Everything that happens to you matters to me.

no, no, it's not all random, if it really was all random, the universe would abandon us completely. and the universe doesn't. it takes care of its most fragile creations in ways we can't see. like with parents who adore you blindly. and a big sister who feels guilty for being human over you. and a little gravelly-voiced kid whose friends have left him over you. and even a pink-haired girl who carries your picture in her wallet. maybe it is a lottery, but the universe makes it all even out in the end. the universe takes care of all its birds.

A perfect person is easy to love. But when somebody likes all your imperfections, well, that's when you know they really mean it.

There are a million rules for being a girl. There are a million things you have to do to get through each day. High school has things that can trip you up, ruin you, people say one thing and mean another, and you have to know all the rules, you have to know what you can and can't do.

Stop trying to be less of who you are. Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back.

I can do this… I can start over. I can save my own life and I’m never going to be alone as long as I have stars to wish on and people to still love.

Books didn’t make me wallow in darkness, darkness made me wallow in books.

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

Dear Teens at Starbucks wearing 'Abstain from Sex 2 Attain Ur Goals' t-shirts: Doesn't it depend on what my goals are?

I could watch him do this until morning — never asking questions and never interrupting his work. I worship quietly — his intense focus and attention to detail and then, out of no where, I realize the inconvenient, inappropriate truth: ‘I love this man… and it has swallowed me.

Your personal truth is your gift to the world.

I didn't want it to be one good memory that led to a lot of bad ones. I wanted it to stay what it was, one amazing moment, something that was strong and sweet enough to stand on its own. Something I could remember without any pain. - Kate

Robert, I’m sorry that you feel so strange, but I’m not sorry that you’re feeling it because of me,” I whispered, my heart feeling a familiar twinge as I continued, “but even if you hadn’t felt it, it would not change the way I feel about you.

Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who they’re destined to be.

I met a boy whose eyes showed me that the past, present and future were all the same thing.

For so many years, I couldn’t understand why every time I thought that someone finally loved me, like… for real, they would eventually turn to vapor. Every person whom I’ve ever loved is trapped inside of my chest. I’ve breathed all of them in so deeply that I’ve nearly choked and died on every soul that I’ve ever given myself to.

I want to be the best version of myself for anyone who is going to someday walk into my life and need someone to love them beyond reason.

Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. I’m going to help you forgive the things that you won’t let yourself forget.

Careful," he smiled, "I'm lethal.

Give me agony or give me death,I'll take thy heart as eternal breath

Raven scowled through his too-long bangs. “The Angel Song doesn’t hurt humans. It only affects the evil within.” “Then you should be writhing on the ground with the hounds,” Mace mumbled.

Kevin looks at me and I know he isn’t seeing the little girl I use to be, all pigtails and gangly limbs. He isn’t seeing my mother’s daughter or even my mother anymore. As his eyes linger over me, stopping here and there in the most uncomfortable places, I know he isn’t really even seeing me as I am. The bloodshot eyes staring out of the alcohol-flushed face are seeing a girl, nearly of age, who owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude.--Rocky Evans

I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself — my past and the kaleidoscope of mistakes, failures and wrong turns that have stacked unbearable regret upon my shoulders.

Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?

I fantasize the night sky to be like a cosmic blue print of my life as I close my eyes and unbutton my heart…. just in case anyone up there is listening.

I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal.

Something, somewhere, knows what’s best for me and promises to keep sending me people and experiences to light my way as long as I live in gratitude and keep paying attention to the signs.

I’ve always seen this in you, ever since you were a little girl — this hunger to love other people into their highest selves and it’s what has made me irreversibly and just so forever in love with you.

Please… Whoever you are, whatever you are… I believe in you even though I don’t completely understand you. I feel you around me even though I can’t exactly describe what I’m feeling. Sometimes things happen to me and I know that you’re there and I’m humbled by the lack of coincidence that exists in the world. Whatever you want from me, it’s yours — just please help me. You know how I get when I lose control, and I find myself constantly being pulled back there these days.

I feel a resurgence of my 6-year-old self… that little warrior, goddess of a girl reminding me of who I was when I was little, before the world got its hands on me.

I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet.

I’m going to follow this invisible red thread until I find myself again… until I finally figure out… who I’m meant to be.

If ever I was running, it was towards you.

I love him in ways that I can’t explain to other people. They don’t understand… it’s not their fault.

I really believe that there is an invisible red thread tied between him and me, and that it has stretched and tangled for years — across oceans and lifetimes. I know that it won’t break because our souls are tied.

Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love.

I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…

I want you to trust yourself, baby. Love is all that matters and you’ve always known that. You’ve known, since you were a very little girl, what your life is meant to be about…

I know that your soul is on life support and that you feel lost and like you’re completely spinning out of control, but you’re finding yourself — here, tonight… even in this darkness.

What is this thing you call substance abuse? All I wanna do is forget and get loose.Drinking and smoking over and overWhat's so great about a life that's sober?There's nothing cool about being youngWhen the monsters of night have stolen the sun.I'm tired of searching for words in the sky.All I wanna do is drink and die. Nothing is real. It's all a big lie. All I wanna do is drink and die. There's nothing cool about being youngWhen the monsters of night have stolen the sun.

