Quotes from E. Lockhart

For the college essay, she wrote that in these stories, being orphaned is a precondition for the making of a hero. She also said those comic book heroes aren't simple heroes, but 'complicated ones who make moral compromises in the same tradition as the orphans in Victorian narratives.

Then he kissed my eyelids. Kind of licked them. And if you've never had someone lick your eyelids, you should know that it's not exactly romantic and it's even a tiny bit gross, but it feels like the other person really likes you and accepts you somehow.

The jolt of a new purchase makes Mummy feel powerful, if only for a moment.

but she's got power—because she's got money.

In the theater," Adelaide went on, wanting him to understand why she found this so interesting, "your audience doesn't expect things to look real. Like, you can't have a real car on the stage, anyway, can you? So instead, you make something obviously artificial. You just create the feeling. And maybe the thing you make, instead of looking real, feels true.

We are liars. We are beautiful and privileged. We are cracked and broken." ? E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

She would love herself, even with her sadness and her distractibility, her defenses and her failures. The process of making would stretch open the universe until it was frighteningly and gloriously wide with possibility.

I already have a toothbrush. I don't know why she would buy me another. That woman buys things just to buy things. It's disgusting.

She made me act normal. Because I was. Because I could. She told me to breathe and sit up.

They want you to be small and silent. Good was just another word for don't fight back.

I seem to remember there was some hocus-pocus with that one." "You mean hanky-panky!" shouted Ruth. "There was hanky panky.

I do not love my father's way of thinking, but much of it has become mine.

His skin is warm and sandy.We intertwine our fingers and close our eyes against the sun. We just lie there.Holding hands.He rubs my palm with his thumb like he did two summers ago beneath the stars. And I melt.

Yet another technique of the neglected positivist is to impose a new meaning on a word that exists but, through the convolutions of grammar, doesn't technically mean what you are deciding it means. The neglected positive of incriminate is criminate, which actually, technically means the same thing as incriminate—because the in- isn't really making a negative in this case—but it is much more amusing if you use it to mean the opposite.

What a lovely way to burn.

WELCOME TO THE beautiful Sinclair family. No one is a criminal. No one is an addict. No one is a failure.

She is a ghost climbing out of the sea, returning to the spot where no one loved her quite enough to keep her safe.

Every curve of his face was familiar, and also, I had never seen him before.

Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,

Be decisive; no one likes a waffler"; "Never complain, never explain"—

This is the only time I will ever tell, I say to myself.

He was a person who couldn't fake a smile but smiled often. He wrapped my wrists in white gauze and believed wounds needed attention. He wrote on his hands and asked me my thoughts. His mind was restless, relentless. He didn't believe in God anymore and yet he still wished that God would help him. And now he was mine and I said we should not let our love be threatened.

But he talked like the kisses were sort of a joke, merely something fun to do so as not to waste the beauty of the evening and the drama of the landscape. pg. 91

Cady, I'm serious. We should NOT always do what we're afraid to do,' says Mirren heatedly. 'We never should.' 'Why not?' 'You could die. You could get hurt. If you are terrified, there's probably a good reason. You should trust your impulses.' 'So what's your philosophy, then?' Johnny asks her. 'Be a giant chickenhead?' 'Yes,' says Mirren. 'That and the kindness thing I said before.