"But I do know which is the least popular. The truth."
"If you hear a song that makes you cry and you don't want to cry anymore, you don't listen to that song anymore. But you can't get away from yourself. You can't decide not to see yourself anymore. You can't decide to turn off the noise in your head."
"I didn't feel physically sick. But mentally. My mind was twisting in so many ways. (...) We once saw a documentary on migraines. One of the men interviewed used to fall on his knees and bang his head against the floor, over and over during attacks. This diverted the pain from deep inside his brain, where he couldn't reach it, to a pain outside that he had control over."
"If you hear a song that makes you cry and you don’t want to cry anymore, you don’t listen to that song anymore. But you can’t get away from yourself. You can’t decide not to see yourself anymore. You can’t decide to turn off the noise in you head."
"But whatever the reason, it felt surreal"
"Here's a tip. If you touch a girl, even as joke, and she pushes you off, leave... her... alone. Don't touch her. Anywhere! Just stop. Your touch does nothing but sicken her."
"Then come to realize that you're making mountains out of molehills. Realize how petty you've become. Sure, it may feel like you can't get a grip on this town. It may seem that every time someone offers you a hand up, they just let go and you slip further down. But you must stop being so pessimistic, Hannah, and learn to trust those around you. So I do. One more time."
"After your visits, I twisted my blinds shut every night. I locked out the stars and I never saw lightning again. Each night, I simply turned out the lights and went to bed."
"If there's one thing I've still got, it's my memory. Which is too bad. Maybe if I forgot things once in a while, we'd all be a little bit happier."
"Sometimes we have thoughts that even we don’t understand. Thoughts that aren’t even true—that aren’t really how we feel—but they’re running through our heads anyway because they’re interesting to think about.If you could hear other people’s thoughts, you’d overhear things that are true as well as things that are completely random. And you wouldn’t know one from the other. It’d drive you insane. What’s true? What’s not? A million ideas, but what do they mean?"
"I decided to find out how people at school might react if one of the students never came back."
"Everything...affects everything"
"What if you weren't the person I hoped you were?That, more than anything, would have hurt the most."
"That's what I love about poetry. The more abstract, the better. The stuff where you're not sure what the poet's talking about. You may have an idea, but you can't be sure. Not a hundred percent. Each word, specifically chosen, could have a million different meanings."
"That girl had two chances. And both of us let her down."
"Put meunderneath God's sky and know medon't just look at me with your eyesTake awaythis mask of flesh and bone andsee me for my soulalone"
"But you can't get away from yourself. You can't decide not to see yourself anymore. You can't decide to turn off the noise in your head."
"We almost bumped into each other. But your eyes were down so you didn't know it was me. And together we said it. "I'm sorry."Then you looked up. You saw me. And there, in your eyes, what was it? Sadness? Pain? You moved around and tried pushing your hair away from your face. Your fingernails were painted dark blue. I watched you walk down the long stretch of hallway. I stood there and watched you disappear. Forever."
"Sometimes, there's no one around to tell you to be quiet... to be very, very quiet. Sometimes you need to be quiet when you're all alone."
"I needed a break...from myself."
"I simply wanted a kiss. I was a freshman girl who had never been kissed. Never. But I liked the boy, he liked me, and I was going to kiss him. That's the story, the whole story, right there."
"I was so anxious about what kind of kiss it would be-because my friends back home described so many types-and it turned out to be the beautiful kind. You didn't shove your tongue down my throat. You didn't grab my butt. We just held our lips together...and kissed."
"Unanswered? I would've answered any question, Hannah. But you never asked."
"Betrayal. It's one of the worst feelings."
"Or deep down, maybe there was more. Maybe I wanted someone to figure out who wrote the note and secretly come to my rescue.Maybe. I don’t know. But I was careful never to give myself away."