Quotes from Susan Beth Pfeffer

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.

When I'm in the water I feel as though nothing bad has happened. I think about the fish, how they don't know what's going on. Their world is unchanged. Actually it's probably better now to be a tuna or a sardine or a salmon. Less chance of ending up as somebody's lunch.

So we baked and sweated together. I like punching the dough. I told myself it was the moon and punched it senseless.

What we were concerned about—what seems to be happening now—is volcanoes

We're all alive. We're all healthy. These are the good times.

Nothing good happened to Romeo or Juliet.

Because if I let myself feel the pain and the anger, I think it might kill me. Or I might kill someone else. I know it's wrong to feel that way about God and I know its's wrong to not feel anything. I hate it. I don't hate God. I hate not loving Him.

I wondered how many people had sung By the dawn's early light' yesterday and were dead today.

Peter always brings death with him, along with spinach or nuts. He said he'd seen 20 cases of West Nile during the week and five deaths from it. He also said two people had died from food allergies. They're so hungry they're taking their chances eating foods they're seriously allergic to, he said.

Sometimes it's safer to cry about people you don't know than to think about people you really love.

Every day we're one day closer to death. But there's no reason to rush into it.

I know I ate at least four cookies, which probably guarantees me a first-class ticket to hell for gluttony.

we could never truly understand God's will. We have to trust God, have faith in Him, and follow the rules He gave us without ever understanding Him.

Maybe things could be better for the grubs, but things could be better for clavers, too. We're in this together. We're all making sacrifices so things will be better, if not for us, then for Gabe and all the children to come.

My existence is the only gift I have left to give, but it will have to do.

I have scars. No one alive today doesn't. But Alex's scars have to be much deeper than mine.

If God's looking for sacrifices, all He has to do is look at Mom.

tears are better if you shed them alone.

There's a difference between charity and love, I said. What we're offering is love. Love lasts forever.

You have to fight for happiness.

the darkest sky is filled with stars, that the sun casts its warmth on the coldest day.

The idiot's still alive!" Mom cried. "And he's still an idiot!

Knowledge was the enemy of fear.

Don't be careless," Mr. Dawkes said, which was what he always said when he'd hand back a test and I'd made a lot of careless mistakes. Which was really pretty funny, since he died when he ran through a red light on Washington Avenue. I