Faking Normal, By Courtney C. Stevens

Page 287: "The difference between us isn't the brokenness; it's what we're going to do about it."

Page 297: "Words will lead to voice."

Page 307: "It won't come with a bow on it, but God'll tie it up."

Page 319: "I just hoped you could look at yourself one day and understand what I see when I look at you."

Page 321: "But today is better than yesterday."

On the Road to Find Out, By Rachel Toor

Page 131: "'The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the area, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again... and who at the worst, if she fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that her place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.'"

Page 153: "While I appreciate the convenience of electronic versions, I love real books, the smell of them, the way they feel in my hands."

Page 182: "...not caring is the end of a meaningful life. To be cynical about everything is a sad way to live. I don't want to doubt; I want to believe. I want to feel passionate about something." "...it feels good to feel something. And it's something I can share with other people."

Page 183: "...where all of the things that make us different fall away and we can talk for hours... for a few minutes, or an hour,...for that brief amount of time, I feel less alone in the world."

Page 189: "The idea that someone can find his or her talent--and passion--and pursue it to the nth degree..."

Page 190: "...having a passion can help you to live...He gets an opportunity to follow his passion and it takes him places. That [movie] makes me think if I could only figure out what I'm interested in, I could excel at something." "Sometimes I don't know what I think until I talk or write about it." "...in a good book, the author comes to life. You feel like he's talking to you, directly to you, answering your questions and thinking your thoughts... Good books feel personal...Reading is a cure for loneliness."

Page 194: "You don't have to be good yet. You just have to keep at it. Build your strength, increase your endurance..."

Page 195: "It's the act of catching yourself before you fall... Sometimes you might fall... But you brush yourself off and keep going."

Page 220: "There are some stories that are better told while moving forward."

Page 225: "You're a link in a chain. Connect to other people and connect them to each other."

Page 273: "How he'd helped me to refocus my life, to learn to enjoy things and give up being tortured by my own competitiveness."

Page 297: "When I look at the people I most admire, many of them have experienced something that looks like failure. But when you take the time to exercise your powers of vision with more imaginative strength, to peer deep into the curves and shifts of how real lives are lived, you see that what happens when you fail is that you get an opportunity to think harder, to think differently."

Page 299: "...the way to change the world--is for each of us to learn to embrace being wrong."

Page 300: "I want to throw myself into the world and at new things." "I may be a reject. But I am not a failure. At least, not as long as I keep trying."

My Life with the Walter Boys, By Ali Novak

Page 89: "...you can't control everything. Roadblocks, little unexpected bumps, they're all part of living."

Page 100: "...not even noticing how much his words had affected me, softening my aching heart, even if it was only by the slightest bit."

Page 106: "So I built a wall inside my mind to keep back my flood of emotions."

Page 130: "...the kind of person who comes off as crazy because she cares too much?"

Page 131: "Not knowing what's going to happen every once and a while makes things all the more interesting."

Page 132: "All I'm saying is sometimes you're too busy worrying about the future. Sometimes you just gotta feel."

Page 136: "Maybe people should just give hugs. Physical contact says a lot without actually saying anything..."

Page 287: "I had been trying to fit in my world into a small, safe box for so long. But life didn't work like that. It could move in and out of the lines. You couldn't control everything, because it wasn't all meant to be perfect. Sometimes things needed to be messy.."

Page 323: "Life didn't come with instructions."

Page 348: "I feel-- I don't know. Broken, I guess."

Free to Fall, By Lauren Miller

Page 230: "...there will always be competing voices... In your head and in the world. You can't spend your life caught between them."

Page 231: "...if you can't decide, the world will choose for you."

Page 285: "Timshel... It's Hebrew. Steinbeck used it in East of Eden. It means 'thou mayest." The idea being that we all have a choice. To do good, to live well."

Page 319: "To use your gifts for the betterment of mankind. You will be called to a grander, more significant purpose. To see the world not for what it is, but what it could be."

Page 463: "The effervescent pulse of human interaction. People turning to faces instead of screens."

Page 469: "The terrifying but glorious freedom to fall."

Earth Abides, By George R. Stewart

Page 106: "A greater joy, perhaps, saying the little things than saying something much greater." "A friend doubles joys and cuts grief in half..."

Page 111: "The match lived, not when it lay in the box, but merely when it burned--and it could not burn forever. So too with men and women. Not by denying life was life lived."

Page 116: "But each of them had already decided independently that life was not to be lived on the basis of fear." "...her courage seemed to flow out from her and sustain him."

