Quotes from Megan McCafferty

I'M SCURRYING AROUND THE HOUSE, TRYING TO DECIDE WHAT I should pack (cloth diapers, knitted booties, cotton jumpers?) and what I should leave behind (cloth diapers, knitted booties, cotton jumpers?) when I'm stopped in my tracks by the lowing and braying of the animals in the barn. Someone's coming. Again.

So where should we go at it?' asked Bastian. 'Anywhere you want me,' I murmured, dreamily. 'Pardon?' 'Anywhere,' I said. 'Why don't we start in a familiar place, so we are not nervous our first time?' I have to remind myself that this is real, and not part of the daydream. He's talking about the Storytelling Project. Not sex.

I MAY FEEL LIKE A SOCIAL OUTCAST BUT IM NOT REALLY ONE TARYN NOW SHE'S A SOCIAL OUTCAST BUT IM NOT REALLY ONE TARYN NOW SHE'S A SOCIAL OUTCAST I THINK IM AN OUTCAST INASMUCH AS I WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE BY PEOPLE I CAN'T STAND WHICH ISNT REALLY THE SAME THING AS TRUE SOCIAL OSTRACIZATION NOW IS IT?

She taught me everything I know about what it means to be a good wife and mother, nourishing me with all the fruits of the spirit: joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness, and gentleness. What's happened to me since then isn't her fault. She did the best she could.

Please, please, please, I silently ask a God who should have stopped listening to me long ago.

Maybe I should find comfort in the utter absurdity of life and death. I can't outwit something that only plays by one rule: It will win in the end. No matter which way I choose to move, death will always come out the victor, so I should just try to enjoy the game of life as I'm playing it.

After all, you can't hang out at the park with your kid and shop for coordinating head scarves and flip-flops (or whatever else Bethany does to fill the endless expanse of nonworking days) without a college education. Oh, that's right. You totally can.

Mine means 'body,'" Tanu interjected. 'Wow, that's so eerie,' ALF said. 'Because . . . you have a body.

Work *is* depressing, if you don't love what you do" -Drea

As we kissed, it was as if I were returning to somewhere safe. We kissed, and it was like coming home after a long, grueling odyssey. Marcus and I kissed, and kissed, and kissed, and I never wanted to leave this familiar place again.

You get older, but you don't ever feel grown up

He's as ambivalent about raising a family as I am, but he'll do it because I asked him to. And until now, I tried convincing myself that it was the praiseworthy decision. But is it the right choice for the babies? For Ram? For me? But I'm not supposed to think about what's best for me, am I?

Oh, Christ. That's exactly the type of thing that warrants a journal burning.

Bridget has vowed to never, ever date a celebrity (or quasi-celebrity) again. "Unless it's, like, James Dean back from the dead," she says. "Well, that's sensible," I say.

Bridget has vowed to never, ever date a celebrity (or quasi-celebrity) again. 'Unless it's, like, James Dean back from the dead,' she says. 'Well, that's sensible,' I say.

It's how my ma raised me, after all, to live in JOY: Jesus first, Others next, Yourself last.

Are you afraid of offending people? Telling them things that they don't want to hear?' 'Yuh,' I said, nodding vigorously.

No ride. So I couldn't go home. No plan. No boyfriend. No job.

In six weeks, I'd be packing up all my stuff and getting the hell out of Pineville. But until then, my life at The Mall would really, really suck.

And for the first time all summer, The Mall was exactly where I wanted to be.

Happy entries in my journal do not exist. Or if they do, they end abruptly with scenes and sentences left unfinished because they are too gushy in a way that is disturbing and sick and foreign.

Maybe the supreme self-confidence I envied in Pepe was nothing more than cleverly masked insecurity.

Those were the best times, when I was still all promise and potential. Because right now I'm definitely not the most important sixteen-year-old on the planet. Not even ish. I'm just another prebumped girl dangerously close to wasting her prime reproductivity.

This is my new hobby. I watch my life depart minute by minute. I anticipate the end of everything and anything—a conversation, a class, track practice, darkness—only to be left with more clock-watching to take its place. I'm continually waiting for something better that never comes. Maybe it would help if I knew what I wanted.