Popularity is teenage heroin.

As a child, I read because books–violent and not, blasphemous and not, terrifying and not–were the most loving and trustworthy things in my life. I read widely, and loved plenty of the classics so, yes, I recognized the domestic terrors faced by Louisa May Alcott’s March sisters. But I became the kid chased by werewolves, vampires, and evil clowns in Stephen King’s books. I read books about monsters and monstrous things, often written with monstrous language, because they taught me how to battle the real monsters in my life.And now I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don’t write to protect them. It’s far too late for that. I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.

The more I write stories for young people, and the more young readers I meet, the more I'm struck by how much kids long to see themselves in stories. To see their identities and perspectives—their avatars—on the page. Not as issues to be addressed or as icons for social commentary, but simply as people who get to do cool things in amazing worlds. Yes, all the “issue” books are great and have a place in literature, but it's a different and wildly joyous gift to find yourself on the pages of an entertainment, experiencing the thrills and chills of a world more adventurous than our own.And when you see that as a writer, you quickly realize that you don't want to be the jerk who says to a young reader, “Sorry, kid. You don't get to exist in story; you're too different.” You don't want to be part of our present dystopia that tells kids that if they just stopped being who they are they could have a story written about them, too. That's the role of the bad guy in the dystopian stories, right? Given a choice, I'd rather be the storyteller who says every kid can have a chance to star.

Starting over can be the scariest thing in the entire world, whether it’s leaving a lover, a school, a team, a friend or anything else that feels like a core part of our identity but when your gut is telling you that something here isn’t right or feels unsafe, I really want you to listen and trust in that voice.

Being a Dream Girl is never going to be about what you look like or how much you weigh. After all, our physical appearances are just reflections of our inner worlds. What makes you a Dream Girl is your emotional sensitivity, your self-awareness, and your ability to communicate who you are effectively and compassionately in the world.

This is your life – not your parents’, teachers’ or significant other’s. If you ever find yourself on a path that just doesn’t feel safe anymore, you have every right to stop the car, get out – change your shoes and start walking.

I never want you to deny anything about yourself because you have grown up thinking it’s unacceptable or inconvenient for the people around you.

Can you identify the source preventing you from feeling good every single day, from loving yourself unconditionally and making your dreams come true? Is it a voice in your head or a gut wrenching ache that compromises your inner peace and doesn’t allow you to accept the love around you? Is there one thing, or maybe many things, keeping you from forgiving your past and moving forward, tormenting you with lies like “You don’t deserve real love so just settle for whatever you can get,” “You’re not smart enough to achieve your dream so don’t even try,” or “Look at your past… you should hate yourself way more than you actually do!”?Welcome to your Little Monster.

Even if we try to conform to ideals and strive for perfection, we will always be pulled back to our core identity because it’s the path of least resistance for our souls – an energy force that wants nothing more than for us to honor and accept who we are and discover what we’re meant to do in the world.

Love is my drug of choice, even if it comes laced with pain and disaster.

pencils racing across paper, a sound I like." Marisol

Freedom of Speech doesn't justify online bullying. Words have power, be careful how you use them.

For those of you who may be homeschooled: high school is that four-year asylum where they put teenagers because we have no idea what else to do with them.

Through most of human history, our ancestors had children shortly after puberty, just as the members of all nonhuman species do to this day. Whether we like the idea or not, our young ancestors must have been capable of providing for their offspring, defending their families from predators, cooperating with others, and in most other respects functioning fully as adults. If they couldn't function as adults, their young could not have survived, which would have meant the swift demise of the human race. The fact that we're still here suggests that most young people are probably far more capable than we think they are. Somewhere along the line, we lost sight of – and buried – the potential of our teens.

I rubbed at my temple, where the zit was gone. It still hurt a little , though, deep under the skin. I hate those zits that burrow underground. You think they've vanished, but no, they just barricade themselves right next to the bone and hurt.

Expired condoms are like nuclear waste: there's nothing sensible you can do with it.

Teenagers read millions of books every year. They read for entertainment and for education. They read because of school assignments and pop culture fads.

I wanted to know what it was like to be a drug addict, and have an eating disorder, and have a loved one die, and fall in love. I saw my friends going through these things, I saw the world going through these things, and I needed to understand them. I needed to make sense of them. Books didn’t make me wallow in darkness, darkness made me wallow in books, and it was books that showed me there is light at the end of the tunnel.

If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it.

Life is full of challenges. In the end, it's getting up that pulls us through the dark days. So we can admire the sunset.

Life is full of challenges. In the end it's getting up that pulls us through the dark day's. So that we can admire the sunset

I write, like anybody else, about how it is to be human." -- Mark Merlis

You get out of hell one step at a time." -- Abbie Sullivan, "Cinderella Shoots the Moon.

There are people in my life who count more than playing soccer in Serie A

I stifled a yawn. "It's too early to be such an asshat, Daniel.

It's not new, our valuation of young female people for how they can serve, satisfy, and satiate. Our girls are both the platter and the meal, and we eat them up--we eat their meat, we lap up their sweetness, we covet and control and consume.

