Quotes About Acceptance

She understood that grief is not neat and orderly; it does not follow any rules. Time does not heal it. Rather, time insists on passing, and as it does, grief changes but does not go away. Sometimes she could actually visualize

We spend so much of our grief looking for answers to explain what cannot be explained.

If you wait long enough, someone had told him once, you settle into being married. Miss

submitting to the will of another requires trust and humility.

After all, you can't force a friendship.

Kristy sat up very straight in the director's chair. She adjusted her visor. "As you know," she said, "today we are going to induct two new members into the club." Jessi and Mal grinned at each other, but I thought, Induct? Who's Kristy kidding? First she comes up with this fancy word, which just means to introduce them into the club officially.

And I, I thought, like having my new family here.

I wondered what being the only black student in your grade would feel like. I guessed it would feel no different from being the only anything in your grade. I was the only one in our grade with seven brothers and sisters, including 10-year-old triplets. But I knew that wasn't quite the same. The kids couldn't tell that just by looking at me, but Jessica's coffee-colored skin was there for the world to see.

However, I knew Mimi would want me to play, so I agreed to.

Mimi … Oh, you just take Janine's side because she's smarter than I am. Mom and Dad love her more because she's smarter, and I bet you do, too!

Ann M. Martin

All of a sudden it dawned on me. I knew. I just knew. I was adopted, and my adoption papers were in there. If I were adopted, that would explain why I didn't look like anyone in my family, why I didn't act like anyone in my family, and why there were so few pictures of me. I wasn't Mom and Dad's real kid. I was an unwanted baby, or an orphan like Emily Michelle.

You see, they hadn't said a single nice thing to me since I had gotten the makeover

My mother says I am a pack rat. So what? Pack rats are probably very nice animals. And I bet they're prepared for anything. I know I am.

There was no way Swanilda could have been black

And then a frail little girl peered through the doorway. She was thin (I could tell that, even though she was dressed in an oversized top and oversized jeans), and a bright red scarf covered her head. Across the front of her T-shirt were the words: BALD IS BEAUTIFUL. She had to be Danielle Roberts.

eyes slant, Claud.

Becca and Danielle looked at each other joyously. What a pair they made: Becca, dark-skinned, shorter and chunkier than Danielle, wearing a flashy pair of jams, her thick hair arranged in ponytails; and Danielle, still pale, with the shape of a bean pole, wearing droopy jeans and her even droopier BALD IS BEAUTIFUL T-shirt, a blue-and-green scarf not really hiding her almost bald head.

At this point I was just hoping he wasn't going to be scarred for life.

There are going to be some things in life that you can't change.

No wicked stepfamilies here!

The burial service began. It was quite short, but Stacey remembers much more about it than I do. All I remember is thinking, as the casket was being lowered into the ground, Mimi's not in there. So I didn't cry. A bunch of men were just putting a box in the ground. That was all. Then Mom made me throw a white rose into the hole. I thought, What's the point? Mimi won't see it, but I did it anyway (since we were being formal).

Part of me had hoped my BSC friends had planned this whole thing as a huge April Fool's joke seven months early. We'd all have a big laugh and go back to the way we were, loyal and full of group spirit. But here's the other side: even though my mind was a mess, my body felt the strangest sense of calmness, as if I'd just taken a swim on a Hawaiian beach. I felt free. Free and peaceful.

Then I realized I smelled like horses and manure