Page 262: "We are afraid, but we do not talk of fear. We have many deep thoughts and doubts, but we do not speak them."

Page 268: "--still you couldn't control what the world does, all of it, pressing in around us."

Page 280: "What you were preparing against--that never happened! All the best-laid plans could not prevent the disaster against which no plans had been laid."

It's Kind of a Funny Story, By Ned Vizzini

Page 17: "I want there to be a Shift so bad. I want to feel my brain slide back into the slot it was meant to be in, rest there the way it did before the fall of last year, back when I was young, and witty, and my teachers said I had incredible promise, and I had incredible promise, and I spoke up in class because I was excited and smart about the world. I want the Shift so bad. I'm waiting for the phrase that will invoke it."

Page 29: "I'll keep at it and hope it gets better."

Page 38: "...always looking for new ways to fix me."

Page 41: "I'm doing experiments with my mind, to see how it got the way it is."

Page 44: "I should be finding what I love about this world."

Page 45: "I have to concentrate on myself."

Page 86: "I could do anything, anywhere, in all four directions."

Page 87: "I was happy because someday I'd be walking across this bridge looking at this city, owning some piece of it, being valuable here."

Page 99: "I don't know how I can be so ambitious and so lazy at the same time."

Page 101: "But I just started freaking out and feeling worse and worse."

Page 103: "I thought like it would be good to have a reset switch, like on the video games, to start again and see if you could go a different way."

Page 105: "The Cycling... Going over the same thoughts over and over. When my thoughts race against each other in a circle... just thoughts of what I have to do. Homework. And it comes up to my brain and I look at it and think 'I'm not going to be able to do that' and then it cycles back down and the next one comes up."

Page 106: "I used to always be up doing something, but once the Cycling starts I can waste hours... I have to go to sleep because no matter what I do, I have to be at school the next day. I can't let them know what's happening to me."

Page 107: "...I have to start shaping up now, but I can't because of this crap that's going on in my head."

Page 110: "'How'd you fix it?'... 'Same way you will. On my own.'"

Page 115: "I use my time how I want, so I rule it."

Page 121: "...that you needed to find happiness within yourself before you got it from another person..."

Page 135: "Over and over again, a cycling of tasks, of failures, of problems."

Page 239: "When you think you've beaten it, but you haven't." "Life not cured.... Life is managed."

**NOT DONE**

This Song Will Save Your Life, By Leila Sales

Page 1: "You think it's so easy to change yourself. You think it's so easy, but it's not."

Page 48: "That's the problem with life. You never get enough time to stare at your ceiling and try to figure out what's going on."

Page 70: "Since then I focused on smaller projects. Waking up in the morning. Doing homework. Walking around at night. Breathing"

Page 164: "But maybe he found something he loved to do and people he loved to do it with."

Page 211: "No one can mold me. I know because I've tried."

Page 220: "But sometimes you have to give up something you are to get to who you want to be."

Page 226: "...why are you letting your issues get in the way of your talent?"

Page 233: "...don't let anyone else decide your life for you."

Page 241: "Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all."

Page 247: "What do you do when you say sorry, but that still isn't enough?"

Page 248: "...because [she] deserved to be the best that she could be. And I did, too."

Page 252: "...I was never going to be the person he hoped I would be either."

Page 253: "This wasn't how I imagined things going. But imagination is so often no match for the absurdity, the randomness, the tragedy of reality."

Page 259: "Some people will mess with you, whenever they want, and for no reason except that they can. But hurting yourself is giving those people all the power, and they don't deserve it. Why would they deserve to have control over your life?"

Page 269: "But people don't always get what they deserve."

Page 271: "People are who they are and, try as you might, you cannot make them be what you want them to be."

Page 273: "...things don't stay the same forever: couches are replaced,...you discover a song, your body becomes forever scarred. And with each of these moments you change and change again, your true self spinning, shifting positions--but always at last it returns to you, like a dancer on the floor. Because throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable. And isn't that--that you--enough?"

Legend, By Marie Lu

Page 251: "In the mirror I look the same. But I am a different person inside."

Page 304: "Each day means as new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again. You live in the moment,... you take it all one day ate a time... You try to walk in the light."

The Mortal Instruments Book 1: City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare

Page 11: "They had something so precious, and they barely safeguarded it at all."

Page 29: "That means you see the world in ways that other people don't... it doesn't make you crazy--just different. There's nothing wrong with being different."

Page 238: "..that made her want to push him, crack that shell of cynicism and make him admit that he believed in something, felt something, cared about anything at all."