The same teen who can't legally operate a four-wheeler, or [ATV]...in a farm lane workplace environment can operate a jacked-up F-250 pickup on a crowded urban expressway. By denying these [farm work] opportunities to bring value to their own lives and the community around them, we've relegated our young adults to teenage foolishness. Then as a culture we walk around shaking our heads in bewilderment at these young people with retarded maturity. Never in life do people have as much energy as in their teens, and to criminalize leveraging it is certainly one of our nation's greatest resource blunders.

Don’t touch me. Don’t tell me how beautiful my eyes are, how soft my hair is, how you love to hear my voice. Don’t. Don’t pretend you are falling in love with me. I know you are lying, and every word you say hurts even more. Let us just be friends, if we can start there. Can’t we? Can’t we at least be friends? Get to know each other a little? Before the wedding, and the bedding, when I will have to take you as my lord and husband?

No doesn't mean to Marcus what it means to those without money and a car.

One minute the teacher was talking about the Civil War. And the next minute he was gone. There. Gone. No 'poof.' No flash of light. No explosion.

I guess I had always sort of fantasized that a guy would see me and get past the ponytail and the glasses and the giant sweatshirt to discover how insanely awesome I am, then come and whisk me off into that magical teenager fairytale where everyone else gets to prance around.

Once upon a time there was a young lady who lived in a marsh, and her name was Poison.

She's a girl after my own heart. Food first, conversation later.

Carla had realised there wasn’t just one destined adventure in life, there were thousands of them.

He’s drowning, suffocating under the weight of my darkness and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Good to see you too, Otto." -Sydney Rose

The world turned itself into a better place around him.

DETOX your mind, body, AND your contact list.

I often wonder what happened to those few I spent my youth in battle beside, those select individuals whom I was drawn to simply by coincidence, whom I joined forces with against an unknown future and a world so large that we depended upon each other because none of us knew a damn thing, and we were all so wise.

Family and friends become oppressors the moment they teach you that loyalty is more important than what is done to people outside your social circle. What they are really saying is this: Save yourself because God is more interested in an intact family or social circle that looks righteous, rather than you being a person of integrity that has compassion for others. It is this absurdity that teaches the wrong version of God and creates the next generation of "me" centered individuals.

Your passions don’t have to connect to one another and no one needs to sign off on them. Passion isn’t logical… it’s only the fuel which keeps our souls alive. Let it be that simple.

My son, my son. When I had my son I would explain all that to him when he was starry enough to like understand. But then I knew he would not understand or would not want to understand at all and would do all the veshches I had done, yes perhaps even killing some poor starry forella surrounded with mewing kots and koshkas, and I would not be able to really stop him. And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers. And so it would itty on to like the end of the world...

I automatically assume people won't like me, so I don't talk to them unless they approach me first. I can't become a part of a crowd because I can't get past that feeling that I don't belong.

So much has been done to my body, and still, somehow, not enough.

I tried to push my body through his and completely disappear.

I lost my innocence very young and it had nothing to do with sex.

As much as I think about sex, I can only with extreme difficulty conceive of myself actually performing the act. And here's another thing I wonder about. How could you ever look a girl in the eye after you've had your winkie up her wendell? I mean, doesn't that render normal social conversation impossible? Apparently not.

Consider, if you will, the morning boner. What a metaphor of hope and renewal! How can anyone give way to despair when one’s groin greets each day with such a gala spectacle of physical optimism?

Stay strong. Don't be bullied by anyone.

a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.

Despite how lonely or broken down you might feel, we need you with us helping to make the world better, kinder and safer, especially for the little girls coming up.

Then turn your eyes back on me,and tell me that Cathy and I are still children to be treated with condescension, and are incapable of understanding adult subjects.

...as we are endowed. ...with rhetorics. ...none will deny. ...of innocence. ...towards scribbling. ...of love lines. ...and of lust. ...to what seems like male. ...to what seems like female. ...in those days. ...I mean nothing. ...but in high school.....even me. ...I can't deny.

She was afraid of giving in to that overwhelming, absolute, unconditional love, a love that had shown her the route to heaven, but which had also taught her how much one could suffer, to the point where even the sound of your own tears became deafening.

The French poet Mallarmé and, after him, Borges, claimed that “everything in the world exists to end up in a book,” and if that’s true, and that even every man is a book, Federico was undoubtedly created by the pen of Keats or some other tormented Romantic poet; while Matteo was pure passion, like Shakespeare’s Romeo: spontaneous, intense, and impetuously real.

It's absurd how crazy love can make you......but even more absurd how stupid jealousy can make you!

Strict parents create sneaky kids.

Trying to understand her teenage daughter’s behavior was like trying to listen to a recording of a symphony whose volume vacillated unpredictably from barely audible to deafening. She couldn’t hear the music, and all she wanted to do was leave the room.

Are you imperfect, romantically irrational, ridiculously fearless, and utterly illogical? You're my ideal reader, friend, partner. I'm your fan.

How you spend your time when you are not working or studying says everything about who you are and what is motivating your life.

You battled monsters. You sweat and cried your way to this one prolific moment where you finally realize that those dark days and sleepless nights were pre-requisites to your becoming.

I never want a girl to lose all hope that her life can’t completely turn around, even if she feels that she is at the edge, standing on one foot, and ready to say goodbye.

We live in a world where there is such a clear definition of what a girl should be that it takes almost no effort at all to completely hate ourselves.

