I think you’re the saddest person I’ve ever met. It’s like you’re drowning in it.

I suppose he's making a real fashion statement, but this is high school. You're not supposed to be real. You're supposed to be enough like everyone else to get through and out into the waiting world.

My full name is Lauren Lee Smith. Of all the names I could have been given, that's the one I got. Lauren Lee Smith. It has all the personality of a toaster.

I deserved the shaking and the headaches and the fact that every single time I took a breath I felt a squeezing in my chest, my heart beating even though I wished it wasn't.

I think the way I feel when I look at Evan comes from her. In pictures taken the day she married my dad, she was reckless, laughing, spinning around in circles. She looked like her whole world was him. She looked a kind of happy I can't even imagine. I don't want that. I don't want to be like that. I don' want to feel the way she did because I know what happens when you do. You love with your whole heart, with everything, and you wake up one morning and kiss someone good-bye the way you always do except you mean it as good-bye forever.

I love books. I like that the moment you open one and sink into it you can escape from the world, into a story that's way more interesting that yours will ever be.

I’m always the one who doesn’t have a date, the one guys walk up to and say, “So, is your friend, you know, with someone?” and I may not be the only girl without someone, but it feels like it sometimes. A lot of the time.