose life will be screwed up by her parents forever.
I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don’t want to die.
I am an owl, bird of the night. I see everything. I know everything.
Eating was hard.Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.
Mr. Freeman sighs. “No imagination. What are you thirteen? Fourteen? You’ve already let them beat your creativity out of you!
I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?
It doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts except the small smiles and blushes that flash across the room like tiny sparrows.
I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way…. I didn’t try hard enough to swallow myself.
I stuff my mouth with old fabric and scream until there are no sounds left under my skin.
I looked in the mirror and realized that I was already dead. I let you kill me one piece at a time, starting when I was, what? Eight years old? Nine? You killed yourself and then you came after us.
My only choice was to fight my way out, even if I didn’t think I would make it.
Melancholy held me hostage, and the bees built a hive of sadness in my soul.
It was hard to know how to play the game when the rules kept changing.
The gloaming that closed over us the cemetery had crawled inside his skin.
I need a new friend. I need a friend, period. Not a true friend, nothing close or share clothes or sleepover giggle giggle yak yak. Just a pseudo-friend, disposable friend. Friend as accessory. Just so I don’t feel or look so stupid.
Why are you being so mean?”“Friends tell friends the truth.”“Yeah, but not to hurt. To help.
I just want to sleep. The whole point of not talking about it, of silencing the memory, is to make it go away. It won’t. I’ll need brain surgery to cut it out of my head.
It doesn’t matter where I go, I don’t want to be there. And then I get to the next place, and I don’t want to be there either.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn’t matter anymore.
I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.
The smoke shifted direction and I breathed in. Breathed out. On the inhale I was angry. On the exhale…there it was again. Fear. The fear made me angry and the anger made me afraid and I wasn’t sure who he was anymore. Or who I was.
Yes it is, because you can only be brave if you’re scared.
Why do you have such a crappy attitude about math?””I don’t. I have a crappy attitude about everything.
I’d given him bits and pieces of my peculiar life, but colored softer and funnier than they had been. I’d painted my dad as Don Quixote in a semi, on a quest for philosophical truths and the best cup of coffee in the nation.
IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.
I want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy — old enough to play outside without Mom, too young to go off the block. The perfect leash length.
Grandma frowned and yelled something in Russian. She could have been saying, ‘Open up, your best friend is here.’ On the other hand, it could have been, ‘America is a great country because of canned ravioli.
The trick to surviving an interrogation is patience. Don’t offer up anything. Don’t explain. Answer the question and only the question that is asked so you don’t accidentally put your head in a noose.
The night sky stretched on forever above me, the stars flung like glass beads and pearls on a black velvet cloak.
I won’t take a real nap. I have this halfway place, a rest stop on the road to sleep, where I can stay for hours. I don’t even need to close my eyes, just stay safe under the covers and breathe.
I drift into the armpits of strangers, tasting their manic salt, and sleep to forget everything.
I can see us, living in the woods, her wearing that A, me with a S maybe, S for silent, S for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame.
I can’t do everything for you. You must walk alone to find your soul.
It’s easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school.
Where did you live before you came here?” I asked. “The moon,” he said smoothly. “We left because the place had no atmosphere.
Me: “All right, but you said we had to put emotion into our art. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.
They mean hot like ‘I’m too good for you I got my own money don’t be frontin’ me.’ You’re more like ‘Be my boyfriend I’ll make you cookies come meet my dad ‘ know what I mean
I want to eat like a normal person eats, but I needto see my bones or I will hate myself even more and Imight cut out my heart or take every pill that was evermade.
Emma is a mattress who got thrown off the truck when her parents split up. It’s not like you can blame a mattress when people don’t tie it down tight enough.
You’re the one who doesn’t understand, I’ve been standing on the edge with you for years.
Too much sun after a Syracuse winter does strange things to your head, makes you feel strong, even if you aren’t.
In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.
The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up. That’s when they can hear us true.
I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy…
Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it. He doesn’t hear the impact, can’t smell the blood.
It’s easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.
And that’s the problem. When you’realive, people can hurt you. It’s easier to crawl into a bonecage or a snowdrift of confusion. It’s easier to lock everybodyout.But it’s a lie.
I hate winter. I’ve lived in Syracuse my whole life and I hate winter. It starts too early and ends too late. No one likes it.
I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn’t touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn’t drown.
I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.
I have to go. Boss hasthis weird idea that I should actually work while he’s payingme.
That can be the most painstaking aspect of being a teen, figuring out what the world really looks like. If you find someone in a book, you know you’re not alone and that’s what’s so comforting about books.
If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that’s why I was put on the planet.
We have to acknowledge that adolescence is that time of transition where we begin to introduce to children that life isn’t pretty, that there are difficult things, there are hard situations, it’s not fair. Bad things happen to good people.