Remember, nothing happens before it’s supposed to, so trust that, as you are striving for authenticity and personal excellence, the recognition of your life’s purpose is nearing closer.

I think it all basically breaks down to something like this: You have to look and feel great first. If you eat well, exercise and get enough sleep, you will have ample energy and the proper self-confidence to create and produce beyond your wildest dreams! Looking great and radiating positive energy, while presenting your highest quality work, is what will always make you the most valuable and only logical choice in whatever it is that you reach for.

Although many things may still need to happen before you identify what your exact work will be, I know that every single person whom you’re meeting and every experience that you’re having is necessary to you discovering your purpose. They are points on a map leading you to the moment where a match will finally be lit and you will be able to see through the darkness.

Recognize that you have been chosen to be alive, right now, at this exact moment in time and know that none of that is random. There is something about you, your past or your future that is required at this exact moment in history. We need to know who you are and what you have been through.

Finding yourself and creating a life that feels authentic and safe is the hardest, most important work that we will ever do and for girls, especially young girls, there is no one more equipped to do this work.

The only way that you can identify and then fulfill your life’s purpose is for you to love yourself, charge up your life and serve the world.

Sometimes you have to let go a little bit and travel the path of least resistance but this doesn’t mean that you quit when things get tough, as you are working towards a goal! It just means that you may only be able to see a rough draft of your final destination, right now, and that it’s safe to explore along the way.

As girls, we will do anything for the person whom we love. We will scale buildings in the rain or run through fire if it means saving our love’s life. There is absolutely nothing more life altering that the fire burning inside of our souls for the one we want most…

For most of us free-thinking, wild hearts, our relationship with God or the Universe will go through peaks and valleys – transforming into new concepts and beliefs, completely disappearing, at times, only then to instantly explode back into existence by something even as small as a sunset!

Marika could feel herself cocking the trigger of a loaded gun and pointing it at herself, because the truth could be too shocking a revelation, something that would shake their lives to the core... but lies were just a dead-end alleyway that offered no way out.

I tried to hate you, to forgive you, all just to forget you, but I'm only capable of loving you. You're tattooed onto my skin, and the more I try to erase you, the deeper you sink in.

You two are bound to one another. You always have been … and you can't run away from what you are. No matter where you go, your feelings for her are going to follow you.

Never give up. Dare to Dream. Dare to believe.

He wishes he could remember everything. Anything. He doesn’t sense a bone in his body that can feel compassion or worthiness. Self-pity hides away as well, the lowest form of emotion not even capable of resting in his wrecked mind.

She actually isn't so bad, now that I'm getting to know her. She's just a little messy on the outside. But aren't we all?

The confusion boys experience about their identity is heightened during adolescence. In many ways the fact that today's boy often has a wider range of emotional expression in early childhood, but if forced to suppress emotional awareness later on makes adolescence all the more stressful for boys. Tragically, were it not for the extreme violence that has erupted among teenage boys throughout our nation, the emotional life of boys would still be ignored. Although therapists tell us that mass media images of male violence and domination teach boys that violence is alluring and satisfying, when individual boys are violent, especially when they murder randomly, pundits tend to behave as though it were a mystery why boys are so violent.

Memories demand attention, and these memories will have teeth.

She had feared the worst, and even though at that very moment she would have liked to wring her neck, she was happy to learn that suicide was not one of the stupid things that Eve had in her repertoire. Suicide made no sense: situations change, people change, and the problems of today may find a solution tomorrow. So long as you’re in the game you can change the final score, but if you take yourself out of it, you’ll never know how it might have ended, and you let the world win.

I love everything about you. And I’ve felt that way for such a long time that it could last forever.

I’ve always liked you, from the first moment I saw you at the Pigafetta Stadium.” He kept his distance because he wanted her too much. “And ever since that day, I knew that you were in love with another guy, and that he would sooner or later feel the same way I did.” Cutting ties with her was excruciatingly painful. “I just hoped that he would be stupid enough to let me have you,” he gasped. “But he wasn’t.

Matteo lived inside her like a memory that paradoxically stopped the pain and which she could never get enough of... because there was, and never would be, anything that was like him. Wherever she went, whatever she did, he was the only thing she truly loved, and which she sadly no longer had.

I write letters to you that you’ll never see.

He looked at me, that first day, like he had just found something he’d lost a thousand years ago.

But I love you and I want you and I need you. Can’t you see that? This world has nothing to offer me if it doesn’t include you.

The Fall will always be yours and mine…

Time' is the most threatening four letter word.

I’m tired of justifying why I love someone. I’m done with the explaining.

That last time you kissed me my heart slid past your teeth down into the center of your chest… trapping us both in a stainless cage.

If I had an .MP3 of your heartbeat… I might actually get some sleep.

I kept waiting for the part where I’d finally know who I was — some flashing, neon moment of relief, but it never came.

In the old days, when travelers would get lost, they would follow the stars and I love that idea. I wish that I could rely on something as simple and magnificent as a star for all of my aching questions.

I ruin everything. I think that a bullet must have passed through my heart when I was very young, causing me to bleed out slowly, over things and people and every white surface that I’d ever come across.

I wish that love could be broken down the way it breaks me down.

