Quotes from Jennifer Niven

I'm not a compilation of symptoms. Not a casualty of shitty parents and an even shittier chemical makeup. Not a problem. Not a diagnosis. Not an illness. Not something to be rescued. I'm a person.

I want to say It's okay to be a person. We're all afraid. We all get hurt. It's okay to hurt. You'd be so much more likable if you just acted human.

Theodore Finch leans against an SUV, hands in pockets, like he has all the time in the world and he expects me. I think of the Virginia Woolf lines, the ones from The Waves: "Pale, with dark hair, the one who is coming is melancholy, romantic. And I am arch and fluent and capricious; for he is melancholy, he is romantic. He is here.

I'm trying out Theodore Finche, '80s kid, and seeing how he fits. I fish through my desk for a cigarette, stick it in my mouth, and remember as I'm reaching for my lighter that Theodore Finch, '80s kid, doesn't smoke. God, I hate him, the clean-cut, eager little prick.

The thing I can't, won't, mention to him is that I see Finch everywhere—in the hallways at school, on the street, in my neighborhood. Someone's face will remind me of him, or someone's walk or someone's laugh. It's like being surrounded by a thousand different Finches. I wonder if this is normal

He writes Before I die I want to and draws a line. He writes it again. Then he writes it a dozen more times. "After we fill these up, we can keep going on the front of the building and down the other side. It's a good way to figure out just why we're here.

Maybe. Maybe not. Whether it's filler or not, I'm pretty glad to be here." If there's anything I've learned, it's that you need to make the most of it. "It mattered enough for you not to jump.

Just be careful" implies that there's an end to it all, maybe in an hour, maybe in three years, but an end just the same.

Suddenly I'm having one of those moments that you have after losing someone—when you feel as if you've been kicked in the stomach and all your breath is gone, and you might never get it back. I want to sit down on the dirty, littered ground right now and cry until I can't cry anymore.

I remember her hand in mine and how that felt, as if something and someone belonged to me.

It's okay to laugh, you know. The earth's not going to split open. You're not going to hell. Believe me. If there's a hell, I'll be there ahead of you, and they'll be too busy with me to even check you in.

Finch scribbles something and slaps it to the wall. Welcome. He scribbles something else. Freak. He shows it to me before destroying it. He writes Belong, which goes on the wall, and Label, which doesn't. Warmth, Saturday, Wander, You, Best friend go up, while Cold, Sunday, Stand still, Everyone else go into the heap.

It is 3:38 a.m., and the time of night when my mind starts running around all wild and out of control, like my cat, George, when he was a kitten.

What a terrible feeling to love someone and not be able to help them. Actually, I know exactly how that feels.

I'm still here, and I'm grateful, because otherwise I would be missing this. Sometimes it's good to be awake.

Violet Markey, I'd like to be your partner on this project.

Too much of my life feels like this already- trying to recycle something old into something new and better, disguising someone else's trash as some fresh, shiny thing.

I know there's more in there, probably years of shit you've been smiling away and keeping down.

Believe it or not, it's actually beautiful to some people.

It's at that moment that I can't help myself,even though she maybe hates me right now.I pull her in and kiss her the way I've always wanted to kiss her,a lot more R-rated and PG-13.I can feel her tense at first,not wanting to kiss me back ,and the thought of it breaks my heart.Before I can pull away,I feel her bend and then melt into me as I melt into her under the warm Indiana sun.And she's still here ,and she isn't going anywhere,and it will be okay.

But maybe even the smallest places mean something. And if not, maybe they can mean something to us.

The fact is, I was sick, but not in an easily explained flu kind of way. It's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other recognizable disease just to make it simple for me and also for them. Anything would be better than the truth.

I'm broken, and no one can fix it. I've tried. I'm still trying. I can't love anyone because it's not fair to anyone who loves me back. I'll never hurt you... But I can't promise I won't pick you apart, piece by piece, until you're in a thousand pieces just like me.

It's only when I'm awake that I think about dying. I love the thrill of impending, weightless doom Someday. You are all the colours in one, at full brightness. ..the ones who didn't make it and never had a chance. I'm disappearing. Maybe I'm already gone. It's not what you take. It's what you leave.