Ellen Wittlinger quotes:

I trust the red sun setting, the leafless November trees. On Monday morning I look foward fearlessly to Friday's eve. But humans are not as reliable as nature, as trees. I wonder if you'll come back; I trust only that you leave.

It's a lie, you know, to pretend that nothing is important to you. It's hiding. Believe me, I know because I hid for a long time. But now I won't do it anymore. The truth is bioluminescent. I don't lie, and I don't waste time on people who do.

When people say they love you, you just have to decide to believe them, because you'll never know for sure.

the whole idea of boys being people you would actually choose to spend time with was pretty much totally incomprehensible to me. i could never think of anything to say to them, and they seemed equally dumbstruck by my presence.

you give everyone the benefit of the doubt. they don't always deserve it.

...and she said we all had to find God inside ourselves, in the things we loved most.

when there's an elephant in the room, you can't pretend it isn't there and just discuss the ants.

Why is it that people don't know what to say when something bad has happened to someone they know? Maybe because they think there are some magic words that will make everything all right again, only they don't know what the words are.

That's what I love about writing. Once you get the words down on paper, in print, they start to make sense. It's like you don't know what you think until it dribbles from your brain down your arm and into your hand and out through your fingers and shows up on the computer screen, and you read it and realize: That's really true; I believe that.

But you can only lie about who you are for so long without going crazy.

People changed lots of other personal things all the time. They dyed their hair and dieted themselves to near death. They took steroids to build muscles and got breast implants and nose jobs so they'd resemble their favorite movie stars. They changed names and majors and jobs and husbands and wives. They changed religions and political parties. They moved across the country or the world -- even changed nationalities. Why was gender the one sacred thing we weren't supposed to change? Who made that rule?

i want to look at all my tears, she said. which made me shiver

sometimes people think they're above the laws the rest of us live by. they're blind to their own imperfections.

nobody is like anybody else. that's why nobody gets along with anybody else.

well, it sounds strange, but when i think of God, i think of a soft whirring noise - like a spinning ball of energy - something i can tap into when i need it.