Quotes from Rebecca Stead

Life is where you sleep and what you see when you wake up in the morning, and who you tell about your weird dream, and what you eat for breakfast and who you eat it with. Life isn't something that happens to you. It's something you make yourself, all the time.

Nice tights," I snorted. Or I tried to snort, anyway. I'm not exactly sure how, though people in books are always doing it.

I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though you're gone and there's no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It's all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never.

Bookbag, Pocketshoe.

Mom. She always says to look at the big picture. How all of the little things don't matter in the long run. . . I know that Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other. The dots matter.

Love is when you like someone so much that you can't just call it "like," so you have to call it "love.

I think that when you don't know, you should just wait until you do.

She's called the secretary, but as far as I can tell she basically runs the school.

Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying.

And when the veil lifts, we can see the world as it really is, just for those few seconds before it settles down again. We see all the beauty, and cruelty, and sadness, and love.

Like when that man was running down Broadway stark naked and we all had to eat in the cafeteria while the police tried to catch him.

Bridge knew why she was here. It's why we're all here, she thought. Call it Mr. Partridge with his black-and-white cookies. Call it Em standing on that stage with her knees shaking but her voice strong. Call it Jamie looking awkward in the doorway of her bedroom after she'd had the mummy nightmare. Call it love.

Some feeling had started in my stomach and was traveling up to my face, and I knew that when it got there I would turn bright red and hear the ocean, which is what happens when I get put on the spot. If I don't cry, I turn red and hear the ocean. It's a lose-lose situation.

Life was a too-tall stack of books that had started to lean to one side, and each new day was another book on top.

Maybe it should just make you feel lucky. Yeah, you were really lucky you didn't die after the accident. But you were a lot luckier to be born in the first place. So if you're here for a reason, maybe we all are.

If you took every tear cried by everyone on earth on one single day and put them in a container, how big would that container need to be? Could you fill a water tower? Three water towers? It's one of those unknowable things. There has to be an answer, but we'll never know what it is.

It's crazy the things a person can pretend not to notice.

I guess my question is: Is the new you the stranger? Or is the stranger the person you leave behind?" -Sherm

It was hard to imagine him sneaking around and leaving a rose on anyone's doormat, but I guess boys will surprise you sometimes.

Many of the books on my list are, in my opinion, amazing. Some I didn't like. But I give them all five stars, because stars make people - including me -- happy.

But every person has to learn to accept what has happened in the past. Without bitterness. Or there is no point in continuing with life.

Love is when your heart wraps around something and won't let go.

Blue Team! It's what's for breakfast!

My grandfather used to say that everyone alive has already beaten the craziest odds, just being born. Like one in a trillion. Your parents could have had a million different kids, but they had you. And before that could happen, your parents had to be born themselves, and their parents had to be born.