Quotes from Maureen Johnson

But where excitement tends to take you up, into the higher, brighter levels of feeling, anxiety pulls you down, making you feel like you have to grip the earth to keep from sliding off as it turns.

Her old high school was a fine high school, if you liked high school. It wasn't bad or evil. It was just like it was supposed to be - miles of linoleum and humming lights, the warm funk of cafeteria stink too early in the morning, the flashes of inspiration that were quickly quashed by long stretches of tedium, and the perpetual desire to be somewhere else.

her choices had not been failures. They had been choices.

It hits all the same buttons. Stop. Go. Up. Down.

Are you going to tell him what you told me? he asked. About how you solved the case? I don't know, Stevie said as her breath puffed out in front of her like a feather of rots. No. I don't know. Maybe. No. And if I stay, it's more time to get what I need - anything I can find to bolster the case. Well, Nate said, now that we belong to The Shining reenactment society, you might as well go for it. Last chance.

Lots of murder weapons at the deli counter. So many knives. The most dangerous thing was the meat slicer, but it would be hard to turn that into a murder weapon.

We're both broken right now. Something's happened to us. But we can do this. We have to. I'm with you. Whatever is going on in your mind right now, I'm with you.

But that is not the way the world works, because the world didn't care what she did last year, or last month, or even earlier tonight when she had bravely tried to read three sentences. If the world is feeling super charitable, it might take a passing glance at what you are doing now. What matters is what you are doing next. And high school was nothing if not about the next box you had to check.

Maybe this was the moment everything would change for her. Maybe now the school year was beginning in earnest. That was perhaps burdening the moment with more expectation than it could bear, but, Stevie figured, something about this year had to give.

Well," David said, breaking a fry in half and examining the fluffy insides. "He runs a fertilizer plant." Stevie looked up at him sharply. Was he making fun of her parents? A pilot and someone who ran a crap plant?

It's true. All the money, all the power—none of it compares to a good book. A book gives you everything. It gives you a window into other souls, other worlds. The world is a door. Books are the key.

Group friendships are products of the right time—the chemistry of season, activity, emotion, and random occurrence.

That message on the wall was someone telling her something. Someone wanted to play with her. So all right. She would play. Maybe she was anxious. Maybe she was untrained. But Steve Bell knew one thing about herself - once she had bitten in, tasted the mystery - she would not let go. She had gotten herself to this mountain. She could do this.

Some people simply knew what they were supposed to be doing and did it, and those people were the worst of all. Stevie's brain had to hit a white-hot pitch of panic before it was willing to do any real work. It would work quickly then. It was a good brain, but it had only two modes—fog and frenzy.

His painter's eye and his deviant soul told him the girl was the one to watch of this pair.

I know what guano is," Janelle said in a warning tone. "But I don't want to hear about poop. I want crispy leaf fun.

why did the town good girl go with three of the bad seeds to a drug buy in the woods? But let's get to it. . . .

Look at us, we are the three Nina, Mel, and there's Avery Shout it loud, then shout it louder Shout it out, Triangle Power!

Nate would tolerate most things for about an hour if he knew there was the promise of a snack and the chance to be left alone in the near future.

As Stevie stepped outside, the cold air slapped her in the face. The magnificent cloak of reds and golds that hung from the Vermont woodland had dropped suddenly, like a massive act of arboreal striptease. Striptease. Strip trees. Striptrees? God, she was tired.

When you want someone to tell you something—don't ask, tell it wrong.

The surefire way to get someone to tell you something you want to know isn't to ask them about it. What you do is start telling the story yourself, say what you think happened, and say it wrong. People may not want to discuss things, but they will correct you, every time.

You didn't improvise that speech back there, she said. How long were you working on that? Day or two. Got a bunch of it from The West Wing . That was the only show I was never allowed to watch when I was a kid, so it's my favourite. I wonder who my dad will have as VP if he gets into the White House? I'm rooting for a cloud of bats. What about you, Stevie? You know him better than I do.

Angela felt like a ghost, moving out of time. Yesterday, they had rushed down this hallway, screaming with laughter as they grabbed their favorite rooms. Now the doors were all cocked open from when the police had trampled through. There had been strangers in the house, strangers in the suitcases, strangers in the drawers and closets