Quotes About Community

I grab my laptop and log on to ChezTeen.com. Within minutes, I'm surrounded by friends, even though I've never met any of them. There, I can pretend that my first day of school was fantastic, because no one is going to know anything different. I can be anyone I want to be when I'm online and I don't even have to wear makeup.

We can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.

Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.

All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough by to shoulder the rest.

But it was okay not to fit in everywhere, as long as you did somewhere.

I'd been convinced I was on the outside, but really, I'd always been within arm's reach. All I had to do was ask, and I, too, would be easily brought back, surrounded and immersed, finding myself safe, somewhere in between.

You only really fall apart in front of the people you know can piece you back together.

I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one things was for sure: like it or not, you'd never be alone.

When faced with the scariest of things, all you want to do is turn away, hide in your own invisible place. But you can't. That's why it's not only important for us to be seen, but to have someone to look for us, as well.

I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying.

Watching them, I thought again of how we can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.

You could just tell when a person belonged somewhere. That is something you can't fake, no matter how hard you try

It's funny how two people can grow up in the same town, go to the same school, have the same friends, and end up so totally different. Family, or lack of it, counts for more than you'd think.

It was kind of soothing, these sounds of lives being lived all around me, for better or for worse. And there I was, in the middle of them all, newly reborn and still waiting for mine to begin.

Sitting there with them, it was almost hard to remember when I first came to Perkins, so determined to remember to be a one-woman operation to the end. But that was the thing about taking help and giving it, or so I was learning; there was no such thing as really getting even. Instead, this connection, once opened, remained ongoing over time.

From up above, in a plane passing over, you'd just see one little light in all this dark, with no idea of the lives that were being lived within it, and in the house beside, and beside that one. So much happening in the world, night and day, hour by hour. It was no wonder we were meant to sleep, if only to check out of it for a little while.

You couldn't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build a world from it.

why should i always have to do the looking?why can't other people do the look out for me?

Even if you do make tons of new friends," I told him, "try not to forget where you came from, okay?

People didn't forget anything in a small town.

When she finally finished a few minutes later, it was hard to tell if she was even aware that the crowds had thinned... Watching them, I thought again of how we can't expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it's a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.

Because in the summers, the world came back to the lake," she'd reply. "And that was when it felt like home.

All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you're lucky, there's someone close enough by to shoulder the rest.

Disco...is great for healing.