Quotes from Robyn Schneider

It's strange how we can lose things that are still right there. how a barrier can go up at any moment, trapping you on the other side, keeping you from what you want. how the things that hurt the most are things we once had.

Like tonight, when everyone dressed as zombies, and you wore that. I mean, don't you want to be like everyone else?" "Not particularly," I said, willing her to finally understand how much I had changed, and how very little she knew about me.

Ezra," Cassidy said, sounding tremendously sorry. "You're better off without me. And I don't want to be around when you realize it.

We'd sit down on one of those wooden benches and she'd tell me how she was sorry, and it had all been a mistake. But things like that never happen, except in really awful movies.

I thought about Cassidy, and how she pronounced "vitamin" the British way and hated when people took too many napkins in restaurants.

I left Jill's party thinking that sometimes it isn't worth confirming what we already know about people we understand so well. Because what Charlotte had wanted that night wasn't me.

She was determined to figure out who I wanted to be

Just once I want someone to be afraid of losing me," Pheobe said

but more than anything, the homecoming nomination made me feel as though I was being pushed back into a world I was happy to leave behind

It's strange how we can lose things that are still right there. How a barrier can go up at any moment, trapping you on the other side, keeping you from what you want. How the things that hurt the most are things we once had.

There was this philosopher-slash-historian called Foucault, who wrote about how society is like this legendary prison called the panopticon. In the panopticon, you might be under constant observation, except you can never be sure whether someone is watching or not, so you wind up following the rules anyway.

No era la vida que yo había planeado, pero sí la que tenía y, por fin, había empezado a aceptarlo.

We all reach for whatever we think is going to dull the pain, and sometimes we don't even want whatever it is, we just want to not be miserable, you know?

But maybe it was better this way, remembering those few months at the beginning of the year as this wonderful thing was over now, rather than living in Cassidy's world without her

A game that I'd kept on playing because people expected me to, and I was good at doing what people expected. But not anymore, because no one seemed to expect anything from me anymore. The funny thing about gold is how quickly it can tarnish.

And Toby, with his thrift-store suit and stubborn insistence that we call him "O Captain My Captain.

I made a decision that year, to start mattering in a way that had nothing to do with sports teams or plastic crowns, and the reality is, I might have made that decision without her, or if I'd never fallen in love with a girl who considered love to be the biggest disaster of all.

Where do you learn this stuff?" "Don't you ever get bored?" Cassidy asked. "Yeah, but I don't Google 'German insults.'" "Why not? It's fascinating.

Definitely. I've got posters of girls in bikinis, too. And like, a whole bedside drawer of lube." "I would be disappointed if you didn't." Cassidy laughed.

Why she would choose a town where she barely knew anyone, and a boyfriend who knew how broken felt.

I shook my head. "No, I mean Animal Farm. You know: 'Some animals are more equal than other animals.

But then, I've always been terrible at math.

I didn't see any secret messages last night." "I didn't want to be predictable," Cassidy retorted. "But at least now I know you're paying attention.

Let me guess," Cassidy said, "because someone else picked it out and put it up in a room meant to encapsulate who you are, even though you have no interest in boats." "If I say yes, do I get to kiss you?