I don’t ever want to hurt anyone, but I really wish there was something like a reset button on my life.

He could pour himself into my little paper cup heart and my emptiness would finally have a meaning.

It feels like the world is folding up around me, like origami paper, and I’m trapped inside of its breathless center.

I want to understand the strings that are tied between me and certain other people and if they really can stretch through infinite time and space without ever breaking. Are soul mates real, and is my life ever going to make sense?

I feel like a paper cut just waiting to bleed.

I wish on one of the stars for divine orchestration and save the rest of them for all of the other girls in the world who will feel like I do tonight.

Standing naked on the beach with all of my secrets between my legs, I look out into the water and up deep into the stars. I beg the sparkling lanterns of light to cure me of myself…

I immediately thought of the stars. Stars. Heavenly bodies formed by huge clouds of dust and gas bumpinginto one another, getting bigger, their gravity getting stronger. Once hot enough, nuclear fusion occurs. And then a star is formed.People are shaped in a similar way—just like stars—excessive amounts of dust and hot gas. And like stars, everyone’s life has a turning point prior to their big bang. The shit show before the creation. Y ’know, one of those moments that can fuck you up.Cleopatra’s was when her father named her joint regent at fourteen. Fucked-up.Bruce Wayne’s when he witnessed his parents get murdered. Fucked-up.Charles Manson’s when his mother sold him for a pitcher of beer. Fucked. Up.Not to mention 'Helter Skelter.

What is life but a fucked-up factory fabricating fuckups?

Each time that I have felt like I might finally be figuring some things out, life has decided to change the rules and I’ve had to start all over again.

So that's it. That's the big secret. I tried to kill myself on New Year's eve. Just like Sadie did last night. Only she really did it. I don't know all the detatils, just the basics. She took a bunch of pills. I don't know what they were or where she got them. I'd like to think they were Wonder Drug. Then at least she could have gone thinking she was flying.

You haunt my days and dreams.

I’d felt this before, when my granddad was in the hospital before he died. We all camped out in the waiting room, eating our meals together, most of us sleeping in the chairs every night. Family from far-flung places would arrive at odd hours and we’d all stand and stretch, hug, get reacquainted, and pass the babies around.A faint, pale stream of beauty and joy flowed through the heavy sludge of fear and grief. It was kind of like those puddles of oil you see in parking lots that look ugly until the sun hits them and you see rainbows pulling together in the middle of the mess.And wasn’t that just how life usually felt—a confusing swirl of ugly and rainbow?

When you told me I didn't love youI simply thought how would you knowFor I remembered the spaces between your fingersAnd the crease between your eyesHow dare you tell meI never thought of you as mine.

When you know truly know that God loves you it won't matter when others don't. And when you know truly know that God accepts you it won't matter when others won't.

We don't speak of it, or react to it. Paralyzed in a reality of uncertainty and madness,this is where we are.

The butterflies swirl again in Sera’s stomach. Perhaps they have brought along fireflies too, to light up her soul.

How would Elijah ever understand a life that is dark more than light? Or a shadow of someone who follows her around, and when she least expects it, taps her on the back and asks, where are you going, Seraphina?

The vision of this massive body of water with towering monoliths jutting straight upward to the heavens, stole our ability to think.Colors that made the wildflowers look dull, streaked up and down across the great pillars of hardened rock. The clouds and sky were mirrored in the glassy surface of the deep expanse of lake.

He reflects on all the times he thought she wasn’t sure of her feelings for him, when perhaps she might’ve been taking a leisurely stroll across Elijah’s heart, leaving footprints behind that he’d never seen.

Hope, in anything but myself, is just way too dangerous right now…

There is the scent too. Wonder follows it; wonder about how a boy can smell like that when he probably has no idea. He smells like the woods in the winter or the rain when it first falls, or maybe it’s just the way he always smells and there is no way to define it.

She pulls her hand away and Damian feels the sensation of falling, a somersault into a foreign abyss where a girl with eggplant hair and a hoop in her brow waits in the darkness.

I'm going to take off your gag. And if you try to bite me or grab me or anything, I'll hit you with this thing as hard as I can as many times as I can. Understood?

He let out a hiss of pain,then smiled that crooked, sheepish smile he always fell back on when he was caught doing something bad. "Sorry. I-I didn't mean to. I just- I've been lying here for hours, thinking about blood.

Checking in on what our kids are doing online isn't helicoptering, it's parenting.

The absolute best way to raise kind kids, is to be kind parents.

Checking in on what our kids are doing online isn't 'helicoptering,' it's 'parenting.

To teach our kids what they need to know online, we have to talk to them off line.

I could be the lone Eskimo, friend of whales and seals."The Panopticon

It was almost painful to be different.

If life really begins at forty, then all poor people die in their teens.

I hate Jesse for leaving me behind. If he asked, I would have walked into the air with him.

For the love of God, unless you’re prepping for Rigoletto at the Met, go easy on the eyeliner.

At some point, you just pull off the band aid and it hurts. But when it is over, you are relieved.

Too many adults wish to 'protect' teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.

You’re unstoppable as long as you keep taking the next step.

Your supporters can help you think in new ways, solve problems, and burst through barriers.

The most meaningful hopes and dreams don’t come from outside sources—they come from within.

