Quotes from Jennifer Niven

It is my job in life, apparently, to teach gawking, laughing girls lessons about kindness. If

You have to live your life like you'll never be sorry. It's easier just to do the right thing from the start so there's nothing to apologize for." Not that I'm one to talk.

The thing I realise is that it's not what you take, it's what you leave.

You know, that's what you've been doing in a way--coming out. Coming out of your room. Coming out of your house. Coming out of your shell.

Worthless. Stupid. These are the words I grew up hearing. They're the words I try to outrun, because if I let them in, until the only thing left of me is worthless stupid worthless stupid worthless stupid freak. And then there's nothing to do but run harder and fill myself with other words...

She was my best friend." "I've never had one. What's it like?" "I don't know. I guess you can be yourself, whatever that means—the best and the worst of you. And they love you anyway. You can fight, but even when you're mad at them, you know they're not going to stop being your friend.

But come to think of it, after a lifetime of feeling too much, maybe there's actually something to be said for fast and sudden.

This is my secret - that at any moment I might fly away.

But then a voice in me says, You're no hero. You're a coward. You only saved them from yourself.

The thing I need most in this world is a long, hot shower, but what I get instead is a trickle of warm water followed by a blast of Icelandic cold

Don't you want to know where I'd go if I could?" Not really, I think. " Where would you go if you could go anywhere?" It comes out bitchier than I mean for it to. He leans forward over the handlebars, eyes on me. "I'd go to Hoosier Hill with a beautiful girl.

Sometimes things end, even if you don't want them to.

I've never realised how hard we are on our bodies. I think, Why are we so mean to ourselves? Why aren't we happy with what we have?

Now. Close the book. But first—remember to open yourself up to love and possibility, to almostness and maybe. Use your voice. Let others in. Choose your future. Choose your body. Choose yourself. And go out there and write your life.

Why do some love stories have a shelf life and others last forever?

No time like the present, and all that. You of all people should know we're only guaranteed right now.

He knows as well as I do what the Why is. It's everything changing when I was ten. It's the bullying and the fear. So much fear of everything, but mostly death. Sudden, out-of-the-blue death. It's also me being terrified of life. It's the giant emptiness in my chest. It's touching my face or my skin and feeling nothing. This is the Why of me staying home in the first place. And the Why of me eating. And the Why of me ending up here. But that doesn't mean I want to die.

With face blindness, I seem to constantly lose the people I love.

You never know what someone's hiding. We all hide ourselves when we need to.

You are the most amazing person I've ever met. You're different. You're you. Always. Who else can say that except maybe Seth Powell, and he's an idiot. You, Libby Strout, are not an idiot.

I don't want to hear about the cardinal again. Because the thing of it is, that cardinal was dead either way, whether he came inside or not. Maybe he knew it, and maybe that's why he decided to crash into the glass a little harder than normal that day. He would have died in here, only slower, because that's what happens when you're a Finch. The marriage dies. The love dies. The people fade away. I

But what if hope had a threshold? What if there was a limit to it? What if each of us was only given a certain amount and mine was used up?

Not here. Not now

She is oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus. The same elements that are inside the rest of us, but I can't help thinking that she's more than that and she's got other elements going on that no one's ever heard of, ones that make her stand apart from everyone else.