It strikes me how strange people are. You can see them every day - you can think you know them - and then you fшnd out you hardly know them at all.

It occurs to me that for a long time she has been doing her own version of resisting.

And for a moment―for a split second―everything else falls away, the whole pattern and order of my life, and a huge joy crests in my chest. I am no one, and I owe nothing to anybody, and my life is my own.

I didn't realize then what a privilege that was: to be bored with your best friend; to have time to waste.

No one can tell us no. No one can make us stop. We have picked each other and the rest of the world can go to hell.

That’s just the kind of thing that kids do to each other. It’s no big deal. There’s always going to be a person laughing and somebody getting laughed at. It happens every day, in every school, in every town in America—probably in the world, for all I know. The whole point of growing up is learning to stay on the laughing side.

It strikes me how strange people are. You can see them every day - you can think you know them - and then you fшnd out you hardly know them at all.