Holy mother of Lord Cocoa Puffs

At the same time I know that it’s not really their fault, at least not completely. I did my part too. I did it on a hundred different days and in a thousand different ways, and I know it. But this makes the anger worse, not better.

You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them.

For the first time in my life I actually feel sorry for Carol. I'm only seventeen years old, and I already know something she doesn't know: I know that life isn't life if you just float through it. I know that the whole point- the only point- is to find things that matter, and hold on to them, and fight for them, and refuse to let them go.

Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in ink - parents' smiles frozen, camera flashes blinding, mouths open and white teeth glinstening, dark glossy hair and deep blue sky and unrelenting light, everyone drowning in light - everything so clear and perfect I'm sure it must already be a memory, or a dream.

It's Connecticut: being like the people around you is the whole point.

That was what her parents did not understand—and had never understood—about stories. Liza told herself storied as though she was weaving and knotting an endless rope. Then, no matter how dark or terrible the pit she found herself in, she could pull herself out, inch by inch and hand over hand, on the long rope of stories.