Quotes from Susan Beth Pfeffer

So what if I don't learn algebra?' 'Someday schools will be open again,' Mom said. 'Things will be normal. You need to do your work now for when that happens.' 'That's never going to happen,' Jon said. 'And even if schools do open up somewhere, they're not going to open up here. There aren't enough people left.' 'We don't know how many people are like us, holed up, making do until times get better.' 'I bet whoever they are, they aren't studying algebra,' Jon said.

The electricity came on for the second time today wile we were eating. This may be a fool's paradise, but it's a paradise nonetheless.

The Christmas after Mom & Dad split up, they both went crazy buying us presents. Matt, Jonny, and I were showered with gifts at home and at Dads apartment. I thought that was great. I was all in favor of my love being paid for with presents. This year all I got was a diary and a secondhand watch. Okay, I know this is corny, but this really is what Christmas is all about.

todays the first anniversary of the asteroid hitting the moon. A year ago i was sixteen years old, a sophomore in high school.

Carlos was probably somewhere warm, eating three meals a day, and sleeping in a real bed. That was the life

I'm the one not caring. I'm the one pretending the Earth isn't shattering all around me because I don't want it to be. I don't want to know there was an earthquake in Missouri. I don't want to know the Midwest can die, also, that what's going on isn't just tides and tsunamis. I don't want to have any more to be afraid of. I didn't start this diary for it to be a record of death.

Don't stop believing in miracles.

That's the function of big brothers... to help their little sisters when their worlds are collapsing.

But I don't want to have to stop feeling. I really think I'd rather die than stop feeling.

I never really thought about how when I look at the moon it's the same moon Shakespeare and Marie Antoinette and George Washington and Cleopatra looked at. Not to mention all those zillions of people I've never heard of. All those Homo sapiens and Neanderthals looked at the very same moon as me. It waxed and waned in their sky, too.

Megan's right about my being a sinner. But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there.

This past year I grew up to know hunger, grief, darkness, fear. I began to understand how lonely you can feel even when all you want is to be alone.

One of the more gratifying things about guilt is that it makes us feel important.

Every day when I go to sleep I think what a jerk I was to have felt sorry for myself the day before. My Wednesdays are worse than my Tuesdays, my Tuesdays way worse than my Tuesday of a week before. Which means every tomorrow is going to be worse than every today. Why feel sorry for myself today when tomorrow's bound to be worse? It's a hell of a philosophy, but it's all I've got.

Do people ever realize how precious life is? I know I never did before. There was always time. There was always a future.

I'm 16 years old. Let me get my learner's permit first. then I'll worry about lifetime commitments

Their eyes were usually open, and they stared up at the moon that had killed them.

Sometimes the rues don't work. Sometimes the rules cause the anarchy.

Well, no one says you can be happy about everything, I said. I know I should be glad for you, Megan, but frankly I think you're crazy. And if Reverend Marshall is making you this way, I think he's evil. This life, this everyday existence, is the one gift we're given. To throw it away, to want to be dead, to me that's the sin.

Even in good times we didn't socialize with most of our neighbors. Mom says when she was growing up she did, but so many of the old families have moved out and new people moved in and neighborliness has changed. Now being a good neighbor means minding your own business.

Maybe we lost the things we loved then so we could survive losing every thing else.

Just in case the world ends tomorrow, we might as well enjoy today.

People see what they want to see.

We can't accept that things will always be bad. If we do, we won't fight to make things better.