We pull our boots on with both hands
but we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do
is stand on the curb and say Sorry
about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of
lullabies.

Nothing can change [Carrie] back now from something made out of newsprint into a person. But she was, and she hurt. More than any of us probably know, she hurt. And I’m so sorry and I hope it was good for her, that prom. Until the terror began, I hope it was good and fine and wonderful and magic…

He kept pretending that they were on a real date, and then he'd remember that they were.

Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.

You may have already figured out that [this book is] about a girl who had cancer. So there’s a chance you’re thinking, ‘Awesome! This is going to be a wise and insightful story about love and death and growing up. It’s probably going to make me cry literally the entire time. I am so fired up right now.’ If that is an accurate representation of your thoughts, you should probably try to smush this book into a garbage disposal and then run away. Because here’s the thing: I learned absolutely nothing from Rachel’s leukemia.

(…) This book contains precisely zero Important Life Lessons, or Little-Known Facts About Love, or sappy tear-jerking Moments When We Knew We Had Left Our Childhood Behind for Good, or whatever. And, unlike most books in which a girl gets cancer, there are definitely no sugary paradoxical single-sentence-paragraphs that you’re supposed to think are deep because they’re in italics. Do you know what I’m talking about? I’m talking about sentences like this:

The cancer had taken her eyeballs, yet she saw the world with more clarity than ever before.

The Mayor's wrong—
He's wrong for ever and ever—
It's not that you should never love something so much it can control you.
It's that you need to love something that much so you can never be controlled.
It's not a weakness—
It's your best strength—

Maybe he's my blackmailer. Maybe he's also becoming my friend. Who the hell knows if that's even allowed.

But I'm tired of coming out. All I ever do is come out. I try not to change, but I keep changing, in all these tiny ways. I get a girlfriend. I have a beer. And every freaking time, I have to reintroduce myself to the universe all over again.

I guess I didn't really think of myself as interesting until I was interesting to Blue.

I thought it might be a great thing to be the air.
I could be something and nothing at the same time. I could be necessary and also invisible. Everyone would need me and no one would be able to see me.

"Knights die in battle," Catelyn reminded her. (...) "As ladies die in childbed. No one sings songs about them."

All Eli had to do was smile. All Victor had to do was lie. Both proved frighteningly effective.

When no one understands, that's usually a good sign that you're wrong.

Someone could call themselves a hero and still walk around killing dozens. Someone else could be labeled a villain for trying to stop them. Plenty of humans were monstrous, and plenty of monsters knew how to play at being human.

He wanted to embrace his guardian, to hold him and tell him that he would never desert him, but the action was unthinkable. He could no more hug Silas than he could hold a moonbeam, not because his guardian was insubstantial, but because it would be wrong. There were people you could hug, and then there was Silas.

Men actually think [the Cool Girl] exists. Maybe they're fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men - friends, coworkers, strangers - giddy over these awful pretender women, and I'd want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who'd like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I'd want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bad and say: The bitch doesn't really love chili dogs that much - no one loves chili dogs that much. (...) There are variations to the window dressing but believe me, he wants a Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn't ever complain. (How do you know you're not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: 'I like strong women.' If he says that to you he will at some point fuck someone else. Because 'I like strong women' is code for 'I hate strong women.')

I waited patiently - years - for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we'd say, Yeah, he's a Cool Guy.

But it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation! Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl. Men believed she existed - she wasn't just a dreamgirl one in a million. Every girl was supposed to be this girl, and if you weren't, then there was something wrong with you.

Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxipad commercial, Windex commercial. You'd think all women do is clean and bleed.

"Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without."
[...] At the moment, the choice would be simple. I can survive just fine without either of them.

If he wants me broken, then I will have to be whole.