"A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead."
"Since when does anyone get the option to do the easiest?"
"Dylan Jerome," the lawyer admits, "wanted to sue God for not caring enough about him."
"Clearly God was in some kind of mood on my birthday."
"I lean against my sister's shoulder. "I thought lightning wasn't supposed to strike in the same place twice.""Sure it does," Izzy tells me. "But only if you're too dumb to move."
"A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you."
"Once, I asked my mom why stars shine. She said they werenight-lights, so the angels could find their way around in Heaven.But when I asked my dad, he started talking about gas, and somehowI put it all together and figured that the food God served causedmultiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night."
"Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans: once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers."
"There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character... Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl."
"Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation., and to others, like a pearl."
"Change isn't always for the worst; the shell that forms around a piece of sand looks to some people like an irritation, and to others, like a pearl."
"There is a curious thing that happens with the passage of time: a calcification of character."
"And just because you turn out differently than everyone's imagined you would doesn't mean that you've failed in some way. A kid who gets teased in one school might move to a different one, and be the most poplar girl there, just because no one has any other expectations of her. Or a person who goes to med school because his entire family is full of doctors might find out that what he really wants to be is an artist instead."
"Taking a deep breath, I shake my head and find Judge staring at me. "Reason number 106 why dogs are smarter than humans," I say. "Once you leave the litter, you sever contact with your mothers."
"There are just as many stories to be told in the dark spots as there are in the bright ones."
"Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception."
"You want to know what I want? I'm sick of being a guinea pig. I'm sick, but I'm never f*cking sick enough for this family."
"I used to wonder about the fake pictures that came in frames you buy at the store—ladies with smooth brown hair and show-me smiles, grapefruit-headed babies on their sibling's knees—people who in real life probably were strangers brought together by a talent scout to be a phony family.Maybe it's not so different from real photos, after all."
"If you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it’s not because they enjoy solitude. It’s because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."
"I wonder how much the general population of this country know that the legal system has far more to do with playing a good hand of poker than it does with justice."
"I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway."
"I learn from my own daughter that you don’t have to be awake to cry."
"It is a curious thing, watching a strong man fall to pieces."
"The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas - a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak."
"Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow-beautiful while it's there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink."