Quotes from Maureen Johnson

He was the closest thing she had to a pony.

We all know what we're doing. Whether we realize it or not.

I'm scared. To Nate's credit, he did not ask why she was scared, and he did not tell her not to be scared. Maybe he understood how terrifying it is to do the thing you meant to do.

After that, I felt like I had two lives. There was the me I had been before the attack, the one people knew and wanted to relate to. The one people wanted to comfort and fix. And there was another me, a hidden me that no one ever saw. There was a me who had tasted death. That me knew things others people didn't know.

Once again, her parents' problems had run through her life like a piece of heavy equipment, smashing everything in their way.

No one in history had ever done less and yet been so wrong.

This wasn't a position she wanted to be in. And yet . . . yet she knew that she was going to do it anyway.

I love Ginny's expedition!

You want to go back to my house the long way? he asked. Or the shortcut? You have to be cold- Long way, I replied. The long way, for sure.

The day was ridiculous. In fact, the situation was so serious I thought they had to be joking - like maybe they staged a special first day to psych people out. I had one class in the morning, the mysteriously named Further Maths. It was two hours long and so deeply frightening that I think I went into a trance.

Mouth guard. And I think we'll start you in goal. Goal sounded like a special job. I didn't want a special job, unless that special job involved sitting on the side under a pile of blankets.

The essay I had to read was called, An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope. The first challenge was that the essay was, in fact, a very long poem in heroic couplets. If something is called an essay, it should be an essay.

I don't mind bigots. You're allowed to be bigoted, if that makes you happy. Just do it at home. And not around the children.

Maybe your resistance is to live. Live big and loud and joyously and fiercely. Live authentic to who you are. Refuse to be silent. Refuse to go away. Refuse stereotypes and limits. Because you being you is the most powerful kind of resistance of all. (Rebecca Roanhorse)

Don-Keun was a new man. The moment they arrived, he vanished for a second. We heard muffled ecstatic screaming coming from somewhere in the back of the Waffle House kitchen, then he reappeared, his face shining with the kind of radiance usually associated with religious epiphany.

Sometimes people graduate but they don't leave. They hang around for years, for no reason. I would think of ghosts like that, I decided.

No one hid their interest when I walked into the room. I'm not sure if it was the news about Boo or my general appearance. At home, people would have asked. People would have been crawling all over me for information. At Wexford, they seemed to extract what they wanted to know by covert staring.

New start or not, there was a line to be drawn, and that line was singing musicals to yourself as serious psychological motivation.

Hot tea, he said, holding the cups. It's just wrong.

Being sixteen means you have to be a genius conversational editor.

The best I ever got was that woman who kept having me come up to fix her TV. There was a lot of bending involved. I felt used and dirty. It's the price you pay for being one of those weedy but good-looking types, Scarlett said. Weedy? You hurt me. I prefer tall and scrawny. Unlike my partner, who's right behind you.

From this close, she could see the color of his eyes perfectly. They were a misty, shifting blue marbled with gray, like smoke rising through an early morning sky.

You've never told me about your love life, Scarlett. You're a very pretty girl. You must have a boy shacked up somewhere for your personal delights. I'd bet it's a booky one, overtones of Harry Potter and a lot of black T-shirts.

Stevie always tried to be truthful, but she didn't want to make her first acquaintance in her new house and say, Your show was mediocre and overrated but I see why you are valued: for your looks and deep voice. People tended not to warm to that kind of thing.