Quotes from Travis Thrasher

I've got a lot of homework to do, and none of it has anything to do with school.

She ever marry? No. The no sounds like not in a million years. Like Aunt Alice couldn't marry, like she has one arm and horns sticking out of her head and she talks in tongues. Or maybe has several tongues to talk with.

Sometimes you can lock the doors and close the blinds, but the monsters are still there inside your house, sleeping and breathing and just waiting to wake up and terrorize you all over again.

What? I ask. I don't get anything about this day. Everything is just off. Are you sure? Am I sure where I live? Yeah. Steeple Drive. Your cabin is on this road? Is it just me, or is everything I'm saying slightly freaking you out?

Was she always that friendly? I joke. She saw Robert. At least I got that out of her. Maybe she buried him in the backyard. Stop. Did you smell it in there? Yes. That wasn't a normal smell. That wasn't the sort of something's-gone-bad-in-the-garbage smell. That was the sort of Dahmer-next-door smell. Stop it. I'm serious, I say. It's probably just some dead animal. Oh, well, in that case, it's fine.

I'm sixteen with what I hope will be a long life ahead, but I'm willing to give it up, to give anything to let her live, to let her make it through the night.

This is Teenage madness. Trapped in a room knowing there's more outside. Trapped listening to a teacher talk about Hemingway as if each sentence and word had mythical importance. Trapped knowing she is in the room with me.

Home should never be dark or full of shadows and secrets. It should be bright and full of open doors. It should be full of stories wanting to be told.

Singing about being rescued will never get old. Never.

If you knew the world was about to end, what would you say? Or maybe the question should be, if this world was going to end, whom would you tell?

A dark world only makes the brighter moments shine that much more.

Things like this don't happen back in Libertyville, Illinois. You don't get lost in the woods behind your house. You don't get trapped inside a fortress-like wall ten feet tall.

Sometimes it seems his whole life revolves around watching and waiting. Waiting for the right moment, waiting for the right memory to capture. Hoping for that perfect minute where everything finally comes together.

You spend long moments worrying and wondering only to see the wash up on the shore of a sea of wasted hours. Only to see them stranded on the island of foolishness. He wants that time back. He wants that energy back.

You can stand in the middle of a street and let the drops fall on you and feel refreshed. It's like God's little sprinkler.

For parents, the days are long but the years are short.

What would it be like to be a white page, starting from the beginning with stories untold and memories unmade? To start with a blank slate and go from there?-Travis Thrasher, Broken

Maybe I'll buy a camera and videotape myself 'a la Paranormal Activity style. Then I'll be able to watch myself sleepwalking and getting up to make pancakes and then standing over Midnight dangling a peice of bacon.

I'll be taking a two-hour after-school class twice a week for seven and a half weeks. After those thirty hours of classroom time, which will bring me to the end of March, I'll need six hours behind the wheel. And then and only then will I be able to drive. I do the math in my mind as I speed home on my motorcycle from the firdt class.

We eventually come to a one-story house that looks as though it's on its way to becoming one with the forest surrounding it. Seriously? Mom looks at me with a glance that says so much. Be quiet, for one thing. Get out, for another. Mind your manners is surely in there. And last but not least, This is freaking crazy.

There's no light bulb lit. I half wonder if there's any power to light one. Aunt Alice? A round goblin comes out of the darkness of the hallway.

I can't help but think of the dance that I'm not going to. It's not that I want to go to a dance. I'd go milk cows with Jocelyn if I could. Or do whatever kids around here do for fun.

When you're someone who likes control, this world can often resemble staring into a broken mirror. You see the sharp, ragged edges but lose sight of yourself.

This place is just a trailer for a film, Brandon. Our lives here. Heaven is like the movie. Except there's only one trailer before the movie. And the movie won't ever end.