If you can find time for [other] activities, you can make time for your goals.

When going for your goals, staying motivated, enthusiastic, and flexible are daily deeds of daring.

Attitude plays a bigger role than you may imagine in determining your future success—bigger than talent, money, or popularity.

The more often you visualize your success and the more details you envision, the more motivated you’ll feel.

No matter how much (or how little) help someone provides, always say thanks. Thank yous are simple but important.

If all else fails, try to get some sleep…whether you realize it or not, getting enough sleep can make it easier to solve problems, control your emotions, and cope with change.

The biggest regrets people have aren’t about what they did, but what they didn’t do.

Three out of every one hundred people set goals. Even fewer write them down… You can be someone who does have goals—A Goal Getter!

The weekends are too short for sleep!

Sleep is the only thing I stay awake for.

Some people were simply created with the right genes and the proper social skills, I figured. They ended up at a lunch table with a group of good-looking individuals, like them, who did what all good-looking individuals managed: making the rest of us feel both envious of them and sad for ourselves, intentional or not. They had activities outside of school and followers online—people of social necessity who sat at home on Friday nights and 'liked' popular posts in hopes that they, too, might one day be as attractive and personable.

If she had looked into his eyes at that very moment she would have seen the inferno that she had thrown him into.

Everything around her was in a fog; the intense light that always shone in his aqua blue eyes was the only thing in focus, but it was suddenly unknown... different... almost embarrassing.

I should walk away. That would be the right thing to do. It would be the smart thing. But I can't, because I'm Taylor Caldwell, the girl who cuts.

He’s not yet realized that by giving away nothing but barefaced lies he’s come to wither and rot inside. But she’s still looking for him into the void of his cold heart.

She had been a teenager once, and she knew that, despite the apparent contradictions, a person's teenage years lasted well into their fifties.

She looked over the colored boxes of smiling women holding plastic sticks. Why isn’t there a box showing a terrified teen?

But do you think our futures are already determined for us?”“Why are you asking all of this? What’s going on?”I let out a small laugh. “Remember when we were in the hallway?” He nodded. “Well, Thirteen tried telling me that I couldn’t escape my fate and that there was no point in fighting the inevitable.”“Do you think it is inevitable?” he asked.“Me?” I scoffed. “No. Nothing is ever guaranteed. One minor adjustment can alter everything. Nothing is ever set in stone. As of right now, we’re all on one path: we’re all stuck inside of this hell that we’re trying to escape, and it may seem like the outcome has already been determined for us, but it hasn’t. The smallest of things could change everything. A death. Deception. Anything could force us to follow another path, and you know what? We determine that path, not fate.”“What path do you see yourself on?” Colton hopped up onto the computer desk, tucking his hands underneath his thighs.“I see us starting new lives outside of this place, far from McVeigh and his men,” I answered honestly. “But I know not all of us will make it out of here. There is still more pain to come our way, but there is also happiness if we allow for it.

Whuppins were like kid taxes we paid with our behinds.

For one last time, I said my goodbyes to the place I’d known as home for the last decade, and for the first time, I welcomed the unknown.

I had an unfortunate habit of allowing my anger to blind me. An extremely unfortunate habit. Glate knew that, and he knew how to stop me from doing something stupid. He was my sense of reality in a world thrown off balance. But he wasn’t here now.

Sometimes I wonder about good and evil. If the villain wins, isn't he heralded as the hero? I've tried so hard to be good since that day, but sometimes I wonder whether it's even worth it. After all, to be the hero, I have to win.

Sometimes I just want to go in a room and break things and scream. Like, it’s so much pressure all the time and if you get upset or angry, people say, ‘Are you on the rag of something?’ And it’s like I want to say, ‘No. I’m just pissed off right now. Can’t I just be pissed off? How come that’s not okay for me?’ Like my dad will say, ‘I can’t talk to you when you’re hysterical.’ And I’m totally not being hysterical! I’m just mad. And he’s the one losing it. But then I feel embarrassed anyway. So I slap on that smile and pretend everything’s okay even though it’s not.

I did not see Pirahã teenagers moping, sleeping in late, refusing to accept responsibility for their own actions, or trying out what they considered to be radically new approaches to life. They in fact are highly productive and conformist members of their community in the Pirahã sense of productivity (good fishermen, contributing generally to the security, food needs, and other aspects of the physical survival of the community). One gets no sense of teenage angst, depression, or insecurity among the Pirahã youth. They do not seem to be searching for answers. They have them. And new questions rarely arise.

It was only high school after all, definitely one of the most bizarre periods in a person’s life. How anyone can come through that time well adjusted on any level is an absolute miracle.

Everything was brighter and more colorful in those years, as if my childhood was ending in an explosion of unreal passion that made my life feel sacred and holy.

From the time they hit middle school, they start moving away from home. They are not doing anything wrong; it's just the way they are made. They are becoming independent, and they begin redefining themselves through the eyes other people who are not in their immediate family. The older they get, the more important it is to have other voices in their lies saying the same things but in a different way.

I raised my three teens with love, perseverance, tenacity, sweat, tears, prayers, lighting candles, and the list could go on.

Parenting should always come from a place of unconditional loving.

