Look at the stupid, poor people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people. Look at the stupid, poor, burned-out people, look at their dead baby. It’s death porn for the masses.

Mr. Freeman sighs. “No imagination. What are you thirteen? Fourteen? You’ve already let them beat your creativity out of you!

Sometimes when I find myself very irritated about a topic, I know it’s my next book.

Sometimes I think high school is one long hazing activity: if you are tough enough to survive this, they’ll let you become and adult. I hope it’s worth it.

Revision means throwing out the boring crap and making what’s left sound natural.

I breathe in slowly. Food is life. I exhale, take another breath. Food is life. And that’s the problem. When you’re alive, people can hurt you. It’s easier to crawl into a bone cage or...

Each reader has to find her or his own message within a book.

You’re the one who doesn’t understand, I’ve been standing on the edge with you for years.

THE FIRST TEN LIES THEY TELL YOU IN HIGH SCHOOL 1. We are here to help you. 2. You will have time to get to your class before the bell rings. 3. The dress code...

I wanted to pull down a book, open it proper, and gobble up page after page

I drift into the armpits of strangers, tasting their manic salt, and sleep to forget everything.

The trick to surviving an interrogation is patience. Don’t offer up anything. Don’t explain. Answer the question and only the question that is asked so you don’t accidentally put your head in a noose.

She cannot chain my soul. Yes, she could hurt me. She’d already done so…I would bleed, or not. Scar, or not. Live, or not. But she could not hurt my soul, not unless I gave...

I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?

If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that’s why I was put on the planet.

Few people know this, but I am a trained assassin, skilled in jujitsu and krav maga. I can also, with a few folds, turn an ordinary piece of notebook paper into a lethal weapon. Or...

Why not spend that time on art: painting, sculpting, charcoal, pastel, oils? Are words or numbers more important than images? Who decides this? Does algebra move you to tears? Can plural possessives express the feelings...

Eating was hard.Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.

You know how sometimes you hear a chord played on an organ and you can feel it vibrating in your bones? Sometimes when I’m writing, I can feel my bones vibrating because I’ll have a...

Mr. Freeman: You are getting better at this, but it’s not good enough. This looks like a tree,but it is an average, ordinary, everyday, boring tree. Breathe life into it. Make it bend – trees...

Gym should be illegal. It’s humiliating.

It had been a good day, all things considered. I had managed rather well on my own. I opened Grandfather’s Bible. This is what it would be like when I had my own shop, or...

Why?’ She nods. ‘She had everything: a family who loved her, friends, activities. Her mother wants to know why she threw it all away?’ Why you want to know why? Step into a tanning booth...

Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.

Homework is not an option. My bed is sending out serious nap rays. I can’t help myself. The fluffy pillows and warm comforter are more powerful than I am. I have no choice but to...

It doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts except the small smiles and blushes that flash across the room like tiny sparrows.

I think how veterans are treated in our country is an abomination. We don’t have the draft any more, which is why so many soldiers come from working-class – rather than middle- or high-income families....

It’s easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what...

Having a friend made everything else suck less.

I want to go to sleep and not wake up, but I don’t want to die.

Kids are mostly very resilient.

A merda de um cara é o adubo de outro.

CONJUGATE THIS:I cut class, you cut class, he, she, it cuts class. We cut class, they cut class. We all cut class. I cannot say this in Spanish because I did not go to Spanish...

Yes it is, because you can only be brave if you’re scared.

Pie makes everybody happy.

I’d given him bits and pieces of my peculiar life, but colored softer and funnier than they had been. I’d painted my dad as Don Quixote in a semi, on a quest for philosophical truths...

I want to make a memorial for our turkey. Never has a bird been so tortured to provide such a lousy dinner.

I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way…. I didn’t try hard enough to swallow myself.

I reach for funny books all the time to help me get through life.

I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.

That’s such bullshit, Mythology repeated by parents because it lets them force their kids into sports and push them too hard by pretending that in the end it will pay off with the holy scholarship....

Tell me this is a nightmare

I don’t reread my books after they’re published, because it’s agony.

The best time to talk to ghosts is just before the sun comes up. That’s when they can hear us true.

If I ever form a clan, we’ll be the anti-cheerleaders and walk under the bleacher forming mild acts of mayhem.

I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn’t touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn’t drown.

I want to be in fifth grade again. Now, that is a deep dark secret, almost as big as the other one. Fifth grade was easy — old enough to play outside without Mom, too...

There was a loud shuffling above. A line of redcoats took their position at the edge of the ravine and aimed down at the rebels.”Present!” the British officer screamed to his men.”Present!” yelled the American...

My parents didn’t raise me to be religious. The closest we come to worship is the Trinity of Visa, Mastercard, and American Express. I think the Merryweather cheerleaders confuse me because I missed out on...

I stuff my mouth with old fabric and scream until there are no sounds left under my skin.