“I always say that creating positive change in the world starts with just one person: you. That’s why it is so important to learn to be the right kind of selfish. It’s essential to learn the art of taking care of ourselves so that we can have the energy and the willpower to take care of each other and the world that we live in”

“I didn't wave my daisy. I felt small, the way an ant must feel looking up at a field of wildflowers. I was nothing. I was trapped below flowers, buried under them, while girls like Lizzie Lovett danced overhead. That was life. We all have a place.”

“Lizzy, Will thought. Lizzy P. 'You n me gonna be buddies, darlin'. He stretched one hand to Elly's hair, and circled Donald Wade's rump with his free arm and touched Thomas's leg, on the far side of Elly. And he smiled at Lizzy P. and thought, Heaven's got nothin' on being the husband of Eleanor Dinsmore.”

“Her jaw dropped. She grabbed him by the shoulders. “I think I have formed an attachment to you. You know, what the English call a desire to have symphonic concerts with someone at all hours of the day?”He smiled. “And I love you too, darling.”-Lizzy and Will”

“Her time has come," answered Miss Lizzie. "That's why I didn't marry Harvey - long ago when he asked me. I was afraid of 'that'. So afraid." "I don't know," Miss Lizzie said. "Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than just to be safe." She waited until the next scream died away. "At least she knows she's living.”

“Don't you ever get in trouble for things like that at the school for the Incredibly gifted?" Jane asked. "No," Merissa said sadly. "Our talent is mischief, so whenever we do something bad they just encourage us to try harder.”

“Who are you, Martin Eden? he demanded of himself in the looking- glass, that night when he got back to his room. He gazed at himself long and curiously. Who are you? What are you? Where do you belong? You belong by rights to girls like Lizzie Connolly. You belong with the legions of toil, with all that is low, and vulgar, and unbeautiful. You belong with the oxen and the drudges, in dirty surroundings among smells and stenches. There are the stale vegetables now. Those potatoes are rotting. Smell them, damn you, smell them. And yet you dare to open the books, to listen to beautiful music, to learn to love beautiful paintings, to speak good English, to think thoughts that none of your own kind thinks, to tear yourself away from the oxen and the Lizzie Connollys and to love a pale spirit of a woman who is a million miles beyond you and who lives in the stars! Who are you? and what are you? damn you! And are you going to make good?”

“Maybe she hated being out of control, knowing that someone or something else was dictating her fate. Because it's really not fair. A drunk driver runs a red light, and you end up dead. A guy in a movie theater coughs on you, and you catch some rare, fatal disease. You sit in class minding your own business, and there's the kid from sixth period holding a gun in his hand. Why should other people be in control? Why should someone else get to choose when you die?”

“As long as something was a mystery, there was still the potential for amazement. Maybe that's where I went wrong before. Some riddles weren't meant to be solved.”

“Pain and anger have to go somewhere. If we keep stuffing them down instead of processing them, we’ll end up either turning them inward, which isn’t good, or outward, which is no better.”

“People change. Thank God. I can't imagine a world where everyone's the same as they were in high school.”