Quotes from Sara Zarr

Katy skipped over, her low-rise jeans threatening to fall off her skinny hips. With some girls, that was a sexy look. With Katy, it made you nervous.

I get a message from my dad. In the mood I'm in, I tear up to see his name in my inbox, and imagine him down the hall in bed, propped on pillows, emailing me. Hon, Enjoyed our gelato date the other night. I just want to say I'm proud of you for a lot of reasons. Also, I've attached a picture of my foot. He's such a weirdo goofball. I love him.

Apparently, the world was perfect in 1958.

I, Deanna Lambert, belong to no one and no one belongs to me. I don't know what to do.

It was knowing someone else thought about me for more than one second, maybe thought about me when I wasn't there.

I don't want these memories to become slippery, to disapper into the thin air of life the way most things seem to. I want them to stick- even the bad ones-so I repeat them often.

Sometimes I see the future and it's like I'm a blank. I mean I know what I'll look like, that I'll exist. But I don't know who I'll be or who will be with me. At least I know who I'm not and who won't be with me.

When you go to high school, and you're trying to figure yourself out, sometimes it takes doing things that you don't like in order to figure out what you don't like. But it's important to maintain your sense of self throughout the journey.

I got this strong feeling of missing him, like he was someone who I loved who had died and gone away, someone who was mostly a memory. I wanted to grab him and say okay, I was sorry about Tommy, it was just a stupid mistake and I knew I'd hurt him and I wish I hadn't. Because I did love him. I did.

There are so many pieces to grief. Sad pieces, angry pieces, guilty pieces, pieces of regret, and pieces that are a certain kind of pain that doesn't even have a word.

Or she could return to the beginning, to the first moment she`d started to feel like playing wasn`t for her anymore. But she coudn`t rehash every hurt, every disappointment, every moment that felt like betrayal. And expect to arrive anywhere good.

Is that the destiny of all friendships, no matter how good they are? To die out or fade away? To end?

I can be human to strangers and coworkers, just not to the people who actually care about me.

Because we were having a family crisis. Your family had a crisis? Yes, Ethan. My family. Had a crisis. A crisis was had by my family.

There are things I want to remember about Cameron Quick that I can't entirely, like the pajamas he wore when he used to sleep over, and his favorite cereal, or how it felt to hold his hand as we walked home from school in third grade. I want to remember exactly how we became friends in the first place, a definite starting line that I can visit again and again. He's a story I want to know from page one.

He said I didn't need to save him. But you want to. Yeah. But I can't. Right? Probably not. Usually not.

What did it feel like, I wondered, to be kissed like that right out in public? Not like some passionate tongue-wrestling thing, just a kiss to declare: We are each other's. I'd never been kissed like that, not by him or anyone else. No one had declared me his, not for the whole world to see, anyway.

His voice just shot through me. It's amazing, the things your body will do just when you don't want them to: heart speeding up, fingers aching. I'd always liked his voice, low and laid-back, the kind of voice that made you listen, a voice that still caused me to teeter when I heard it saying my old nickname.

It happened right then; he looked at me and it was the thing I'd been waiting for but didn't know it. I don't mean anything corny like I fell in love or even into a crush or anything like that. It was more a feeling like when I'd get picked first for volleyball or find one of those stupid school candygrams in my locker. It was knowing someone else thought about me for more than one second, maybe even about me when I wasn't there.

Just hearing their names pushes and pulls at you in a hundred ways, and when you try to define those hundred ways, describe them even to yourself, words are useless. If you had a lifetime to talk, there would still be things left unsaid.

Death changes things,' I said. 'It happens and you can't stop it. You don't have a choice. This is different.' 'Life changes things, too.

You don't get anything without giving up something.

I'm going to check on you in the night, he said. At random intervals of my choosing. I figured.

Mom always says that doubt is just another way of expressing faith.