Many parents have experienced the fact that kids don’t seem to honor their parents the way that previous generations of children did. The question we need to ask is, how did we get to this position? How did this lack of respect infiltrate even the closest family relationships? Most importantly, how can we make sure that it doesn’t ruin our bond with our own teens?

Embrace your beautiful mess of a life with your child. No matter how hard it gets, do not disengage... Do something—anything—to connect with and guide your child today. Parenting is an adventure of the greatest significance. It is your legacy." - Andy Kerckhoff, from Critical Connection

You know, bullying," her mother began. "I see it every day. Kids get bullied at school, they get cyber bullied, text bullied, Myface bullied." "Oh, God!" Arista groaned. "It's My Space or Facebook. Not Myface.

The universe is more than thirteen billion years old. What is the value of a single kiss compared to that?

If I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you. But if I am I because you are you and you are you because I am I, then I am not I and you are not you!

She affected me, even when she was absent.

Don't think about waht other's think of you. Matter of fact don't think at all,just be you. Do what you feel. No one else matters.

.Ensuring that young people get the right information that will enable them make the right choices is a responsibility all citizens must take seriously

We are going to change the way young people think about fitness.

Few, if any, survive their teens.

Respect should be found in your own heart and never demanded, sacraficed, begged for or negotiated. If you have to explain why you deserve it then you never had it.

If young people are our greatest asset in a war that must be won then wemust be willing to extricate them at whatever cost from the clutchesof those who seek to exploit their weaknesses

We sat there smiling at each other, shimmied to a standstill, thinking about all the boys that had wanted us that day, and how none of them had got us, not for a minute; how we'd let them pay for drinks and candyfloss and then run away laughing, their cries of 'Slags!' and 'Bitches' ringing in our ears like respect rather than derision.

It was the flashing lights, and the noise of the machines, and the loud, loud music, all seeming to refract and contract around her, her eyes widening, her hair swooshing, her slow smile shining. She seemed an actual part of the place - all fun, all joy, all shimmery skittering energy.

After that, I’d wanted to date, but I simply didn’t know how. It seemed to come natural to everyone else, pairing up and going out. And now, well, I felt like a nonparticipant, like there was a schedule to be followed and I was so far behind I’d never get caught up.

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is just a little bit extra.

Sometimes I think gravity may be death in disguise. Other times I think gravity is love, which is why love's only demand is that we fall.

I could write my name across the sky, and it would be in invisible ink.

As human beings, we're born believing that we are the apex of creation, that we are invincible, that no problem exists that we cannot solve. But we inevitably die with all our beliefs broken.

We aren't just defined by who we are, but by who are friends are. It's funny that we put so much importance on something that wont mean shit once we graduate.

She's the gristle stuck between Time's teeth, and I love her for it.

And I stood there and took it because I was an object. We were all objects to Marcus McCoy.

According to Sarah, who had gone two years ago, prom was famous for being an overpriced disappointment where most people had no fun.

Every man dies. Not every man truly lives." Sir William Wallace

There is no way of stopping death, not here. You can prolong it. But at some point, it is bound to catch up to you.

Not for the first time, I wonder what it would feel like that, to be so beautiful that you don't even realize people are watching you, to be so confident that you don't even have to worry about being nervous or feeling self-conscious. I've spent what seems like my whole life trying to pretend I'm that way. What would it be like to have it just come naturally?

Halfway through the set, the lead singer, who goes by Cloud, knife in hand, begins to stab at the cutout of Copal Brandt with a lion's passion. Out of nowhere blood is produced and Cloud proceeds to rub it all over his own face and body, then on his own bandmates. Afterwards he roars into the microphone, 'Do you know why we're doing this, McAllen? We're doing this FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON!!!!!!!!!

We're so happy, even when we're smiling out of fear.

I think I finally understand the saying like a moth to a flame. I’m the moth. My heart flutters like the paper thin wings. And he is the flame, incendiary, scorching my soul.He inhales so heavily, like he’s been holding his breath under water. He presses his lips against mine and tugs at my hair gently. My head falls back and my mouth falls open. His tongue, slick as silver, dances with mine.I’m wrong. I’m not a moth. I’m Icarus and I’ve flown too close to the sun.

And although I broke a lot of laws as a teenager, I straightened out immediately upon turning eighteen, when I realized the state had a legal right to execute me.

Never trust a pretty girl with an ugly secret.

He could add something to the list of things you weren't supposed to do. Don't get hurt, don't get dirty, don't get drunk, don't get scared, don't count on it. You ended up doing all of them.

We make people into Gods, desperate that they never leave us and hopeful that someday, if we ever deserve it, maybe they’ll love us back even half way.

This is one rule about mixing boys and girls: that a date always comes first.

I was surfing the Internet for a different sort of education. I surfed for photos of circus freaks and synonyms for the word intercourse and for answers to why staring at the stars in the evening tore my heart with longing.

[On hearing that 86% of gay teens have experienced harassment] Eighty-six percent? Eighty-six per-fuckin-cent WERE harassed?! That means fourteen per-fuckin-cent WEREN'T harassed? WHAT?!At MY school a hundred percent of the children - gay, straight, transgendered, bi, sell... or trade - WERE harassed. She's saying that fourteen percent of the gay students were NOT harassed? That seems impossible.At MY school any one of us would have sucked Elton John's COCK at a mandatory school assembly for a fourteen percent chance of NOT being harassed.

