Jennifer Echols quotes:

But you are right, being stupid is not illegal. Otherwise half this town would be behind bars.

The TV said you should ignore bullies and they would stop harassing you. In practice this worked about half the time. The other half, you ended up with two tall boys shadowing you through a trailer park, their fingers taking little nips at your clothes, like dogs.

Boys are two years behind girls in maturity level.

No. I just don't want to be a detective. They figure out what happened after the fact, when it's too late. I want to prevent it from happening.

Of course I don't faint at the sight of blood. I jump onto the dance floor and do the Soulja Boy. Get the hell off me, Dr. McDreamy."

Sam was creative and dedicated, but his wasn't the plodding bright-and-early work ethic of the morning person, like mine. It was the crazy creative burst of the night owl, long dark hours of despair before dawn.

Your lot in life? A lot is something you draw, like straws. It's chance. You didn't get this life by chance. You chose it on purpose. If you're dissatisfied from it, you can change it.

Yes, I was good at reading people. I studied them so I could put them in my novels.

Sarcasm was a weapon for children.

John pointed at me to get my attention. He circled his finger in the air to tell me to wrap it up, then pointed to his cop car. I made a series of baseball catcher's signs."

It wasn't a pretty sunset. The colors were as expected: violet clouds, bright orange and pink underneath, against the pale blue sky. But the clouds were high cirrus, wispy, and crossed with the contrails of F-16s, a colorful glowing mess. I said, It looks like God barfed a rainbow.

Seeing him jogging at the park had cracked the window so I could peek into his soul. Seeing him with his friends threw the window wide open.He was so nineteen.

It's one thing to think you're worthless, and quite another for somebody else to tell you that you are.

I turned to the clarinets. They were a resourceful lot.

I mean, even in these snow pants,check out my ass.

It was better that we never apologized to each other. Then we'd be admitting that we were wrong and we owed each other something. That's where people got into trouble.

When something awful happens, sometimes people get stuck.

My mistake was assuming that when I got to college, people would not be such assholes.

The nurse knocked softly on the door of the examining room and wheeled in a shiny silver tray displaying neatly arranged instruments of torture.

That is the way convince people. Or change them and prevent them from hurting whether themselves and others. Art is the most effective form of communication. You can use it to lift the human spirit and make them understand that there is more to life than their next drug use.

Or that I couldn't stand to watch anything bad happen to you, because it was like it was happening to me too. Is that love?

It's easier to remember your lies if they're close to the truth,

But you can't live your life worried about dying all the time. If you do, you're dead already.

How did we get to this place where we had to be tough all the time and never said how much we loved each other?

Love isn't something you have to deserve.