"I’d rather not know what lies ahead because I like the dark. I like thinking there is something good in the places I can’t see. And that’s not ignorance. That’s just hope."
"When you find a truth that surpasses your desire to fit trends and meet approval, you can be certain it’s worth fighting to spread."
"To cherish my purity and set boundaries are, in my opinion, the highest forms of feminism—a woman who saves her body proves she is strong and secure enough to resist the men who seek to claim her, that she’s more than what lies between her legs."
"I twist and pin my hair at the nape of my neck, and then stand with legs wide. It’s what Nash told me to do before speaking because men, no matter how many times they profess women are equal, prefer to take direction from bodies like theirs."
"You don’t know what love is until you find it,” he whispered, “but when you do, promise me you won’t let it go. Promise you’ll seek it out even when you’re scared it’ll hurt."
"The truth is crazier than lies because lies are required to stick to possibilities—the truth isn’t."
"There comes a moment when we must choose how we’re going to love someone. Some forms of love leave a sweet memory once they’re gone, others leave scars. But there are forms that when stolen, destroy part of who we are—love that transforms us."
"Are you real?” Stupid. Of course he’s real.“Yes, Julie. I’m not the mystical man from your dreams."
"If a boy can manage to have coffee with me during the apocalypse, I know he cares. There’s not a speck of doubt in my mind. He must care."
"You’re different, and I know that’s probably the most cliché response ever given, but it’s the truth. When I look at you, it’s as if I’m reading a novel. No matter how much time I spend studying your pages, there will always be more for me to learn, deeper layers of complexity to baffle me, and plot twists that’ll leave me speechless."
"After the end of the world, there is a world. Life doesn’t stop. It changes. And it changes me."
"If I seem to not want to be with him now, it’s only because love scares me too, more than manipulation, because love is a choice I make and not something forced upon me. I trust him, but I don’t trust myself. I must have time to trust myself so I can completely love him.He’s the grenade. I’m the grenade. We’ll blow each other to pieces… Together."
"Yes,” I whisper so the others won’t hear, “but being afraid is good because it means I still have more to lose."
"People have always expected the end of the world to be a dramatic, thematic event: war, disease, a sudden explosion. But what if the end of the world has already occurred? What if our final demise happened slowly, secretly … and we’ve been oblivious to it all?"
"Men tend to treat women as fragile creatures, but our bodies were built to withstand pain and hard work, think with profound insight. We were created to do what men can’t. And if that isn’t reason enough for us to be treated equal, I’m not sure what is."
"I am strong and human with a mouth that works like a man’s and a more intelligible brain, and I demand to be heard."
"Our surroundings fade and we exist in unison, two people who once shared cups of coffee, unprecedentedly ourselves in a changing world."
"There is only one thing in this world worse than dying and that’s watching someone you love die instead—you feel their pain with no final solace."
"Sometimes you find a lie, and sometimes it finds you."
"We didn’t cause the apocalypse…”“But we were too dumb to see it,” she snaps. “That was our mistake."
"We know your secret.And we won’t be made invisible."
"Never has it been inappropriate for a girl to wear a red dress."
"It wouldn’t be very ladylike to punch a guy in the balls, but it isn’t very manlike to harass a woman because she has different parts and a sweet face."
"Welcome to the apocalypse. Where make-do is a motto and life seems wrong, out-of-place. Where the weak become strong because they have no other choice."
"The world doesn’t change because the sun sets and rises. We can either adapt to survive our circumstance or we can change it. And I know we can’t control fate, but I’m sure not going to spend whatever time I have left sitting around and waiting for my life to get better."