I am seventeen. The good things about seventeen is that you’re not sixteen. Sixteen goes with the word sweet, and I am so far from sweet.

Teaching middle school is an adventure not a job.

I guess whoever built and buried that IED out there in the desert will never know how far that blast traveled. But all things ripple out, cause shrapnel.

teenagers are never joking. when seeking to prove a point, principals and teachers should remember that teenagers are never, ever sarcasic or ironic. if they say "I wish someone would drop a bomb on this school right now," that means they have arranged for a nuclear arsenal to be emptied onto the school and should be immediately suspended and ridiculed. if they say they were merely coming up with a joking excuse to postpone a bio test, reply that all jokes are funny, and that since dropping a bomb on a school is not funny, it is therefore not a joke.

In their quest to hit cloud Nine, our young men and women intheir prime are gradually finding themselves on ground Zero,emotionally battered, academically bankrupt and medicallyparalyzed.

If only parents would listen! If only they would let us talk instead of forever and eternally and continuously harping and preaching and nagging and correcting and yacking, yacking, yacking! But they won’t listen! They simply won’t or can’t or don’t want to listen, and we kids keep winding up back in the same old frustrating, lost, lonely corner with no one to relate to either verbally or physically.

I wanted to buy a T-shirt that read: I AM UNKNOWABLE.

There comes a time in a girl’s life where she finds her heart broken, what matters is not the boy who broke it but the boy who stitches it back together

A lot of teenagers today are influenced by the media’s depiction of perfection. I want readers to understand they don’t have to follow the unofficial laws society creates, to be liked by others.

I half-expect to check out, but I'm really there for it. It's not like at the dance, angry and forced. It's terrible in its gentleness and he's just wasting it on me.

The warmth and the passion in my veins are more than enough for a hundred thirsty girls.

-just on the verge ofbecoming a woman, and in these three years and almost five months, I'dreached maturity. I was older than the mountains outside. The wisdomof the attic was in my bones, etched on my brain, part of my flesh.

I reached for his other hand, which he quickly accepted and I pulled him up into a hug. I didn't know what the other kids in the room were thinking or saying or doing. And I didn't care. I had Jamie in my arms, and that was all the mattered.

I was sixteen, and I honestly believed I was due a love story.

If you skip one class, everyone knows about it. The teacher will track you down, or one of the guidance counselors will track you down and ask if you're smoking pot. According to the geniuses running this place, the only reason you would skip class is if you're smoking pot, though I actually find my classes more enjoyable when I'm high.

One warm morning in July, a ghost came to our breakfast table.

But it’d be nice to have someone who cared about me, someone I could talk toabout anything, someone who’d tell me I was really special.

I was born into chaos. I didn’t know what peace felt like.

Kids are more advanced these days. The teenage years now start at 11.

In winter this town is freezing. You step out your door in the morning and the whole place looks like one of those nature specials in which a guy brings a camcorder to the North Pole and then the camera cuts out and you hear on the news that he got eaten by a bear

Have you ever really wanted to be able to do something, but you came across a roadblock of some kind?You have a difficult choice. I made that choice once and it changed my whole life, by giving me experiences I never would have had if I took the easy street and had not tried.

I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air,So there.

I realized someone else might tell you you're pretty. I'd do anything to keep you away from that person.

She could ask for anything, she thought dizzily, anything--an end to pain or world hunger or disease, or for peace on earth. But then again, perhaps these things weren't in the power of angels to grant, or they would already have been granted. And perhaps people were supposed to find these things for themselves.

Don't take on more student loans than your future-self can handle.

I would make an anonymous call and say, this is someone who cares, do you know what kind of children you have?

A lot of teenagers today are influenced by the media’s depiction of perfection. I want readers to understand they don’t have to follow the unofficial laws society creates, to be liked by others.

Always live the adventure.

I was just stock in the middle, vague and undefined.

When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

A monster. You and your friends, all of you. Pretty monsters. It's a stage all girls go through. If you're lucky you get through it without doing any permanent damage to yourself or anyone else.

Why does she always seem to think you drive like we're holding up a bank?"Roswell grinned and rolled his eyes, "Because that's what teenagers do, right? They also carve swastikas into their arms, steal prescription drugs from old people, and freebase cocaine. I need to institute a policy where she stops watching 60 Minutes and pretty much all public service announcements.

Yes, I was scared, vulnerable, and fragile and lived in books more than real life. Yet there was nothing Mom could do to make things easier for me, just worse by grounding me for life at the slightest hint of truth. Why? Because in spite of what she said she did not trust me or, to put it in her words, I did not know what was good for me.Being a teenager sucks! I might as well have been in prison.

How embarrassing that she ever did something that silly. But, good God, she was seventeen. At that age, we're mostly high-pitched and crazy. All urgent chemicals raging around the blood course. And that's why we do dangerous and embarrassing things, as if simultaneously we're immortal and going to die tomorrow. And that's why we look back on that time so fondly from the dimmer years to come. Remembering the days when we were like Greek gods. Mighty and idiotic.

I thought you were just typical teenagers.”No one has ever called me typical. I can’t say I like it.