Quotes from Lynne Rae Perkins

What can you do? You pick yourself up. You pull yourself together. You move on.

The trouble with being too careful about your wishes, though, was that you could end up with a wish so shapeless that it could come true and you wouldn't even know it, or it wouldn't matter.

My dance on the pedestal was my friendship with Maureen. I wasn't sure how I had lost my balance and fallen off. Or whether I was pushed. Everyone around me was trying to get me to dance again. The thing was, I hadn't quite given up on getting back up there. I still believed it was the only place where I could be happy.

Many girls at school were infatuated with his shallow athletic splendor and his golden handsome features that were biologically inherited and had nothing to do with the kind of person he might actually be.

Debbie wondered if it was true that there was only one person in the world for every person, and if she had already met him, and she either had to find a way to be around him again someday or always be alone. Romance-wise. She didn't quite believe this. What seemed more likely was that there were at least five or six people scattered around the globe who you could bump into and, wham, it would be the right thing.

I know I'm still young and there's a lot of time for things to happen, but sometimes I think there is something about me that's wrong, that I'm not the kind of person anyone can fall in love with, and that I'll just always be alone. But I think if I knew someone was going to fall in love with me when I'm fifty-three or something, I think I could wait. Maybe. If I knew it would at least happen.

I tried to think whether I had ever had a great adventure. I decided that I had. It's all in how you look at it.

Our brains are always busy, even when we're not trying. They take all of the events and information of our days and try to make them fit together. Try to make sense of them. And now and then, two or three pieces of information fit together in an unexpected way. This is called "getting an idea.

But at least I have my health," he said. It was a joke.

Good-bye, ocean," said Alix. "This was the best time I ever had." "You always say that," said Jools. "It's always true," said Alix.

Step and land, step and land. That's all travel was. Throw in some running and a change of scenery. No big deal, right? And so, off he went. Off they went together.

Life was rearranging itself; bulging in places, fraying in spots. Sometimes leaving holes big enough to see through, or even step through, to somewhere else.

His fingertips lightly and unintentionally grazed her face and her ears, and Debbie's don't-get-in-trouble self felt itself making room for her alert-alert-something-new-is-happening self.

He tried to ignore the feather of longing that tickled his heart. But it kept tickling. Because he hadn't quite made up his mind to stay here.

Over and over and over, Mom and Dad towed them out, turned them around, then let go. The water whooshed them back to shore. The hot sun above, the cold water beneath: it was a feeling you could never get tired of.