“I want my life to be the greatest story. My very existence will be the greatest poem. Watch me burn. Love always, Charlotte”
“Magda looks at me as if I ve gone mad. Or I ve grown up. It s kind of the same thing.”
“As it turned out, almost every notion I had on my 13th birthday about my future turned out to be a total waste of my time. When I thought of myself as an adult, all I could imagine was someone thin, and smooth, and calm, to whom things... happened. Some kind of souped-up princess with a credit card. I didn t have any notion about self-development, or following my interests, or learning big life lessons, or, most important, finding out what I was good at and trying to earn a living from it. I presumed that these were all things that some grown-ups would come along and basically tell me what to do about at some point, and that I really shouldn t worry about them. I didn t worry about what I was going to do. What I did worry about, and thought I should work hard at, was what I should be, instead. I thought all of my efforts should be concentrated on being fabulous, rather than doing fabulous things.”
“That night, Gregory dreamt of his mother. It was a dream that he d have carried to his therapist like a raw, precious egg if he d had a therapist, and the dream made him wish he had one. In the dream, he sat in the kitchen of his mother s house at the table on his usual place. He could hear her handle pots and pans and sigh occasionally. Sitting there filled his heart with sadness and also with a long missed feeling of comfort until he realised that the chair and the table were much too small for him: it was a child s chair and he could barely fit his long legs under the table. He was worried that his mother might scold him for being so large and for not wearing pants. Gregory, in the dream, felt his manhood press against his belly while he was crouching uncomfortably, not daring to move.”
“Oak, granite, Lilies by the road, Remember me? I remember you. Clouds brushing Clover hills, Remember me? Sister, child, Grown tall, Remember me? I remember you.”
“Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person s childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging above the brim. And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It s their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can t understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That s the carrier of all the living qualities. It s the centre of all the possible magic and revelation.”
“محدش م الناس وااااو زي ما انته متخيل! كل ما تعمل زووووم على أي حد بتلاقيه بيبكسل !!”
“He wanted pure compliments, just as he wanted unconditional love.”
“It seems only yesterday I used to believe there was nothing under my skin but light. If you cut me I could shine. But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, I skin my knees. I bleed.”
“I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.”
“She was not a little girl heart-broken about him; she was a grown woman smiling at it all, but they were wet smiles.”
“We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together.”
“I found myself suddenly jealous of the time when things were simple, when days centered on creek walks and tetherball, and your biggest worry was whether you d have riding or sailing. There were no boys, there were no secrets or rumors, and there were no regrets. Not even fear of regret. There was just a best friend and endless hours to fill with Pixy Stix and laughing so hard you couldn t breathe.”
“People always think something s all true. I don t give a damn, except that I get bored when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am, I really do. But people never notice. People never notice anything.”
“And what other kind of man would you want leading you into battle?” he says, reading my Noise. “What other kind of man is suitable for war?” A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes monsters of men. “Wrong,” says the Mayor. “It’s war that makes us men in the first place. Until there’s war, we are only children.” Another blast of the horn comes roaring down at us, so loud it nearly takes our heads off and it puts the army off its stride for a second or two. We look up the road to the bottom of the hill. We see Spackle torches gathering there to meet us. “Ready to grow up, Todd?” the Mayor asks.”
“We are not sure what we will become, only what we want to and don’t want to. We often become what we never thought we could, then we become fine with that.”
“The boy and the man must be raised to see the possibility of self worth, then meet a few others who provide the vision of a road toward it, then spend a lifetime pursing that worth through action and relationship. One of the great tragedies in human life is to be born a male and not be guided toward the value of a man.”